Jonas Pontusson holds a BA from Amherst College (1978) and a PhD from the University of California at Berkeley (1984).  Prior to moving to Geneva in 2010, he taught at Cornell University (1984-2005) and Princeton University (2005-10).  He has been a visiting scholar at Nuffield College (Oxford), the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in Social Sciences (Uppsala), the Russell Sage Foundation (New York), Sciences Po (Paris) and the Hertie School of Governance (Berlin).  Jonas has a long-standing interest in the comparative politics of inequality and redistribution, with an emphasis on labor-market dynamics and the role of trade unions.  He has written extensively on Swedish social democracy and also contributed to the literature on varieties of capitalism.  Alongside Unequal Democracies, Jonas is engaged in a project on post-Fordist growth models with Lucio Baccaro, supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation.  As principal investigator, Jonas is responsible for the organization and overall coherence of the Unequal Democracies program and implicated in all the research projects that the program encompasses.   

Curriculum Vitae

Publications related to Unequal Democracies:

• “Macroeconomic Conditions, Inequality Shocks and the Politics of Redistribution, 1990-2013.” Journal of European Public Policy, v. 25, no. 1 (2018), 31-58.  Co-authored David Weisstanner. 
• “Solidaristic Unionism and Support for Redistribution in Contemporary Europe.” World Politics, v. 69, no. 3 (2017), 448-492.  Co-authored with Nadja Mosimann. 
• “Introduction to the Debate: Does descriptive misrepresentation by class and income matter?” Swiss Political Science Review, v. 21, no. 2 (2015), 207-215.
•  “Unionization, Inequality and Redistribution.”  British Journal of Industrial Relations, v. 51 (2013), 797-825. 
•  “The Structure of Inequality and the Politics of Redistribution.” American Political Science Review, v. 105, no. 2 (2011), 316-336.  Co-authored with Noam Lupu. 
• “Whose interests do unions represent? Unionization by income in Western Europe.” In Research in the     Sociology of Work, vol. 22B (2011), 181-211.  Co-authored with Michael Becher. 
• “The Politics of Inequality: Voter Mobilization and Left Parties in Advanced Industrial States.”  Comparative Political Studies, v. 43, no. 6 (2010), 675-705.  Co-authored with David Rueda. 
• “Globalization, Labour Power and Partisan Politics Revisited” Socio-Economic Review, vol. 8, no. 2 (2010), 251-281.  Co-authored with Hyeok Yong Kwon. 
•  “Rising Inequality and the Politics of Redistribution in Affluent Countries.” Perspectives on Politics, v. 3, no. 3 (2005), 449-471.  Co-authored with Lane Kenworthy. 
• “Comparative Political Economy of Wage Distribution: The Role of Partisanship and Labor Market Institutions." British Journal of Political Science, 32 (2002), 281-303.  Co-authored with David Rueda and Christopher Way. 
• “Wage Inequality and Varieties of Capitalism.” World Politics, v. 52 (April 2000), 350-383.  Co-authored with David Rueda.