Current Scholar Bios
Tim Büthe is Assistant Professor of Political Science and Associate Director of the Center for European Studies at Duke University. He received his B.A. in Government, History, and Economics from Harvard in 1995, and his Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University in 2002. His primary research interests are the evolution and persistence of institutions and the ways in which institutions enable and constrain actors. Substantively, his work focuses primarily on the politics of standards and regulations in the US and Europe and the politics of business confidence. He conducted a major study of the politics of product standards, including standards for medical instruments/devices (jointly with a colleague from Oxford University) and is currently completing a multi-national research survey and study on financial reporting standards---and the public and private politics of setting those standards. As a RWJ Scholar, he will study the standardization of medical terminology, including the political contestation over the definition of diseases and terminology for the severity of symptoms.