Daniel Mattingly is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at Yale University. His research focuses on the politics of authoritarian regimes, historical political economy, and China.

His first book, The Art of Political Control in China was published by Cambridge University Press in 2020. It drew on over a year of fieldwork in China, including over a hundred interviews and an original survey. In the book, Dr. Mattingly examined how the Chinese state controls protest and implements ambitious policies from sweeping urbanization schemes to family planning initiatives. He challenges the idea that autocratic states rely on coercion to compel compliance, and shows instead how the Chinese state uses social organizations to encourage society to police itself. The Art of Political Control received the best book award from the Democracy and Autocracy Section of the American Political Science Association and was named one of the best books of 2020 by Foreign Affairs.

Dr. Mattingly’s current book project focuses on elite politics, the military, and political change in China from 1911 to the present. It draws on archival evidence, new datasets of military leaders and revolutionaries, to illuminate the role of the military and foreign threats in sparking revolts, coups, and the personalization of power.

Prior to joining the faculty at Yale, Dr. Mattingly received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, Berkeley, and his B.A. from Yale. Previously, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University.