University of California, Berkeley
Università della Svizzera italiana
Professor of Public Administration and Public Policy
Comparative public administration: administrative capacity, bureaucratic discretion, policy implementation and public-sector performance.
I study how bureaucracies convert formal authority into delivery, coordination, analytical and regulatory capacity; how discretion, accountability and performance management are institutionalised in public organisations; and how public management reform and digital-era governance are reshaping the administrative state across the Middle East and North Africa and the Global South.
Ben Brik, A. (2026). Performative authoritarianism in AI ethics charter production: A configurational analysis of 22 Arab states. AI and Ethics, 6, 565. doi.org/10.1007/s43681-026-01409-4
Research programme
How do public organisations acquire capacity, organise authority, coordinate and learn?
Agencies, merit systems, evaluation units, performance regimes and AI regulators are formal institutions. Whether they produce administrative performance depends on organisational capacity, bureaucratic professionalism, inter-agency coordination, implementation structures and accountability arrangements inside public organisations.
My research programme in comparative public administration examines that translation, and the conditions under which institutionalisation ends in decoupling, isomorphic mimicry and capability traps, with evidence from more than 30 countries.
Institutionalisation can build capacity, and it can also end in decoupling, isomorphic mimicry and hollow structures.
Oxford Handbooks on programme evaluation and social welfare, Edward Elgar volumes on governance reform, public policy in the Arab world, evaluation institutionalisation and the policy sciences, and an NYU Press volume on governing through the pandemic. Every book
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Research infrastructure for administrative capacity: measurement of evaluation institutionalisation and of citizens’ access to and experience of public services, comparative coding of AI regulatory regimes, and a professional community for evaluation in the Global South.
arablab.ai ↗Studies how the 22 member states of the Arab League govern artificial intelligence, through an open dataset, the Arab AI Governance Index and the annual Arab AI Governance Report.
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mena-evaluation.com ↗Publishes the Index of Evaluation Institutionalization in the Arab Region, which measures how far public policy evaluation is institutionalised in the political, social and professional systems of 11 Arab League states.
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marsad-edara.org ↗A citizens survey of 1,861 residents of ten Arab states. Its Arab Access and Experience Index records, for eleven domains, what residents can obtain and use and how they rate it.
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evalsouth.org ↗An association of evaluators, researchers and policy makers across Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East, with five regional networks and chapter leads in more than forty countries.
Read moreWhere the research travels
Conferences, lectures, United Nations sessions and fieldwork from the engagement record. Select a city.