Biography

Makoto Fukumoto received his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley, and M.Sc. in International Political Economy at the LSE. His research deals with comparative political economy with a focus on geography, in particular, the tensions associated with sharpening economic and political divides between prospering and ‘left-behind’ areas. His research projects focus on two issues: political economy of place-based policies and regional development programs; geographic mobility of workers and its political ramifications. He inquires into how political logic prevents optimal policy options in declining areas.
He employs a range of geospatial and statistical analyses, and finds natural experiments exploiting particular geographic or administrative circumstances. He participated in designing opinion polls for the Los Angeles Times and went through training and vetting processes to analyze restricted-access data in Sweden and the US. To supplement quantitative findings, he conducted expert interviews in Belgium and archival research in Austria. His research has received dissertation fellowships from the Berkeley Law School and the Austrian Marshall Plan Foundation.
Makoto’s research target as a Max Weber Fellow is to publish papers focusing on politicians’ side of the story. He concentrated on voters during his Ph.D. years, and he intends to get the complete picture by revealing politicians’ incentives regarding regional divergence and decline.

Expertise for Teaching and Mentoring of Ph.D. Researchers
At UC Berkeley, Makoto taught undergraduate courses in comparative political economy, international political economy, comparative politics, American diplomacy, and European politics.