Gary Bland

Gary Bland, Ph.D., a Fellow and Senior Advisor in Governance at RTI International, provides scientific and technical leadership to RTI research, evaluation, and programming, particularly in the area of democratic governance.  A scholar and analyst, he combines extensive policy, academic, and programmatic expertise with a focus on comparative politics, participatory governance, anti-corruption, elections, legislatures, decentralization, and local governance.  Over the past 20 years, his multidisciplinary research and analysis and his programming work in governance have helped inform policy and successful development in more than 25 countries worldwide.  He has nearly 5 years of senior managerial experience, has developed various evaluation methodologies, and recently developed a comprehensive framework for measuring subnational corruption.  As Director of RTI’s Center for Democratic Governance, Dr. Bland supervised multiple USAID projects abroad and worked closely with Missions while serving as a lead technical advisor and managing a home office team.  He has also closely research and written about democracy, participatory planning, economic governance, corporate social responsibility, globalization, and civil society development.  Dr. Bland served as an adjunct graduate professor of comparative public policy process at Georgetown University, has given many seminars.

Earlier, Dr. Bland was a private consultant for the World Bank and other international aid agencies. He provided policy advice, wrote analyses on decentralization and local governance, and advised officials on democratic development. From 1998–2001, Dr. Bland served as a fellow in the Center for Democracy and Governance at U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), where he served as the lead technical and intra-agency advisor for decentralization and local government programming. Earlier, at the Latin American Program of the Woodrow Wilson Center, he examined decentralization reform, liaised with the U.S. Congress, and developed or led an array of policy-related public events. Previously, he also served three years as a legislative aide in the U.S. House of Representatives.