Barbara joined King’s College London from the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies (University of Oxford) where she was a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow and a teaching associate. Prior to that she was a researcher at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford.

Barbara holds a PhD and an MA in political science from the University of Rochester (USA) and an MSc in economics from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Office hours

Tuesday (in-person BHNE 8.15): 10.30 – 11.30

Friday: 15.00 – 16.00

Confirm the time and book at: https://calendly.com/barbara-piotrowska/

Research interests

• Bureaucracy
• Public sector motivation
• Authoritarianism
• Regime transitions

Barbara’s research focuses on the incentives faced by bureaucrats, with a particular focus on authoritarian states and states undergoing regime transitions. She is also interested more broadly in policymaking in non-democracies.

To date, Barbara has concentrated on the analysis of two very different organizations. In her study of the East German Ministry for State Security (Stasi) she constructed and analysed a dataset based on files of almost 300 informants to draw lessons about authoritarian survival. Barbara is also a member of a research project studying the recent history of expenditure control in the UK Treasury. As a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, Barbara worked on motivations of bureaucrats during transitions to democracy, as well as during democratic backsliding.

Teaching

• 7SSPN001 The Policy Process
• 7SSPN204 Policymaking in Non-Democracies
• 7SSPP002 Comparative public policy (not in 2024)

PhD supervision

Barbara is interested in supervising on the following topics:

• Bureaucracy
• Street-level bureaucracy
• Regime transitions: to democracy and democratic backsliding
• Authoritarianism
• Policing and security services

and other topics related to her research interests.

Please get in touch before applying.

Latest publications

Piotrowska, B. M. (2024). Street‐level bureaucracy and democratic backsliding. Evidence from Poland. Governance. https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/en/publications/street-level-bureaucracy-and-democratic-backsliding-evidence-from

Piotrowska, B. M., Szkurłat, I., & Szydłowska, M. (2024). Regime transitions and institutional weakness: the case of police reform in Poland in the early 1990s. In Street-Level Bureaucracy in Weak State Institutions (pp. 137-156). Policy Press.

Hood, C., & Piotrowska, B. (2024). Mature NPM. The Resilience of New Public Management, 49.

Piotrowska, B. M. (2024). The effect of political alignment on street-level bureaucrat job satisfaction and motivation. Governance, 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1111/gove.12853

Hood, C., King, M., McLean, I., & Piotrowska, B. M. (2023). The Way the Money Goes: The Fiscal Constitution and Public Spending in the UK. Oxford University Press.

Hood, C. & Piotrowska, B.M. (2023) Who Loves Input Controls? What Happened to 'Outputs' not 'Inputs' in UK Public Financial Management, and Why? Public Administration 101(1), 303-317

Hood, C. & Piotrowska, B.M. (2021) Goodhart's Law and the Gaming of UK Public Spending Numbers Public Performance & Management Review 44(2), 250-271

Piotrowska, B.M. (2020) The Price of Collaboration: How Authoritarian States Retain Control Comparative Political Studies 53(13):2091-2117