Biography
Sven Holger Steinmo was an American political scientist. He worked at the University of Colorado, Boulder as professor of political science. He obtained his BA from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and his MA, MPH, and PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. His primary teaching and research interests were in the realm of institutional theory, comparative public policy, and comparative historical analysis. Steinmo also researched how political and economic institutions grew and currently operate within various developed democracies, such as Sweden and Japan, while utilizing the perspectives found in evolutionary theory. He was widely recognized for his work in institutional theory, having been one of the founders of the subfield of historical institutionalism. His book with Kathleen Thelen, Structuring Politics: Historical Institutionalism and Comparative Analysis (1992), is academically notable, and is a significant contribution within that domain of research.
