Zachary Elkins

Professor Zachary Elkins is a faculty member in the Department of Government at the University of Texas at Austin’s College of Liberal Arts. His research focuses on democracy, institutional reform, and constitutional design, particularly in Latin America. He co-directs the Comparative Constitutions Project, an NSF-funded initiative analyzing constitutional choices, and the Constitute website, which provides resources for constitutional drafters. He earned his B.A. from Yale University, M.A. from the University of Texas at Austin, and Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.

His research explores the origins and consequences of national constitutions, including trends in constitutional diffusion and institutional endurance. He has contributed to leximetric analysis, textual similarity metrics, and the role of international models in domestic constitutional design. His work has been published in journals such as American Political Science Review and International Organization.

Professor Elkins teaches courses on constitutional design, conceptual analysis, and democratic development, including GOV 355M, GOV 384N, and TC 358 across multiple semesters. He is also involved in the Embedded Scholars Program and the Cambridge Series on Comparative Law.