Sven H. Steinmo is a professor of Political Science at the University of Colorado, Boulder. 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 are in the realm of Institutional Theory, comparative public policy, and comparative historical analysis. Steinmo has 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 is 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, is academically notable, and is a significant contribution within that domain of research. Steinmo recently held a position as “Research Professor” at the Robert SchumanCenter for Advanced Studies of the European University Institute in Florence. While being hosted by the EUI, Steinmo was awarded the prestigious Frontier Grant, also referred to as the European MacArthur Fellowship, by the European Research Council in September 2012. After receiving the award, Steinmo acted as the Principal Investigator in his European Commission funded project, "Willing to Pay?". The goal of the project was to better understand, through experiment, why heterogeneity exists among different democratic welfare states regarding citizens' willingness to paygovernment taxes. In broad terms, "Willing to Pay?" set out to explore "the interactive relationships between policy choices, institutions and ideas", effectively "exploring and explaining the multiple paths and different choices made in different democratic welfare states". Steinmo returned to a professorship position at the University of Colorado, Boulder in 2017. His most recent project, Leap of Faith, explores the relationship between citizens and their government regarding general trust and tax compliance.
