Dr. Mark Jones, Ph.D.

Chief Information and Analytics Officer

Mark P. Jones is the Joseph D. Jamail Chair in Latin American Studies, the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy’s Political Science Fellow, and a Professor in the Department of Political Science at Rice University. He also leads the Baker Institute’s Argentina Program and helps direct its Presidential Elections Program, in addition to serving as the Faculty Director of Rice’s Master of Global Affairs Program and as a Senior Research Associate at the University of Houston’s Hobby School of Public Affairs. Prior to arriving at Rice, Jones was a tenured member of the faculty at Michigan State University, in addition to serving as a visiting fellow or professor at other institutions such as the University of Notre Dame (Notre Dame, Indiana), the Universidad de San Andrés (Buenos Aires, Argentina) and the Universidad de la República (Montevideo, Uruguay).

Jones has received substantial financial support for his research, including eight grants from the United States National Science Foundation along with grants from the Moody Foundation, the Clayton Fund, the Summerfield G. Roberts Foundation, and the United States Department of State. Jones is the editor of Voting and Political Representation in America: Issues and Trends (2020), the lead author of Texas Politics Today (2018, 2016), and the author of Electoral Laws and the Survival of Presidential Democracies (1995). His research has been published in journals such as the American Journal of Political Science, Electoral Studies and the Journal of Politics, as well as in edited volumes published by Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press and Penn State University Press, among others. He is a frequent contributor to Texas media outlets, and his research on the Texas Legislature and on Texas elections and public opinion has been widely cited in the mass media. Jones also is a frequent commentator in local, state, national and international media on government, politics, public opinion and public policy.

Jones regularly advises U.S. government institutions on economic and political affairs in Argentina and has conducted research on public policy issues in Latin America and Texas for numerous international, national and local organizations, including the Inter-American Development Bank, the United Nations Development Programme, the U.S. Department of Defense, the Texas Department of Agriculture and the City of Houston.

Jones received his doctorate from the University of Michigan, where he studied with leading public opinion scholars such as Christopher Achen, Ronald Inglehart and Warren E. Miller. He received his bachelor’s degree from Tulane University, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa.