Elliot Stoller

Doctoral Student

Elliot Stoller is a Doctoral Candidate in the Organizational Behavior program jointly offered by the Harvard Business School and the Department of Sociology at Harvard. His research seeks to contribute practical and theoretical insights for better aligning government and economic institutions with a more just distribution of power. To do so, Elliot integrates organizational theory with research on government bureaucracies to better understand the relationships between power, bureaucracy, and democratic accountability systems. His research critically examines how exercises of power are experienced, justified, and are normatively and structurally constrained within and between organizations.

Elliot has two research streams. First, he studies how federal government agencies in the United States justify regulatory policies through formal projections and evaluations of social and economic impacts. This research relies on a unique data set of nearly all regulatory impact assessments produced by federal government agencies for major regulations between 1996-2016. This research identifies systematic differences in when bureaucratic organizations rely on monetary assessments of worth to justify their political power. Second, Elliot is conducting interview, archival, and survey-based research at state-level agencies in the United States about the distribution, experiences of, and accountability systems for power during ongoing organizational reforms.

Prior to his doctoral studies, Elliot worked at the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) on the Policy Development Team, and at the Hoover Institute as a research assistant focusing on institutional change. He has also worked as the co-founder and co-president of the American Middle Eastern Network for Dialogue at Stanford (AMENDS), and in legislative and constituent affairs for an Illinois State Senator. Elliot holds a BA in Political Science and a minor in Economics from Stanford University as well as an AM in Sociology from Harvard University.

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