is an Assistant Professor of Political Science and Associate Director of the Center for European Studies at Duke University (on leave).  He received his B.A. in Government, History, and Economics from Harvard in 1995, and his Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University in 2002.  His primary research interests are the evolution and persistence of institutions and the ways in which institutions enable and constrain actors.  Substantively, his work focuses primarily on the politics of standards & regulations and what he calls global private politics.  His work has been published in theAmerican Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, Governance, Law & Contemporary Problems, and other journals, as well as edited volumes (see www.buthe.info for details).  A major study of the domestic and international politics of setting standards for product and financial markets, including standards for medical instruments/devices, is forthcoming with Princeton University Press--based on multi-industry surveys in the U.S. and several European countries.  As a RWJF Scholar, he is studying the standardization of medical terminology and the political contestation over the technology for electronic medical records, as well as the delegation of regulatory authority in the realm of food safety.