Steven Teles is Professor of Political Science at the Johns Hopkins University. Teles co-authored The Captured Economy with Niskanen Senior Vice President Brink Lindsey. The book, published by Oxford University Press in 2017, investigates the role of rent-seeking in the growth of inequality. Teles is also the author of (with Rob Saldin) Never Trump: The Revolt of the Conservative Elites (Oxford, 2020); (with David Dagan) Prison Break: Why Conservatives Turned Against Mass Incarceration (Oxford, 2016); The Rise of the Conservative Legal Movement: The Battle for Control of the Law (Princeton, 2008); and Whose Welfare: AFDC and Elite Politics (Kansas, 1996). He is the editor (with Brian Glenn) of Conservatism and American Political Development (Oxford, 2009) and (with Glenn Loury and Tariq Modood) Ethnicity, Social Mobility and Public Policy: Comparing the US and UK (Cambridge, 2005).

His work has been featured in a number of outlets, including National Affairs, The Public Interest, Democracy Journal, The American Prospect, The Nation, Washington Monthly (where he is a member of the Editorial Advisory Board), The American Interest and The New Statesman. At Niskanen, Teles provides intellectual input into the full range of the Center’s research.