Jeanne Sheehan Zaino

Jeanne Sheehan Zaino is Professor of Political Science and International Studies at Iona University and a political contributor to Bloomberg News, where she provides regular commentary on democratic institutions, constitutional governance, and elections in the U.S. and abroad. She is co-recipient of a three-year National Science Foundation (NSF) grant supporting an interdisciplinary initiative to expand data literacy and civic engagement in undergraduate education, with a focus on preparing students for the challenges of a data-driven democracy.

Her research spans American political development, electoral systems, constitutional design, and the global legacies of colonialism. She is the author most recently of American Democracy in Crisis: The Case for Rethinking Madisonian Government, Post-January 6 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025) and Sikander Hyat-Khan: Collected Papers of the Premier of United Punjab, 1928–1942 (Primus, 2024), and co-author of Adventures in Social Research, a leading text in data analysis and political inquiry. Her work has appeared in South Asia Research, Journal of Politics, Campaigns & Elections, and other scholarly and public-facing outlets.

Zaino is a senior democracy fellow at the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress (CSPC) in Washington DC and serves on the International Advisory Board for South Asia Research. She is also affiliated with the Institute for Thomas Paine Studies. Her work bridges scholarly research and public discourse, with a focus on the institutional pressures shaping democratic resilience.

She holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in Political Science from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst; an MPA in Survey Research and Data Analysis from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research at the University of Connecticut, Storrs (now at Cornell University); and a B.A. in Political Science and Mass Communications, earned as a University Scholar at the University of Connecticut.