Alfred Stepan is the Wallace Sayre Professor of Government at Columbia and previously the Gladstone Professor of Government at Oxford University and a Fellow of All Souls College. He received the Karl Deutch Award of the International Political Science Association in 2012.

His numerous books, which have been translated into over a dozen languages, include Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation with Juan Linz and Crafting State Nations: India and Other Multinational Democracies with Juan Linz and Yogendra Yadav.

He was the Rajni Kothari Chair in Democracy in the year 2014 and delivered the Annual Rajni Kothari Lecture on 'The Theravada Buddhist Puzzle: Why Inclusionary Founding Doctrines and Exclusionary Contemporary Politics?' at CSDS on 2 May 2014