Charles Cadwell

Institute Fellow for the Center on International Development and Governance at the Urban Institute

Charles Cadwell is an Institute Fellow at the Urban Institute. From 2007-2019, he led the Institute’s Center on International Development & Governance. A lawyer, he has worked with economists, political scientists and others for thirty years to explore the relationship of political institutions and economic development, to develop tools for assessing corruption or state fragility, to design reform programs in dozens of countries and to recruit and manage teams of scholars, practitioners and local counterparts. His current interests are in how effective multi-level governance emerges and is sustained and the processes of decentralization and urban service performance, especially in the face of needed adaptation to climate change. 

Prior to his appointment at the Urban Institute, Cadwell was the Director of the University of Maryland’s IRIS Center, located in the Department of Economics, also targeting issues of governance and growth. In the United States, Cadwell has practiced law in private practice, worked in the White House Office of Consumer Affairs and in a research and policy unit of the US Small Business Administration. He serves on the Board of the Center on Values in Development and as an advisor to the Local Public Sector Alliance.