Orit Kedar is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science and a member of the Federmann Center for the Study of Rationality at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her principal research interest lies in comparative politics. In particular, she is interested in electoral politics, representation, electoral systems and institutions more broadly, party systems, as well as in gender and politics. Other interests of hers include multi-level explanations in comparative politics, federalism, identity, European integration, and political methodology.    

Her current research analyzes how electoral districts affect representation and party systems. The study is funded by the European Research Council and the Israel Science Foundation. She also works on a comparative project analyzing the gender gap in voting and how it has changed overtime. Kedar’s past work examines various ways by which institutions mediate between voters and government. These include a study of voter choice and strategic voting under power sharing and coalition governments in parliamentary democracies and under presidential regimes. She teaches courses in comparative politics and particularly in comparative electoral politics, parliamentary democracy, gender and politics, and European integration. 

Kedar’s work appeared in such venues as the American Journal of Political Science, American Political Science Review, British Journal of Political Science, Electoral Studies, Political Analysis, and Public Opinion Quarterly. Her book, Voting for Policy, Not Parties: How Voters Compensate for Power Sharing (2009, Cambridge University Press), won APSA's Riker Award for best book in political economy. Her recent article ‘Are Voters Equal Under Proportional Representation?’ (AJPS 2017) won APSA’s Longley award for best article in representation and electoral systems. She is the former president of the European Political Science Association (2017-19). She serves on the editorial boards of European Union Politics and Political Analysis.  

An Israeli citizen, Kedar is a graduate of Tel Aviv University (political science and economics). She received her MA in political science from Brown University, and her Ph.D from Harvard's Government Department. Prior to joining the Hebrew University, she taught at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and at MIT. During the 2022-3 academic year, Kedar was a Katherine Hampson Bessell Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University.