Patrick Quirk, Ph.D., serves as Vice President for Strategy, Innovation, and Impact at the International Republican Institute (IRI), a non-profit, non-partisan organization committed to strengthening democracy worldwide. In this role, Dr. Quirk provides the leadership, management, and vision to ensure that IRI is addressing global challenges to democracy by developing innovative and evidence-based programs, tools, and resources. He leads IRI’s organization-wide strategic planning as well as oversees institutional efforts on monitoring, evaluation, research, and learning (MERL).
Dr. Quirk also oversees the Center for Global Impact, the 60-person team of thematic experts, researchers, and global project staff who help IRI monitor and develop innovative approaches to priority technical areas—from countering foreign authoritarian influence and combatting corruption, to strengthening political parties. Previously, he served as IRI’s Senior Director for Strategy, Research, and the Center for Global Impact.
Concurrent to serving at IRI, Dr. Quirk is a Nonresident Senior Fellow in the Atlantic Council’s Freedom and Prosperity Center and Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security and an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University, where he teaches courses on conflict stabilization; electoral violence prevention/mitigation; and briefing senior officials From 2019-2021, he was a Nonresident Fellow in the Foreign Policy Program of the Brookings Institution.
Previously, he served on the U.S. Secretary of State’s Policy Planning (S/P) staff in the Department of State as the lead advisor for fragile states, conflict and stabilization, and foreign assistance. In this capacity, he regularly provided independent policy analysis to the Secretary on these themes. From 2018-19, he conceptualized, and managed the process to advance, the new U.S. approach to fragile states .
Prior to Policy Planning, he served in State’s Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations (CSO) as Senior Advisor for Policy and Strategy. In this capacity, he was the chief political scientist for, and a lead author of, the 2018 Stabilization Assistance Review ; led the team that conceptualized and institutionalized CSO’s approach to mitigate conflict surrounding high-priority elections and political transitions; and deployed to Myanmar, Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria, and Tunisia to work on conflict prevention efforts. From 2017-18, he was a nonresident Penn Kemble fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy.
Prior to joining the Department of State, he was a Research Fellow at the German Marshall Fund as well as designed and implemented conflict prevention and democracy strengthening foreign assistance interventions overseas. His analysis has appeared in The American Interest, American Purpose, Just Security, Foreign Policy, the Financial Times, The National Interest, NPR, and Real Clear Defense, among other outlets. His book, “Great Powers, Weak States, and Insurgency: Explaining Internal Threat Alliances ,” was published in 2017. He also co-authored USAID’s “Best Practices in Electoral Security, a Guide for Democracy, Human Rights and Governance Programming ” and is the lead author of CSO’s “Electoral Violence Assessment Framework” assessment methodology.
Quirk earned a bachelor's in history from Bates College and a doctorate in political science from Johns Hopkins University.
Academic Appointment(s)
- Primary
- Adjunct Lecturer, College - Department of Government