Magnus Ohman headshot

Dr. Magnus Öhman

Director, Regional Europe Office, and Senior Political Finance Adviser
General Inquiries
media@ifes.org
+1 (202) 350-6700

Dr. Magnus Öhman has worked on anti-corruption and political finance issues in more than 40 countries since the 1990s, specializing in effective disclosure and oversight, sustainable solutions for transparency and accountability, and reducing abuse of state resources and political corruption. He has researched both country and macro-level trends and practices and assisted legislators, oversight institutions, civil society, media outlets, and political parties. He is the lead author of the Building Resources in Democracy, Governance, and Elections (BRIDGE) curriculum module on political finance. Öhman is currently steering the development of the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) Political Finance Implementation Toolkit and Political Finance Oversight Database.

You can connect with Öhman on LinkedIn and on the IFES Regional Europe Office Facebook page. 

Full Biography

Serving as the senior political finance adviser at IFES, Dr. Magnus Öhman has extensive global experience supporting political finance initiatives in more than 45 countries, including Afghanistan, Albania, Armenia, Bangladesh, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Egypt, Fiji, Georgia, Haiti, Honduras, Indonesia, Jamaica, Jordan, Kenya, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Liberia, Libya, North Macedonia, the Maldives, Moldova, Montenegro, Myanmar/Burma, Nepal, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Romania, Serbia, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Sweden, Tanzania, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Ukraine, the United States, Yemen, and Zimbabwe. He has contributed to several anti-corruption training curriculums for civil society groups in Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America.

Öhman is also the director of the IFES Regional Europe Office (REO). This office brings together people working with electoral issues for professional development events featuring experience sharing, innovative approaches, evidence-based solutions, and peer-to-peer learning. The REO has held online and in-person events for participants from the Central and Eastern Partnership countries and Western Balkans on issues from monitoring abuse of state resources, election integrity assessments, and election integrity management planning to increasing political and electoral access for persons with disabilities and stakeholder engagement in political finance oversight.

Öhman is the lead author of Third Party Regulation in the OSCE Region, The Cost of Representation: A Study of Women’s Representation and Political Finance In Nepal, and the IFES Political Finance Oversight Handbook. He frequently contributes to conferences and courses and conducts speaking engagements, such as for the Commonwealth Secretariat, Association of World Election Bodies, the Parliamentary State Affairs Committee in Nepal, the House of Representatives of Australia, and the Standing Constitutional Committee of Sweden. He has appeared in several media outlets such as the BBC World Business Report, BBC World Service, Deutsche Welle, and Ukrainian Pravda.

Öhman has been a board member of the International Political Science Association’s Research Committee on Political Finance and Political Corruption since 2006 and a member of the ACE (Administration and Cost of Elections) Practitioners’ Network since 2007.

Öhman holds a Ph.D. in political science from Uppsala University, Sweden, and speaks English and Swedish.