About
Welcome!
I am an Assistant Professor in the Center for International Studies at El Colegio de México (Colmex). Since January 2023, I also serve as the Editor-in-Chief of the academic journal Foro Internacional. I earned a Ph.D. in Government from Cornell University. Prior to joining the faculty at Colmex, I held positions as an Academy Scholar at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies and as an Assistant Professor of Politics at the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (CIDE) in Mexico City.
My research interests include state-building, democracy and autocratization, and historical institutional development, with a regional focus on Latin America. Additionally, I have conducted work on health politics and policy. My ongoing book project delves into the state formation process in Colombia and Mexico to explain the origins of territorial variations in various dimensions of state capacity. The book is an extension of my doctoral dissertation, which received the 2018 William Anderson Award to the best dissertation in the general field of federalism or intergovernmental relations, state, and local politics, from the American Political Science Association (APSA).
Per capita municipal tax revenues, 1945
Research
Articles
"Constitutional Origins and Liberal Democracy: A Global Analysis, 1900-2015." 2021. American Political Science Review 115, n.2. (With Gabriel Negretto) [Online Appendix]
"Is Mexico Falling Into the Authoritarian Trap?" 2021. Journal of Democracy 32, n.4. (With Kenneth F. Greene)
"One-Eyed State: The Politics of Legibility and Property Taxation." 2020. Latin American Politics and Society 62, n.3. [Online Appendix]
"Building the Modern State in Developing Countries: Perceptions of Public Safety and (Un)willingness to pay Taxes in Mexico." 2020. Politics & Society 48, n.3. (With Gustavo Flores-Macías)
"Mexico 2019: Personalistic Politics and Neoliberalism from the Left." 2020. Revista de Ciencia Política 40, n.2.
- Partially reprinted and updated in Balance Temprano. Desde la Izquierda Democrática, eds.
Ricardo Becerra and José Woldenberg. Ciudad de México: Grano de Sal, 2020.
"Mexico's Party System Under Stress." 2018. Journal of Democracy 29, n.4 (October). (With Kenneth F. Greene)
Health systems and COVID-19
"Non-pharmaceutical interventions to combat COVID-19 in the Americas described through daily sub-national data." 2023. Scientific Data (Nature) 10, 734. (With the University of Miami Observatory to Contain COVID-19 in the Americas)
"Strengthening Health Systems To Face Pandemics: Subnational Policy Responses To COVID-19 In Latin America." 2022. Health Affairs 41, n.3. (With the University of Miami Observatory to Contain COVID-19 in the Americas)
"Mexico's Response to COVID-19: A Case Study." 2021. Institute for Global Health Sciences, UCSF. Prepared for
the World Health Organization’s Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response.
(Lead Author. With Jaime Sepúlveda, Eduardo González-Pier, Lucía Abascal-Miguel,
Jane Fieldhouse, Carlos del Río, and Sarah Gallalee).
(Versión en español).
"Punt Politics as Failure of Health System Stewardship: Evidence from the COVID-19 Pandemic Response in Brazil and Mexico." 2021. The Lancet Regional Health-Americas 4. (With Felicia Knaul, Michael Touchton, et. al.)
"A Partisan Pandemic: State Government Public Health Policies to Combat Covid-19 in Brazil." 2021. BMJ Global Health 6(6). (With the University of Miami Observatory to Contain COVID-19 in the Americas)
"Not Far Enough: Public Health Policies to Combat COVID-19 in Mexico’s States." 2021. PLOS One 16(6). (With the University of Miami Observatory to Contain COVID-19 in the Americas)
Edited books
Informe de la Comisión Independiente de Investigación sobre la Pandemia de COVID-19 en México. Aprender para no repetir. Head author and research coordinator. 2024. (Edited with Jaime Sepúlveda)
Izquierda, Democracia y Cambio Social. PRD: 1989-2019. Edited volume. 2020. Ciudad de México: Cal y Arena. (Edited with Ricardo Becerra)
Las caras de Jano: 90 años del PRI. Edited volume. 2019. Ciudad de México: CIDE. (Edited with Ricardo Becerra)
“¿La venganza del ‘pueblo’? La democracia frente a sí misma.” Editor, special issue, Configuraciones 48-49 (January-August 2019). Essays by Lührmann and Lindberg, Urbinati, Roberts, Riofrancos, Schedler, González and Saffon, Becerra, Pantoja, Oñate.
Book chapters
"El Ejército paralelo: las defensas rurales y el orden político en México, 1920-2020." 2024. In Ariel Rodríguez Kuri (ed.), Violencias mexicanas, 1920-2020. Once estudios. Ciudad de México: El Colegio de México.
"La recesión democrática como un problema de estatalidad." 2021. In Rolando Cordera and Enrique Provencio, eds. Informe del desarrollo en México. Ciudad de México: UNAM, Programa Universitario de Estudios del Desarrollo.
"1989-2019. La política en una época de desgarramiento social." 2020. In Izquierda, democracia y cambio social: PRD, 1989-2019, eds. Ricardo Becerra and Mariano Sánchez-Talanquer. Ciudad de México: Cal y Arena.
"The Political Economy of NAFTA/USMCA." 2019. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics. Oxford University Press. (With Gustavo Flores-Macías)
“Las huellas del pasado. Legados representativos de la era del PRI.” In Las caras de Jano: 90 años del PRI, eds. Mariano Sánchez-Talanquer and Ricardo Becerra. Ciudad de México: CIDE. In press.
"Authoritarian Legacies and Party System Stability in Mexico." 2018. In Scott Mainwaring (ed.) Party Systems in Latin America: Institutionalization, Decay, and Collapse. New York: Cambridge University Press. (With Kenneth F. Greene) [Online Appendix]
"Voto y ciclo económico" and "Clientelismo y coacción." 2017. In Informe sobre la democracia mexicana en una época de expectativas rotas. Mexico City: Siglo XXI Editores.
"La economía política del salario mínimo: Estados Unidos y América Latina en perspectiva comparada." 2016. In Del salario mínimo al salario digno. Distrito Federal: CESCDMX-Cal y Arena.
"El cambio constitucional necesario." 2012. In Equidad social y parlamentarismo. Edited by Ricardo Becerra. Distrito Federal: Siglo XXI Editores.
Work under review and in progress
"Suffrage Restrictions and the Reach of the Nation-State." 2019 award for best paper presented in the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association (APSA), Comparative Democratization Section.
"Why does Patrimonialism Persist? Authoritarian Legacies and Judicial Selection in Mexico, 1917-2017." (With Julio Ríos-Figueroa)
"Crime, Social Distance, and Elite Support for Redistribution in Unequal Societies." (With Gustavo Flores-Macías and Vincent Mauro)
"Spatial Inequality, (In)security, and Support for the Tax State: Evidence from Mexico." (With Gustavo Flores-Macías)
"`Indians' into Mexicans: Land Reform and Linguistic Assimilation in Revolutionary Mexico."
"Social Dissent, Coercive Capacity, and Redistribution: Evidence from Authoritarian Mexico." (With Horacio Larreguy and Juan Felipe Riaño)
"Legacies of Revolution: Popular Militias and the Rule of Law."
Rural defense militias in postrevolutionary Mexico
Book manuscript
The Geography of State Power: Domestic Conflict and State-building in Colombia and Mexico
Why do states develop more effective authority in some parts of their territory and domains of governance than in others? Despite the importance of state capacity for political order, economic development, and equal access to citizenship rights, the rise of effective states and the causes of chronic institutional weakness are not well understood. Moreover, few studies have sought to systematically explain the vast differences in state capacity that exist within countries, although this unevenness is a defining feature of many contemporary states.
Conservative Party vote share, average 1930 and 1946
This project examines the historical foundations of state (in)capacity in Mexico and Colombia from a subnational perspective. It presents a theoretical framework to explain variation in the state’s ability to perform core functions within its borders, centered on the impact of historical political cleavages on the process of state formation across territory. I argue that the structure of political conflict between state-building coalitions and their rivals during formative periods of the state shapes spatial patterns of institutional development and receptiveness to state authority. Different types of state-society relations emerge across territory during these critical periods of state-making, depending on who builds the state, for whom, and how. Subnational patterns of societal compliance or resistance to early state-building projects, in turn, have enduring effects on the strength of state institutions and state capacity outcomes along various dimensions. As a result, the geography of state power reflects historical lines of conflict.
Per capita tax revenue, 1950
I test the argument using within-country historical analyses, case studies, and novel historical datasets compiled through extensive archival research in both countries and covering several core dimensions of state power, including taxation, coercion, and public service provision. Drawing on original and highly disaggregated data, the analysis shows that insurgency along a religious divide in the aftermath of the Mexican Revolution systematically and enduringly affected the state’s ability to exercise uniform fiscal authority, its propensity to collaborate with popular militias, or the provision of basic education across territory. Such patterns of state development help explain spatial inequalities, the emergence of vigilantism, and other important outcomes down the road. The analysis also documents that patterns of state capacity development in Colombia followed a partisan logic. Variables like land registration in cadasters, property tax revenues, or literacy rates have all bore the marks of partisan processes of state-making for over a century. Yet, not all forms of state strength or weakness point in the same direction in any given region. Rather, the state's authority is uneven across territory and domains simultaneously, producing seemingly counterintuitive patterns. A focus on historical political antagonisms makes this complex geography of state power intelligible.
The study has important implications for our understanding of the process of state formation across geographic space, the origins of state capacity, and the political roots of institutional weakness.
Other writing
"La izquierda oficialista." Julio 2024. Otros Diálogos 28.
"El ‘Plan B’ o el caballo de Troya." 2023. Ciudad de México: UNAM-IIJ.
"Los derroteros del populismo contemporáneo. Entrevista con Nadia Urbinati." Agosto 2023. Nexos 46, n.548. (Con Roberto Breña)
"La contrarreforma definitiva: prejuicios y peligros de la reforma electoral." Noviembre 2022. Letras Libres.
"Qué significa la defensa del CIDE." December 2021. Letras Libres.
"Orden y desorden político de México." February 2021. Nexos n. 518.
" Las Defensas Rurales del Ejército y las raíces históricas de la militarización." October 2020. Programa para el Estudio de la Violencia, CIDE.
"Errada y errática: la respuesta gubernamental a la pandemia." August 2020. Nexos (With Felicia Knaul, Julio Frenk, Salomón Chertorivski, and Héctor Arreola-Ornelas)
"La letalidad hospitalaria por COVID-19 en México: desigualdades institucionales." August 2020. Nexos, Taller de Datos.
" Mexico’s Economic Austerity is a Danger. Including for the U.S." June 2020. (With Kenneth F. Greene)
"Crisis y pensamiento después del fin de la historia." Configuraciones 50 (sept 2019-mar 2020).
"La desfiguración de la representación política: populismo y bonapartismo en el siglo XXI," in "¿La venganza del 'pueblo'? La democracia frente a sí misma," ed. Mariano Sánchez-Talanquer, special issue, Configuraciones 48-49 (Jan-Aug 2019): 10-30.
¿Democracia clientelar? La representación política frente a la debilidad estatal. July 2019. Ciudad de México: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung.
" Los derechos cuestan: debilidad fiscal y límites de la "Cuarta Transformación." January 2019. Primer Saque.
A Trade Deal Worse than NAFTA. October 1, 2018. The New York Times. (With Gustavo Flores-Macías)
NAFTA’s Overhaul: From Stability to Uncertainty. September 2018. Foreign Policy Research Institute. (With Gustavo Flores-Macías)
Review of Violence and Crime in Latin America: Representations and Politics, David Carey Jr. and Gema Santamaría (eds). 2018. Bulletin of Latin American Research 37, n.5 (November).
The Future of Mexico under AMLO. July 2018. Foreign Policy Research Institute.
Lo que está en juego en las elecciones de México. May 2018. Misión de Observación Electoral, Colombia.
El Panorama Electoral en América Latina en 2018. Foreign Affairs Latinoamérica 18, n.1. (With Gustavo Flores-Macías)
Teaching
Comparative Political Regimes (Fall 2023). El Colegio de México. Graduate seminar.
Autocratization and Democratic Challenges (Fall 2022). El Colegio de México. Graduate.
Quantitative Research Methods I (Fall 2021). El Colegio de México. Graduate.
Comparative Politics (Spring 2021). El Colegio de México. Undergraduate.
Political Institutions I: The State, Constitutionalism, and Democracy (Fall 2018, 2019, 2020). CIDE. Undergraduate.
Comparative Political Economy (Spring 2019). CIDE. Graduate seminar.
CV