Working papers and Work in Progress
Special Interests Trade-offs: How Restricting Money in Politics Help Church-backed Candidates
(with Melani Cammett and Guadalupe Tuñon) [Revisions requested, Journal of Politics]
The Autocracy Bandwagon: Political Selection and Autocratic Consolidation
(with Guadalupe Tuñon) - [email for wp]
Political outsiders
(in preparation, with Natalia Garbiras Diaz)
Ideology First: Physicians in Bolsonaro's Brazil
(in preparation, with Horacio Larreguy and Letícia Nunes)
Modular Parties: Making Clientelism Work in Volatile Systems
The Exit Trap: the Gender Gap in Political Perseverance
(with Guadalupe Tuñon)
(with Melani Cammett and Guadalupe Tuñon) [Revisions requested, Journal of Politics]
The Autocracy Bandwagon: Political Selection and Autocratic Consolidation
(with Guadalupe Tuñon) - [email for wp]
Political outsiders
(in preparation, with Natalia Garbiras Diaz)
Ideology First: Physicians in Bolsonaro's Brazil
(in preparation, with Horacio Larreguy and Letícia Nunes)
Modular Parties: Making Clientelism Work in Volatile Systems
The Exit Trap: the Gender Gap in Political Perseverance
(with Guadalupe Tuñon)
Peer-Reviewed Publications
"The Violence of Law and Order Politics: The Case of Law Enforcement Candidates in Brazil" - American Political Science Review (firstview). [pdf], [dataverse]
This article analyzes the effects on violence of electing law-and-order candidates at the local level. It argues that law-and-order politicians embedded in the police will divert resources to favor their constituency, which in violence-prone areas could generate more murders. Using ballot names of council candidates in thousands of local elections in Brazil to accurately classify law-and-order candidates, it shows that the election of police law-and-order candidates causes more homicides. Moreover, georeferenced data on police activity and homicides show neglect in areas that did not support a winning police law-and-order candidate, despite these areas being home to the majority of individuals vulnerable to violence. This favoritism, however, is not present in places where preexisting local institutions make policing more transparent. Instead of persecution directed against minorities or the incapacity to battle criminal gangs, this research shows that surges in violence can be the result of typical forms of democratic representation.
Media: blog faces da violência, época, ponte, vice
"Media Manipulation in Young Democracies: Evidence from the 1989 Brazilian Presidential Election" - Comparative Political Studies (online first).(with Alexsandros Cavgias, Raphael Corbi, and Luis Meloni) [pdf],[dataverse]
We investigate how dominant media networks can manipulate voters in young democracies. During the first presidential election after the democratic transition in Brazil, TV Globo, the largest and most-watched network in the country, unexpectedly manipulated the news coverage of the last debate 2 days before the decisive second round. In a video segment, Globo unfavorably depicted the left-wing candidate, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Using the geographical distribution of broadcaster-specific TV signals and the timing of election events, we identify the effect of the manipulation net of the effect of the debate itself, showing that Globo’s misleading reporting caused Lula to lose millions of votes. Our results showcase how the media can reshape an election in a single stroke, especially where the media is concentrated and politically inexperienced voters have few other sources of information
"Commodity Shocks and Incumbency Effects" - British Journal of Political Science, (2022) 52(4), 1689-1708.(with Luis Schiumerini)[pdf],[dataverse]
Why do incumbents enjoy an electoral advantage in some political settings but suffer from a disadvantage in others? We propose a novel explanation linking variation in incumbency effects with exogenous commodity shocks. While voters attempt to sanction incumbents for economic performance, changes in commodity prices affect their evaluations and condition the electoral fortunes of incumbents vis-à-vis challengers. We test our argument in Brazilian municipalities, combining a plausibly exogenous measure of variation in commodity prices with a close election regression discontinuity design. Our results show that increases in the price of agricultural commodities greatly enhance the prospects of incumbents, while negative shocks exacerbate their incumbency disadvantage, especially in rural municipalities. Further investigation suggests that commodity shocks do not operate via voter learning about candidate quality, changes in the pool of candidates, shifts in voter preferences, or strategic elite investments. Instead, we find suggestive evidence that commodity shocks affect voters' evaluations through their effect on local economic growth.
"Disloyal Brokers and Weak Parties" - American Journal of Political Science 62.1 (2018) no. 1 84-98 [pdf],[dataverse]
This article shows that the disloyalty of political brokers causes party fragility. Lacking distinctive brands,
organization, and activists to mobilize individuals, parties “hire” local notables to broker votes among a local, nonpartisan constituency. However, brokers may be unreliable agents, regularly changing political allegiances in search of better returns for their brokerage among the module of voters they control. This free agency from brokers hinders durable party–voter linkages and results in electorally vulnerable parties. Measuring how brokers influence parties is empirically complex, but taking advantage of the fact that in Brazil these agents are also local candidates, this article demonstrates the negative electoral consequences of brokers’ free agency on party performance. Natural experiments and an unexpected, temporary institutional reform that discouraged disloyalty for brokers demonstrate this relationship.
"The effect of re-election on health expenditures: an analysis of the reputation-building model" - Brazilian Review of Political Economy (Revista de Economia Política) (2010) v. 30, p. 140-158. (with Enlinson Mattos, and in Portuguese)[pdf]
"Scale economies in the supply of health services: a study of São Paulo Municipalities" - Revista ANPEC, (2009) v. 10, p. 357-386. (with Paulo Arvate, Enlinson Mattos, Veronica Orellano, and Fabiana Rocha)
Chapters in Edited Volumes
"The new left in broker-mediated party systems" in Kapiszewski, Levitsky and Yashar (eds.) The Inclusionary Turn in Latin American Democracies, Cambridge University Press (with Thad Dunning)[pdf]
Non Peer-Reviewed
2021 - COMUNICANDO INCERTEZAS (with Pedro Burgos)
in Machado, Laura Mueller (org.) Legado de uma Pandemia. Autografia.
2010 - MEXICO CENTENNIAL: LIMITED INDEPENDENCE, LIMITED DEMOCRACY
(with Sinaia Urrusti-Frenk)
Berkeley Review of Latin American Studies