Research 

This study examines how personalistic presidents influence ministerial tenure, arguing that personalism—defined as a leader’s dominance over their party—affects ministerial stability. We theorize that personalistic presidents have higher overall ministerial turnover but retain greater control over appointments from their own party and independent ministers, while coalition ministers face higher dismissal rates due to policy conflicts. Using data from 14 Latin American presidential systems between the 1980s and 2020s, we find that personalism decreases turnover among ministers from the president’s party, but it does not impact the overall replacement rates. 

Foundational research in comparative politics highlights the importance of institutional context for political accountability and corruption. When institutional configurations encourage clarity of responsibility, they encourage political accountability and reduce corruption. Research in political communication highlights an important role for media in holding political leaders accountable and reducing corruption. Yet most research using the clarity of responsibility framework pays limited attention to the characteristics of the political information environment. Yet, when considered together, these bodies of research suggest that institutional systems of governance and media should operate in tandem to encourage democratic accountability and reduce corruption. Moreover, clarity of responsibility provides a fruitful theoretical framework with which to better incorporate the characteristics of media systems into large cross-national studies of comparative politics. We examine whether and how the characteristics of information environment interact with institutional configurations associated with clarity of responsibility to affect political corruption. 

The impact of perceived economic threat on immigration attitudes is well-established in Western countries. While heavily studied in this context, little work has sought to understand this relationship in the Latin American context. We advance a theory of perceived economic competition affecting immigration attitudes that emphasizes a different causal mechanism: differences in state capacity. We theorize that spatial variation in state capacity across contexts produce substantial variation in the immigration attitudes of natives. Utilizing an spatial approach, we test the influence state capacity on immigration policy opinions at the second-level administrative division.