Peer-reviewed articles

Framing Labor Action: Experimental Evidence from Teachers in Mexico, with Christopher Chambers-Ju (Perspectives on Politics, 2025)

Abstract: Labor organizations increasingly rely on political communication campaigns to win broader support from bystanders. How do framings of worker mobilization influence public support for strikers' demands? This paper explores the effects of different framings of teacher strikes on support for labor unions and strikes in Mexico by employing an original vignette experiment embedded in a nationally representative survey. We find that how strikes are framed alters responses to them. Our treatment effects indicate that mentioning the political interest of union leaders decreases support for unions, while informing voters about teacher grievances increases support for ongoing strikes. Our finding suggests the importance of disaggregating attitudes towards strikes and unions and proposes new avenues for research on how media strategies are used by various actors to gain political leverage during labor conflicts.

Informal Institutions and Community Development Protests: Evidence from Sub-Municipal Localities in Mexico, Comparative Politics. Volume 55, Number 3, April 2023, pp. 401-424(24) 

Abstract: Why are citizens in some communities able to protest to bring attention to their grievances, while not in others? While a long literature has contended that informal civil society institutions facilitate contentious collective action, not all organizations do so, and some might even discourage it. I argue in this article that inclusive institutions—open to everyone in a community—facilitate protests, while non-inclusive institutions uniting some particularistic sub-groups within communities hinder them. The former provide communities with broad social networks fostering communal unity, while the latter erode communal unity through provoking internal conflicts. I provide evidence for this theory in the sub-municipal context of Mexico, using statistical analysis of data from an original survey of sub-municipal community presidents and qualitative fieldwork evidence from Puebla and Tlaxcala. 

Inclusive Institutions, Unequal Outcomes: Democracy, State Infrastructural Power and Inequality 1970-2015, with Hector Bahamonde, European Journal of Political Economy (2021), 70, 1-21.

Abstract: Although the relationship between democratic rule and income inequality has received important attention in recent literature, the evidence has been far from conclusive. In this paper, we explore whether the redistributive effect of democratic rule is conditional on state capacity. Previous literature has outlined that pre-existing state capacity may be necessary for inequality-reducing policies under democratic rule. In contrast to that intuitive view, this study argues that democratic rule and high state capacity combined produce higher levels of income inequality over time. This relationship operates through the positive effect of high-capacity democratic context on foreign direct investment and financial development. By making use of a novel measure of state capacity based on cumulative census administration, we find empirical support for these claims using fixed-effects panel regressions with the data from 126 industrial and developing countries between 1970 and 2013.

Informal Customary Institutions, Collective Action, and Submunicipal Public Goods Provision in Mexico , Latin American Politics and Society (2021)

Inequality, Poverty and Social Protection in the Times of Covid-19 in Latin America: Comparing Brazil and Mexico (with Nora Lustig) (2021), Current History 120 (823): 57– 63. 

Working papers

Do Citizens Punish Politicians for Protests? A Vignette Experiment in Mexico

Abstract: Do protests affect elections? Drawing on an original informational experiment embedded in a nationally representative survey in Mexico, this paper investigates the electoral consequences of local service delivery protests. Do voters punish municipal politicians (mayors) after their jurisdictions experience waves of protests? I argue that these protests serve as cues for voters, influencing retrospective evaluations of politicians in democratic systems. Yet, the effect of protests on electoral outcomes is conditional on two factors: the perceived seriousness of protests (whether there is a violent clash between the protesters and the police) and whether there is a partisan alignment between the respondents and the politician experiencing the protest. 

Protest and Local Public Goods Provision: Experimental Evidence from Mexico

Recent literature documents that village and slum communities across the developing world use small-scale protests and other forms of contentious collective action to secure resources from policymakers and promote community development. This paper employs a conjoint experiment with local political elites to examine their perceptions of the impact of community protests on resource allocation in Mexico. Challenging existing literature that focuses primarily on electoral factors and clientelism, I demonstrate that protests significantly influence municipal-level policymakers' decisions. The conjoint experiment reveals that protests and protest-promoting community institutions are perceived as effective tools for securing development projects for sub-municipal communities. These findings are further supported by observational data from an original survey of community leaders in Puebla and Tlaxcala, as well as qualitative interviews. This research underscores the crucial role of contentious politics and informal institutions in shaping resource distribution within decentralized systems. 

Losers’ Consent and Democratic Stability: Experimental Evidence from Chile and Estonia (with Hector Bahamonde and Inga Saikkonen)

Abstract: Citizens’ support for democracy is central for democratic stability, yet recent research has begun to question the depth of this commitment in both new and established democracies. Moreover, in recent years there has been an increase of violent post-electoral protests by citizens who’s favored candidate has lost an election. Contrary to most research that concentrates on potential breaches of democratic values by the "winners," we turn our attention to the "losers." In particular, we seek to understand if individuals who sided with the losing candidate are more open to supporting anti-systemic actions against the current government, and whether their stance is influenced by their country's regime type (presidential vs. parliamentary). To do this, we carried out a novel, fully pre-registered survey experiment in two new democracies, Estonia and Chile, probing into the willingness of these "losers" to tolerate transgressions against democratic principles.

Violent Crime and Pork-Barrel Politics: evidence from Mexican municipalities 2016-2018

Abstract: How does the presence of criminal violence affect politicians’ distributive strategies? Recent literature has vigorously debated which voter groups receive discretionary transfers, but less is known about the conditions under which these distributive strategies might be more or less likely. Using evidence from the Mexican Municipal Social Infrastructure Fund (Fondo de Infrastructura Social Municipal), this paper argues that that an important contextual factor – the presence of criminal violence – affects the allocative strategies of politicians within their constituencies. Under violence, politicians have especially strong incentives to target development resources towards their core constituencies. First, the criminal violence facilitates non-programmatic targeting through lowering public oversight and accountability in the use of public resources. Second, the electoral uncertainty and reduced political participation under violence makes targeting towards swing districts risky, making it especially likely that politicians focus on buying turnout in core districts.  Download PDF

Civil Conflict, Political Regime and Income Inequality 

Abstract: What is the redistributive effect of civil war? Recent literature has pointed towards the equity promoting effects of interstate warfare, but the question on the effects of civil war on income inequality has not received considerable attention so far. In this paper I explore the relationship between domestic civil conflicts and income inequality in both cross-national and sub-national context of Mexican municipalities. My argument is conditional: I propose that the effects of civil violence on inequality differ in democracies and autocracies. Counter intuitively, I argue that post-conflict settings produce increasing inequality in democratic regimes. Democratic checks and balances tend to favor faster recovery of banking system and financial sector, producing higher return for capital, and relative income growth of business elites. By contrast, conflict tends to decrease inequality in authoritarian settings, due to higher threat of re-occurrence of violence, and inability of rulers to credible commit to respecting private property rights, which harms the business sector. I find evidence for these claims in cross-national setting, using Error Correction Models for 115 countries during 1965-2015, and in the Mexican municipal level during 1990-2000, making use of a regression discontinuity design.

Media

The Rise of New Authoritarianism in the EU? Diplomaatia, International Centre for Defense and Security, August 11, 2017

Is Endless Austerity Such a Good Idea? Diplomaatia, International Centre for Defense and Security, November 13, 2015