Welcome!
I am a PhD Candidate at Johns Hopkins University's Political Science Department. I hold an MA in Historical Studies from Universidad de San Andres, awarded in December 2020.
I am a scholar of Historical Political Economy, primarily interested in the first wave of democratization and its fiscal consequences. My research agenda seeks to understand how established elites preserved their political influence and policy preferences amid rising political participation. I am also interested in the relationship between democratization and state-building in Latin America. To address these questions, my projects combine archival research and quantitative analysis.
My dissertation, Tamed Democracy: Officeholding Requirements and Redistribution during the First Wave, argues that authoritarian elites across Western Europe and the Americas imposed and entrenched stringent eligibility requisites for top state positions to dampen the redistributive effects of suffrage expansion. This research relies on cross-national analyses and within-country studies of Argentina and Switzerland to demonstrate how eligibility requirements for office shape fiscal policy through their effect on political selection.
My research has been supported by the American Political Science Association’s Centennial Center, the APSA Section on Representation and Electoral Systems, and the SNF Agora Institute.
Contact: scortes5@jh.edu