I have written public-facing essays and political analysis for Mexican media outlets on democracy, elections, political parties, institutional design, and democratic backsliding. This work reflects a broader commitment to making political science travel beyond academic audiences while preserving analytical clarity and empirical discipline.
“El juego del retroceso democrático: manual de uso.” Este País, April 21, 2025.
In this essay, I try to explain democratic backsliding without turning it into either a slogan or a purely academic concept. I begin from a simple problem: when we use the same words to describe everything that worries us about democracy, we lose precision and the conversation becomes noisy. The essay distinguishes democratic backsliding from populism, autocratization, and democratic erosion, and then uses the metaphor of a game to explain how presidents, institutions, and citizens interact when democratic rules are stretched or broken. What I wanted to show is that backsliding is not an accident, nor a building that collapses on its own. It is a strategic process shaped by what political actors do, how institutions respond, and whether citizens recognize that a democratic line has been crossed. In that sense, the essay connects directly to my broader research agenda: understanding how people identify democratic violations and when that recognition becomes politically consequential.
“Coaliciones vemos”. Reforma newspaper. June 18, 2021.
I use the results of Mexico’s 2021 congressional elections to unpack what electoral coalitions actually do. The piece starts from a puzzle: both major coalitions competed in many districts, but they used coalition-building for different purposes. Va por México used its coalition mostly to pool votes and win competitive districts. Juntos Hacemos Historia, by contrast, used the coalition not only to compete electorally, but also to distribute district victories among allied parties in a way that helped Morena avoid constitutional limits on overrepresentation. What I wanted to show is that coalitions are institutional tools for shaping how votes become seats. In that sense, the essay connects to a broader concern in my work: how formal democratic rules can be strategically used, stretched, or reinterpreted to alter political representation while remaining within the language of legality.
“The problems of (and for) democracy. An interview with Adam Przeworski”. Nexos Magazine, March 20, 2018
In this interview, Horacio Vives and I spoke with Adam Przeworski about the problems of democracy and the problems for democracy. The conversation took place in the context of the 25th anniversary of Political Science at ITAM and reflected on some of the questions that continue to shape my own work: what democracy can realistically do, why representative institutions generate both hope and frustration, how inequality and money affect political power, and why citizens may become dissatisfied with democratic politics even when elections continue to work. Looking back, I see this interview as part of my early intellectual formation. It allowed me to engage directly with one of the scholars who most shaped how political science thinks about democracy, conflict, elections, and institutions, while also trying to make those debates accessible to a broader Spanish-speaking audience.
Martin Gou 