Research

Making Democratic Boundaries Enforceable: Norms, Shared Expectations, and Citizen Sanction

My dissertation examines why some democratic violations become politically enforceable boundaries while others remain contested even among citizens who privately object to them. I argue that democratic accountability depends on whether citizens recognize that a democratic boundary has been crossed, believe that others share that judgment, are willing to sanction the politician responsible, and expect fellow citizens to sanction as well. Democratic norms become more capable of constraining political behavior as these elements align.

The project treats democratic norms as historically grounded boundaries of acceptable political behavior. Countries inherit different democratic red lines from authoritarian experience, democratic transitions, institutional development, and subsequent political conflict. These histories shape which actions citizens readily recognize as democratic violations and which remain open to competing interpretations. The dissertation therefore explains variation in the coordination-readiness of democratic norms: the extent to which recognition, shared expectations, and willingness to enforce a boundary converge around a concrete political act.

Empirically, I develop a strategy for measuring these components directly and testing how they shape citizen behavior. Using focus groups, original validation surveys, anchoring vignettes, and preregistered survey experiments in Mexico and Argentina, I identify historically grounded democratic boundaries, measure what citizens believe others will do when those boundaries are crossed, and experimentally test whether information about collective punishment changes citizens’ own willingness to sanction. A final part of the dissertation examines the institutional side of this process, asking when courts, electoral authorities, and legislatures possess sufficient public authority to clarify contested democratic boundaries and connect citizen expectations of punishment to effective political constraint.

Reforming Justice, Reframing Democracy: Public Opinion on Mexico’s Judicial Reform

This paper investigates who supports institutional reforms that weaken constraints on the executive and whether exposure to information about their democratic consequences reshapes perceptions of the incumbent’s intentions. The empirical case is Mexico’s 2024 judicial reform, which introduced the popular election of Supreme Court justices and other judges. The paper draws on original survey items fielded across three nationally representative surveys in Mexico in 2024, as well as an online survey experiment conducted before the judicial election. More broadly, the paper asks how citizens evaluate institutional reforms when democratic costs are contested, technical, or reframed as democratic renewal.

Learning by Doing: The Effect of Organizing an Election on Political Attitudes

This project examines whether participating in the administration of an election fosters democratic engagement. It leverages Mexico’s system of randomly selecting citizens to serve as poll workers, treating electoral service as a form of direct institutional experience. The project asks whether helping organize an election can affect political knowledge, attitudes toward electoral institutions, and internal political efficacy. Although data collection was not completed, the research design offers a strategy for studying how democratic institutions shape citizens as temporary administrators of democracy.

Strange Bedfellows? How Ideologically Incoherent Coalitions Shape Partisan Identity

With Salvador Ascencio Pastora.

This paper examines whether voters penalize political parties that enter strategic electoral coalitions with ideologically distant partners. The project combines observational evidence from Mexico’s 2021 federal election with an original survey experiment designed to assess how voters respond when coalition incoherence is made salient. We ask whether coalition strategies reshape party support, weaken partisan identity, or reveal the limits of voter updating in unconsolidated democracies. The paper contributes to debates on electoral coordination, party brands, and ideological accountability.

Assessing the Representativeness of Online Survey Samples in Latin America

With Noam Lupu.

This paper assesses the demographic and political representativeness of online survey samples in Mexico and Argentina. We benchmark two widely used online survey platforms against official population data and examine where these samples approximate or diverge from the target population. The project focuses on demographic characteristics, household conditions, and political engagement, while also considering how these differences matter for substantive research in political behavior. The broader goal is to help researchers make more informed decisions about when and how online samples can be used to study public opinion in Latin America.

Participatory Budgeting as Bounded Direct Democracy: Citizen Agency and Institutional Responsiveness in Mexico City

With Alejandro Díaz Herrera.

This paper examines participatory budgeting in Mexico City as a form of bounded direct democracy. Citizens can propose and select local public projects, but their influence is mediated by administrative rules, feasibility screening, unequal participation, and uneven implementation. Using an original administrative dataset covering participatory budgeting processes from 2011 to 2025, the paper traces the full chain of citizen influence, from project proposal and institutional review to neighborhood voting and government implementation. The project asks how institutional design shapes the relationship between participation, inclusion, and responsiveness in unequal urban contexts.