I am a Reader in Comparative Politics at King’s College London.
My research focuses on elections and political institutions in both emerging and well-established democracies.
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PUBLICATIONS
BOOKS
2025. Democracy under strain. The political effects of financial bailouts in citizens and parties. Oxford: Oxford University Press (Forthcoming). You can read a summary of the book here.
2016. Informe sobre la democracia en España. Madrid: Fundación Alternativas.
2015. Handbook of Comparative Political Institutions. London: Routledge (co-edited with Jennifer Gandhi)
ARTICLES
2024. Activation and co-optation: The strategic adoption of compulsory voting in Western Europe. Parliamentary Affairs (Forthcoming)
2021. Financial Bailouts and the decline of establishment politics. Electoral Studies, Volume 70, April, 102292
2020. The Costs of Responsibility for the Political Establishment of the Eurozone (1999-2015). (with Sonia Alonso) Party Politics, 26(3) 317-333.
2020. The effect of alternation in power on electoral intimidation in democratizing regimes. (with Sarah Birch) Journal of Peace Research, 57(1) 126-139.
2018. Tying Incumbents’ Hands: The Effects of Election Monitoring on Electoral Outcomes. (with Nasos Roussias) Electoral Studies, 54 (August) 116-127.
Winner of the Lawerence Longley Award to Best Article 2018. APSA Representation and Electoral Systems section.
2018. When do electoral institutions trigger electoral misconduct? Democratization 25 (2):331-50.
2017. Democracy without Choice: Citizens’ perceptions of government’s autonomy during the Euro-zone crisis. (with Sonia Alonso) European Journal of Political Research, 56 (2) 230-245.
2013. Satisfaction with Democracy in Multi-ethnic Countries - The Effect of Representative Political Institutions on Ethnic Minorities. Political Studies, 61 (1) 101-118.
2011. Characterizing electoral systems. An empirical application of aggregated threshold functions. West European Politics, 34(2) 256-281.
2008. The parliamentary election in Armenia, May 2007. Electoral Studies, 27 (2) 369-372.
2007. Exploring political representation and ethnic conflict in new democracies. (with Sonia Alonso) European Journal of Political Research, 46(2) 237-267.
2007. Aggregated threshold functions or how to measure the performance of an electoral system. Electoral Studies, 26 (2) 492-502.
2005. La caracterización de los sistemas electorales. Una aplicación de las funciones de agregación de umbrales en las nuevas democracias de Europa y América Latina. Revista Española de Ciencia Política, 13. 89-118.
CHAPTERS IN EDITED BOOKS
2019. Gobiernos impotentes, ciudadanos desconcertados: la percepción ciudadana de la autonomía de los gobiernos en la Eurozona (2002-2014). (with Sonia Alonso) in Política de la Unión Europea: Crisis y continuidad. Cristina Ares and Luis Bouza (eds). Madrid: Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas.
2018. Democracy without Choice: Citizens' perceptions of government's autonomy during the Eurozone crisis. (with Sonia Alonso) in Democracy and Crisis: Challenges in Turbulent Times. Wolfgang Merkel and Sascha Kneip (eds.) Cham: Springer.
2015. Ethnicity and Elections in Handbook of Comparative Political Institutions. Jennifer Gandhi and Rubén Ruiz-Rufino (eds.) London: Routledge.
2015. Introduction in Handbook of Comparative Political Institutions. Jennifer Gandhi and Rubén Ruiz- Rufino (eds.) London: Routledge.
2012. Las reglas electorales y sus efectos in Las Elecciones Europeas 2009. Joan Font and Mariano Torcal (eds.). Madrid: CIS.
2003. Representación parlamentaria y conflicto étnico. (with Sonia Alonso) in Minorías nacionales y conflicto étnico. Carmen González (ed): Madrid. UNED-Instituto Gutiérrez Mellado.
Ongoing PROJECTS
Contextual determinants of radical-right electoral strongholds. (Paper)
This article claims that the observation of radical-right electoral strongholds can be explained by contextual, in addition to, individual factors. Focusing on the type of industry where individuals work and socially interact two claims are made. Firstly, compared to knowledge-based industries, labour-intensive activities are characterised by clustering individuals with high levels of job vulnerability and low levels of education. Secondly, when jointly observed, these two socio-economic characteristics explain the development, and expression, of nativist preferences and exclusionary attitudes which drive support for radical-right parties. These claims are tested using two different datasets. Survey data from 17 European democracies are used to test how working in labour-intensive industries exacerbate the role of job vulnerability and education on preference formation, and partisan expression. Such empirical regularities are illustrated at the macro-level by showing how municipalities exposed to labour-intensive economies like certain forms of agriculture, or tourism, determines support for radical-right parties in Spain. You can download the article here and the supplementary material here.
Globalization and support for social-democracy – With Lee Savage (King’s College London)
Has social-democracy lost its capacity to govern? In this project, we analyze a possible mechanism explaining why social-democracy has shifted from being a dominant political platform in the electoral arena to a platform struggling to win elections. Our main argument lies in how social-democratic parties have faced the challenges put forward by globalization. Globalization has implied both an increase of flexibilization of labor markets but also changes in the capacity of governments to determine fiscal and monetary policies. Put together, these two consequences of globalization hit both voters and parties. On the party side, social-democratic platforms like Labour were successful to provide adequate policies to their constituents when they had sufficient control over fiscal tools like taxation and the budget. However, as countries became more interconnected, such control became less clear and social-democratic parties struggled to implement policies similar to those used in the past. This situation put social-democratic parties before the dilemma of abandoning principles of social democracy in order to keep high their electoral chances of victory but at the expense of losing much of its traditional support. On the voters’ side, globalization pushed some individuals to precarious working and living conditions. These voters no longer benefited from policies traditionally delivered by social-democratic parties and, as a consequence, they no longer supported these parties in the elections. We test these theoretical claims using a novel dataset that combines electoral and census data at the district level for all general elections in the United Kingdom since 1945.
Why do electoral observation missions occur? The importance of being trusted – With Nasos Roussias (University of Sheffield)
In the last years, questions dealing with the causes and consequences of fraudulent elections have won popularity among political scientists. Scholars have been focusing on how fraudulent elections affect party systems; have explored how electoral systems account for fraudulent behavior or, under which conditions incumbents decide to commit electoral fraud. However, there has been little attention in exploring why a country would allow a third-party to monitor the elections and, likewise, why an international organization would be interested in deploying a mission to observe such election. In this project, we address this issue by arguing that electoral observation missions (EOMs) are observed when a particular set of conditions are met. EOMs occur in developing countries that need some international branding to improve their economic conditions. Using the trade flows between countries, we hypothesize that one way countries have to show their level of institutional trust is by allowing international organizations to monitor their elections. This decision comes with the cost of reducing the capacity of incumbents to rig the elections which put rulers, especially unpopular ones, in a trade-off between surviving in power and improving economic conditions.
TEACHING
UNDERGRADUATE
2020-present. Introduction to Comparative Politics. King’s College London (syllabus)
2013 - 2024. Institutions, Economics and Change. King’s College London (syllabus)
2015 - 2019. Statistics for Political Science I. King’s College London (syllabus)
2014-2016. Failed Regimes, Elections and Fraud. King’s College London (syllabus)