I am a Reader in Comparative Politics at King’s College London.
My research focuses on elections and political institutions in both emerging and 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. You can read a summary of the book here. The supplementary material of the book is also available 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
2026. Labour-intensive geographies and support for radical right parties. Forthcoming in Political Studies.
2025. Crisis management and attitudes towards democracy: The case of the COVID-19 recovery plan in Europe. (with Lea Heyne) European Union Politics, 26(3), 552-572.
2025. Activation and co-optation: The strategic adoption of compulsory voting in Western Europe. (with Ria Ivandic) Parliamentary Affairs. Open access here.
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
Economic Crisis Management and Trust in the EU. A Quasi-Experimental Approach. (with Lea Heyne) Accepted by Cambridge University Press, Elements in European Politics.
Our project examines how different economic crisis management strategies implemented at different times across the European Union (EU) have affected levels of trust in the EU. In addressing this question, our proposed Element seeks to make novel contributions both at the theoretical and empirical levels.
Theoretically, our projects starts by proposing that changes in citizens' trust in the European supranational project are driven by how the management of bad economic performance affects the balance of political representation between national and supranational actors. To develop this idea, we first characterise spells of economic decline within the EU around two dimensions: the extension of the economic shock and the scope of the economic recovery policy.
Borrowing from the macroeconomic literature, extension refers to symmetric and symmetric economic shocks. The former is observed depending on country-specific factors whereas the former is used to identify adverse common economic shocks that affects all EU countries in a comparable way. The extent of a crisis is supplemented by the scope of remedial instruments. In this sense, we differentiate between ordinary and extraordinary adjustments. Economic recovery instruments resulting from previous collective negotiations which are designed to be implemented in the presence of bad economic performance are labelled as ordinary adjustments. One example is the initiation of the Excessive Deficit Procedure. There are occasions, however, when these ordinary arrangements are insufficient and new instruments are needed. These are extraordinary adjustments in the sense that they deviate from policies existing in ordinary ones. The financial facilities included in such extraordinary adjustments range from involving third-party financial institutions that typically impose policy conditionality in return of assistance, such as the IMF, to creating new supranational cooperative schemes where preferences of national governments and priorities of the EU converge.
When combining these two dimensions, a 2x2 matrix originates that characterises different approaches towards crisis management observed within the EU. Our study shows that shifts in levels of EU trust are successfully explained when this typology is considered. In the presence of ordinary adjustments, positive shifts are expected when common shocks are handled by existing ad-hoc institution, however, no attitudinal shift would take place when asymmetric shocks are managed by country-specific supranational corrective mechanisms. We test these claims by examining announcements made by the ECB in 2023 to increase interest rates to combat the cost-of-living crisis and the decisions of the European Commission to initiate EDP in 2004/5 in countries deviating from the Stability and Growth Pact criterion, respectively.
The largest shifts in levels of EU trust are, however, expected following the management of shocks that require extraordinary adjustments. Our theoretical characterisation shows that convergence adjustments are observed when shocks are symmetric, however, in the presence of asymmetric, country-specific ones imposed recovery packages are used. We argue that convergence policies should largely increase levels of EU trust while imposed recovery packages would produce the opposite effect. We use the announcement of the Recovery and Resilience Facility in 2020 and the announcement of the Portuguese financial bailout in 2011 to test these claims.
Our empirical tests use quasi-experimental techniques involving diff-in-diff modelling and exploiting key relevant events that facilitate the implementation of Unexpected Event during Survey Design (UESD). All our analysis use Eurobarometer data and cover individuals from countries that are part of the Economic Monetary Union since 1999. Our analyses robustly confirm all of our theoretical claims.
Mitigating economic deprivation? NextGeneration EU funds and radical-right vote (with Lea Heyne)
The growing electoral success of radical-right parties has become a defining feature of contemporary European democracies. In this context, current debates around “left-behind regions” and the “geography of discontent” have specifically focused on the economic characteristics of places with high radical-right support. This paper wants to investigate how the reception of large-scale EU funds through the NextGenerationEU programme has affected radical right vote, using data from over 3000 Portuguese parishes.
Portugal experienced high levels of economic vulnerability following the 2010 economic crisis, especially in interior and southern regions. Since 2019, the rise of the radical right party Chega has put an end to the believe that the country was "immune" to the radical right due to its association with the authoritarian past. We argue that the massive inflow of EU funding into local projects through the Recovery and Resilience Fund has the potential to mitigate local-level discontent and to reduce radical-right vote shares, especially in highly vulnerable areas.
We use fine-grained geographical data from Portugal to test the impact of receiving EU funds on radical right vote under different levels of economic vulnerability. Our unique dataset combines data on the projects that were implemented and funded through Portugal's National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PRR) with electoral and economic data from 3091 Portuguese parishes (freguesias), the smallest administrative division of the country. The Portuguese PRR programme amounts to approximately 13.9 billion euros in grants and 2.7 billion euros in loans and will remain in effect between 2021 and 2026. In order to estimate the causal effect of receiving large EU funds on parish-level voting behaviour, we employ a difference-in difference approach where we compare parishes that have received PRR funded projects with parishes that did not receive such projects.
When is a democracy under strain?
Democracy under strain arises when political actors are compelled to prioritize economic and institutional responsibility over policy responsiveness. This typically occurs during severe economic shocks, when governments cannot manage the fallout alone and must seek external financial support. Such support often comes with policy and institutional reform conditions that may conflict with citizens’ preferences. This divergence between public demands and political actions can influence how individuals perceive democracy. This paper examines the conditions under which democracy is strained, comparing attitudes toward democracy during two crises: the Latin American financial crisis (1998–2007) and the Eurozone sovereign debt crisis (2010–2015). It argues that democracy is strained only in highly integrated supranational contexts with ill-defined monetary institutions. The hypothesis is tested using survey data from Latinobarometer and Eurobarometer, applying unexpected events designs and difference-in-differences models. By contrasting these two regions and crises, the paper sheds light on how institutional context shapes democratic resilience under economic pressure.
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)