About

My research focuses on the political economy of development, including the study of authoritarian regimes, violence, public security and human rights, 'non-state' forms of governance, distributive politics, and the provision of public goods. Much of my research has been on Latin America.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Sociology
• Law
• Criminology
• Economics
• Business
• Geography
• Psychology
• Public administration
• Political economy

Selected publications

• Police Body Worn Cameras in Rio's Favelas: Can Technology Reduce Violence?

  2025-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  In 2016, a team of three researchers based at Stanford University —Beatriz Magaloni, Vanessa Melo, and Gustavo Robles— conducted a groundbreaking experiment in Rocinha, Rio de Janeiro's largest favela (informal settlement), to test whether body-worn cameras (BWC) could reduce police violence and improve community relations. The findings reveal that body cameras hold great promise, but they also come with serious challenges. Before the experiment started, one police unit commander ominously told the researchers: “If you give body cameras to my officers, this will stop them from doing their job.”

  PublisherDOI

• Delivering for Democracy: Why Results Matter

  Journal of democracy · 2025-03-27 · 12 citations

  articleSenior author

  Abstract: The global wave of democratic backsliding has questioned the ascendancy of democracy in the 21st century. A purported decline in political trust and satisfaction with democracy, alongside the rise of high-performing autocracies, has sparked conjectures that popular support for the democratic project is eroding in favor of new, more authoritarian alternatives. Part of this discussion concerns the extent to which service delivery and outcomes matter for the legitimacy and stability of democracy. We argue that delivery for citizens is crucial to rebuilding the social contract and hence support for democracy alongside thwarting backsliding. We reflect on infrastructure as a public good for exposition.

  PublisherDOI

• Fabricated justice: How due process reform enables evidence manipulation

  World Development · 2025-11-22

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Gender-based Violence Prevention: Evidence from a Randomized Trial in Mexico

  2025-05-05 · 1 citations

  reportOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) has become a powerful and effective tool to deal with violence in many at-risk areas in the world. However, its use for gender-based violence (GBV) and dating violence, although promising, has been limited and used as a response service for survivors, rather than for prevention. To understand to what extent such interventions can help provide tools and skills to young people in their impressionable years to produce behavioral changes that prevent GBV, we carried out such an intervention among high school students in the municipality of Ecatepec in Mexico. We assessed the intervention with a randomized control trial. We introduce the novelty of collecting objective measures from automated neuropsychological tests to explore whether CBT might be functioning through the development of subjects' executive functions. Results from this intervention fail to show any clear change in self-reported violence. They do show, however, impacts on executive functions related to violence, such as emotional recognition and inhibitory control skills.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Desempeñando para la democracia: por qué los resultados importan

  Revista Elecciones · 2025-12-01

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  La ola global de retroceso democrático ha puesto en tela de juicio el predominio de la democracia en el siglo XXI. Un presunto declive en la confianza política y en la satisfacción con la democracia, junto con el ascenso de autocracias de alto rendimiento, ha generado conjeturas sobre si el apoyo popular al proyecto democrático se está erosionando en favor de alternativas nuevas y más autoritarias. Parte de este debate se centra en el grado de importancia que poseen la prestación de servicios y la obtención de resultados para la legitimidad y estabilidad de la democracia. Sostenemos que la eficacia en la provisión de servicios a la ciudadanía resulta crucial para reconstruir el contrato social y afianzar el apoyo a la democracia, además de contrarrestar su retroceso. Para efectos de exposición, reflexionamos sobre la infraestructura como un bien público.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Challenges in creating humane and equitable policing: A focus on the Global South

  Criminology & Public Policy · 2024-02-01 · 22 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Research Summary Police brutality is a widespread phenomenon around the world. Particularly gruesome human rights abuses in the course of policing take place in Latin America, the world's most violent region outside war zones. Democratic institutions such as competitive elections, checks and balances, and judicial independence are insufficient to prevent police from abusing their power. What factors explain that police engage in abusive behaviors, including illegal arrest, the fabrication of evidence, the use of torture to extract confessions, and the excessive use of force causing injury or death? How can societies restrain these abusive behaviors and subject police to the rule of law? Police behavior is shaped by a combination of institutional, societal, political, organizational, and individual factors. Inquisitorial criminal justice institutions, inherited from the colonial past, have persisted in Latin America until very recently. This meant that democracies in the region were born with weak due process protections that have enabled state authorities and police to abuse their coercive powers as they investigate and prosecute crimes. Police brutality is further the product of security policies. High crime rates and the presence of highly organized criminal groups have pushed many Latin American governments to adopt militarized security interventions ‐including deploying the armed forces to control crime and militarizing police forces. Populist demands for harsh policies, moreover, generate incentives for politicians to adopt security strategies that violate human rights and which, in the long run, increase violence in society. The most affected groups are the poor, people of color, and those living in impoverished minoritized communities. Policy Implications It is essential to strengthen due process protections and judicial oversight over police to reduce torture and other forms of police brutality. Police demilitarization and, under some conditions, community‐oriented policing approaches can sharply reduce the use of excessive force causing injury or death. Body‐worn cameras (BWC), moreover, can effectively be used to reduce police abusive behavior —and violence against police officers — even in high violence situations and where toxic police‐community relations prevail. One limitation of this technology is that it gives too much leeway to frontline officers to turn their cameras on. Poor supervision can further undermine police compliance with camera protocols. These problems can be overcome by assigning cameras to supervisors and using more advanced technologies that allow turning cameras on from the main station. Monetary incentives that reward police officers “to kill less” is another effective policy intervention to reduce police violence causing injury or death.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• State-Evading Solutions to Violence: Organized Crime and Governance in Indigenous Mexico

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Warriors and Vigilantes as Police Officers: Evidence from a Field Experiment with Body Cameras in Rio de Janeiro

  Cambridge Journal of Evidence-Based Policing · 2023-05-30 · 6 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Research Question Can requiring police to wear body-worn cameras (BWC) on duty restrain police misconduct in contexts such as a favela in Rio de Janeiro, where police use militaristic and highly aggressive tactics? Data We collected quantitative and qualitative data on a wide range of behaviors, including police wearing BWC, turning on the BWC for recording citizen contacts, use of force by and against police officers, stop and search, responding to citizen requests for police assistance, and police supervisors wearing BWC. A total of 857 different police officers were tracked during the 1-year study, with a mean of 470 officers each month participating in the test of BWC across 52,000 officer shifts. Methods BWC status was randomly assigned by shifts to all officers in the shift, within five different kinds of police units. Analyses focused on intent-to-treat effects, with high compliance of wearing BWC but less than half of measured encounters recorded. Regression analyses provided estimates of different effects for officers who had previously been injured or had injured civilians. Findings Camera assignment, regardless of whether police turned cameras on, reduced stop-and-searches and other forms of potentially aggressive interactions with civilians. Cameras also produced a strong de-policing effect: police wearing cameras were significantly less likely to engage in any activity, including responding to calls and dispatch and street requests for help. These changes in police behavior occurred even when in 50% of the registered interactions with civilians, officers disobeyed the protocol that required them to turn their cameras on. Yet when officers’ supervisors wore cameras, policing activities and camera usage increased. Police surveys, interviews, and focus groups strengthen the findings. Conclusion The potential of BWC to reduce police abuse finds limitations where an organizational culture that perpetuates a lack of compliance with internal protocols and violence persists.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Stanford H-2A project

  AEA Randomized Controlled Trials · 2023-08-12

  datasetSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Autocracies of the World, 1950-2012

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2023-01-01 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Alberto Díaz-Cayeros

  Stanford University

  52 shared

• Vanessa Melo

  University of California, Los Angeles

  32 shared

• Edgar Franco Vivanco

  University of Michigan–Ann Arbor

  29 shared

• Luis Rodriguez

  Stanford University

  19 shared

• Federico Estévez

  19 shared

• Vidal Romero

  15 shared

• Gustavo Robles

  Stanford University

  14 shared

• Gabriela Calderón

  9 shared

Labs

• PovGovPI

  Our research aims to provide solutions to poverty, lawlessness, and violence.

Education

• Ph.D., Political Science

  Duke University

• Other

  Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM)

Awards & honors

• Leon D. Epstein Outstanding Book Award
• Comparative Democratization Section Best Book Award
• Stockholm Prize in Criminology
• Boris Mints Institute (BMI) Prize
• Heinz I. Eulau Award for the best article published in Ameri…