Beatriz Magaloni
Biographic Data
| ID | 448541 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Beatriz Magaloni |
| GIVEN NAMES | Beatriz |
| FAMILY NAME | Magaloni |
| SIGNATURE | MAGALONI B |
| AFFILIATIONS | Stanford University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4131-0075 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 28 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1298 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 28 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1990 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 14 |
Fabricated justice: How due process reform enables evidence manipulation
Delivering for Democracy: Why Results Matter
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 matte…
Challenges in creating humane and equitable policing: A focus on the Global South
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…
Legislatures and Policy Making in Authoritarian Regimes
Living in Fear: The Dynamics of Extortion in Mexico’s Drug War
Why do drug trafficking organizations (DTOs) sometimes prey on the communities in which they operate but sometimes provide assistance to these communities? What explains their strategies of extortion and co-optation toward civil society? Using new survey data from Mexico, including list experiments to elicit responses about potentially illegal behavior, this article measures the prevalence of extortion and assistance among DTOs. In support of our…
Killing in the Slums: Social Order, Criminal Governance, and Police Violence in Rio de Janeiro
State interventions against organized criminal groups (OCGs) sometimes work to improve security, but often exacerbate violence. To understand why, this article offers a theory about criminal governance in five types of criminal regimes-Insurgent, Bandit, Symbiotic, Predatory, and Split. These differ according to whether criminal groups confront or collude with state actors, abuse or cooperate with the community, and hold a monopoly or contest ter…
Institutionalized Police Brutality: Torture, the Militarization of Security, and the Reform of Inquisitorial Criminal Justice in Mexico
How can societies restrain their coercive institutions and transition to a more humane criminal justice system? We argue that two main factors explain why torture can persist as a generalized practice even in democratic societies: weak procedural protections and the militarization of policing, which introduces strategies, equipment, and mentality that treats criminal suspects as though they were enemies in wartime. Using a large survey of the Mex…
Public Good Provision and Traditional Governance in Indigenous Communities in Oaxaca, Mexico
Can ethnically distinct communities ruled through “traditional” assemblies provide public goods and services better, than when they are ruled by leaders elected through “modern” multiparty elections? We exploit a unique institutional feature in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico, where municipalities are ruled by traditional governance institutions, to explore the effect of these forms of governance on the provision of public goods. Using locality-level…
Mexico in the Grip of Violence
[C]riminal groups are above the law because they have managed to capture and corrupt the state
The Political Logic of Poverty Relief: Electoral Strategies and Social Policy in Mexico
Poverty relief programs are shaped by politics. The particular design which social programs take is to a large extent determined by the existing institutional constrains and politicians' imperative to win elections. The Political Logic of Poverty Relief places elections and institutional design at the core of poverty alleviation. The authors develop a theory with applications to Mexico about how elections shape social programs aimed at aiding the…
How the Mexican drug war affects kids and schools? Evidence on effects and mechanisms
Presidential Approval and Public Security in Mexico's War on Crime
To fight criminal organizations effectively, governments require support from significant segments of society. Citizen support provides important leverage for executives, allowing them to continue their policies. Yet winning citizens' hearts and minds is not easy. Public security is a deeply complex issue. Responsibility is shared among different levels of government; information is highly mediated by mass media and individual acquaintances; and …
Authoritarian Survival and Poverty Traps: Land Reform in Mexico
The Beheading of Criminal Organizations and the Dynamics of Violence in Mexico
In 2006, the Mexican government launched an aggressive campaign to weaken drug-trafficking organizations (DTOs). The security policies differed significantly from those of previous administrations in the use of a leadership strategy (the targeting for arrest of the highest levels or core leadership of criminal networks). While these strategies can play an important role in disrupting the targeted criminal organization, they can also have unintend…
The Mexican War on Drugs: Crime and the Limits of Government Persuasion
Journal Article The Mexican War on Drugs: Crime and the Limits of Government Persuasion Get access Vidal Romero, Vidal Romero 1Political Science Department, Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México, Mexico; 2Political Science Department, Stanford University, USA; 3The Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University, USA Vidal Romero (PhD, Stanford University, 2005) is professor at the Department of Political Science at the…
Traditional Governance, Citizen Engagement, and Local Public Goods: Evidence from Mexico
Las consecuencias económicas de la violencia del narcotráfico en México
En este estudio se argumenta que en México existe un umbral de violencia relacionada con el narcotráfico a partir del cual se contrae la actividad económica en general. Por debajo de este umbral de violencia, los individuos y las empresas internalizan el aumento en costos de seguridad y protección, y dichas decisiones se reflejan en el mercado laboral. Una vez que el conflicto violento ha escalado sustancialmente, las decisiones económicas de med…
Political Order and One-Party Rule
The second half of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first century have witnessed an unprecedented expansion of one-party autocracies. One-party regimes have become the most common type of authoritarian rule and have proved to be more stable and to grow faster than other types of authoritarianism. We review the literature on one-party rule and, using data from 1950–2006, suggest four avenues for future research: focusing on au…
The Game of Electoral Fraud and the Ousting of Authoritarian Rule
How can autocrats be restrained from rigging elections when they hold a huge military advantage over their opponents? This article suggests that even when opposition parties have no military capacity to win a revolt, opposition unity and a consequent threat of massive civil disobedience can compel autocrats to hold clean elections and leave office by triggering splits within the state apparatus and the defection of the armed forces. Opposition un…
Patrons, Clients and Policies: Patterns of Democratic Accountability and Political Competition
Poverty, Inequality, and Democracy (II): Aiding Latin America's Poor
Social policy in Latin America has traditionally failed to benefit the poor. Throughout most of the twentieth century, the main redistributive efforts in the region went into building welfare states. Social insurance schemes generally foster a "reverse Robin Hood effect" in which the poor are made to pay for the benefit of the rich. In addition, subsidies—another form of social policy commonly used in Latin America—have historically tended to go …
Credible Power-Sharing and the Longevity of Authoritarian Rule
To survive in office, dictators need to establish power-sharing arrangements with their ruling coalitions, which are often not credible. If dictators cannot commit to not abusing their “loyal friends”—those who choose to invest in the existing autocratic institutions rather than in forming subversive coalitions— they will be in permanent danger of being overthrown, both by members of the ruling elite and by outside rivals. This article explores t…
Partisan Cleavages, State Retrenchment, And Free Trade: Latin America in the 1990s
This article accounts for the role that partisan divisions played in shaping variation in mass preferences for market-oriented policies in Latin America during the 1990s. Most of the existing studies on attitudes toward market reforms have focused on issues such as the timing of reforms, the presence of economic crises, and how economic performance shaped citizens' preferences. Fewer studies have investigated whether partisan cleavages translated…
Clientelism and portfolio diversification: A model of electoral investment with applications to Mexico
Interest in the study of clientelism has reawakened in recent years. While the sociological and anthropological frameworks developed in the 1960s and 1970s still provide important insights into the logic of patron–client exchanges, a reckoning with the underlying political process that makes those forms of political linkage so prevalent is in order. Clientelism was then viewed as a phenomenon typical of underdeveloped political systems, usually a…
Voting for Autocracy: Hegemonic Party Survival and its Demise in Mexico
This 2006 book provides a theory of the logic of survival of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), one of the most resilient autocratic regimes in the twentieth century. An autocratic regime hid behind the facade of elections that were held with clockwise precision. Although their outcome was totally predictable, elections were not hollow rituals. The PRI made millions of ordinary citizens vest their interests in the survival of the autocr…
Credible Power-Sharing and the Longevity of Authoritarian Rule
To survive in office, dictators need to establish power-sharing arrangements with their ruling coalitions, which are often not credible. If dictators cannot commit to not abusing their “loyal friends”—those who choose to invest in the existing autocratic institutions rather than in forming subversive coalitions— they will be in permanent danger of being overthrown, both by members of the ruling elite and by outside rivals. This article explores t…
Political Order and One-Party Rule
The second half of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first century have witnessed an unprecedented expansion of one-party autocracies. One-party regimes have become the most common type of authoritarian rule and have proved to be more stable and to grow faster than other types of authoritarianism. We review the literature on one-party rule and, using data from 1950–2006, suggest four avenues for future research: focusing on au…
The Beheading of Criminal Organizations and the Dynamics of Violence in Mexico
In 2006, the Mexican government launched an aggressive campaign to weaken drug-trafficking organizations (DTOs). The security policies differed significantly from those of previous administrations in the use of a leadership strategy (the targeting for arrest of the highest levels or core leadership of criminal networks). While these strategies can play an important role in disrupting the targeted criminal organization, they can also have unintend…
Killing in the Slums: Social Order, Criminal Governance, and Police Violence in Rio de Janeiro
State interventions against organized criminal groups (OCGs) sometimes work to improve security, but often exacerbate violence. To understand why, this article offers a theory about criminal governance in five types of criminal regimes-Insurgent, Bandit, Symbiotic, Predatory, and Split. These differ according to whether criminal groups confront or collude with state actors, abuse or cooperate with the community, and hold a monopoly or contest ter…
The Game of Electoral Fraud and the Ousting of Authoritarian Rule
How can autocrats be restrained from rigging elections when they hold a huge military advantage over their opponents? This article suggests that even when opposition parties have no military capacity to win a revolt, opposition unity and a consequent threat of massive civil disobedience can compel autocrats to hold clean elections and leave office by triggering splits within the state apparatus and the defection of the armed forces. Opposition un…
Institutionalized Police Brutality: Torture, the Militarization of Security, and the Reform of Inquisitorial Criminal Justice in Mexico
How can societies restrain their coercive institutions and transition to a more humane criminal justice system? We argue that two main factors explain why torture can persist as a generalized practice even in democratic societies: weak procedural protections and the militarization of policing, which introduces strategies, equipment, and mentality that treats criminal suspects as though they were enemies in wartime. Using a large survey of the Mex…
Traditional Governance, Citizen Engagement, and Local Public Goods: Evidence from Mexico
Living in Fear: The Dynamics of Extortion in Mexico’s Drug War
Why do drug trafficking organizations (DTOs) sometimes prey on the communities in which they operate but sometimes provide assistance to these communities? What explains their strategies of extortion and co-optation toward civil society? Using new survey data from Mexico, including list experiments to elicit responses about potentially illegal behavior, this article measures the prevalence of extortion and assistance among DTOs. In support of our…
Legislatures and Policy Making in Authoritarian Regimes
Party Dominance and the Logic of Electoral Design in Mexico’s Transition to Democracy
This paper discusses the role of electoral institutional design in Mexico’s transition to democracy. Our argument is that electoral rules facilitated party dominance through two mechanisms: electoral rules disproportionately rewarded existing majorities and, at the same time, discouraged potential majorities from forming. More specifically, the rules rewarded parties that could win a majority of the vote in single-member districts; but at the sam…
Public Good Provision and Traditional Governance in Indigenous Communities in Oaxaca, Mexico
Can ethnically distinct communities ruled through “traditional” assemblies provide public goods and services better, than when they are ruled by leaders elected through “modern” multiparty elections? We exploit a unique institutional feature in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico, where municipalities are ruled by traditional governance institutions, to explore the effect of these forms of governance on the provision of public goods. Using locality-level…
Authoritarian Survival and Poverty Traps: Land Reform in Mexico
Poverty, Inequality, and Democracy (II): Aiding Latin America's Poor
Social policy in Latin America has traditionally failed to benefit the poor. Throughout most of the twentieth century, the main redistributive efforts in the region went into building welfare states. Social insurance schemes generally foster a "reverse Robin Hood effect" in which the poor are made to pay for the benefit of the rich. In addition, subsidies—another form of social policy commonly used in Latin America—have historically tended to go …
Presidential Approval and Public Security in Mexico's War on Crime
To fight criminal organizations effectively, governments require support from significant segments of society. Citizen support provides important leverage for executives, allowing them to continue their policies. Yet winning citizens' hearts and minds is not easy. Public security is a deeply complex issue. Responsibility is shared among different levels of government; information is highly mediated by mass media and individual acquaintances; and …
How the Mexican drug war affects kids and schools? Evidence on effects and mechanisms
Partisan Cleavages, State Retrenchment, And Free Trade: Latin America in the 1990s
This article accounts for the role that partisan divisions played in shaping variation in mass preferences for market-oriented policies in Latin America during the 1990s. Most of the existing studies on attitudes toward market reforms have focused on issues such as the timing of reforms, the presence of economic crises, and how economic performance shaped citizens' preferences. Fewer studies have investigated whether partisan cleavages translated…
The Mexican War on Drugs: Crime and the Limits of Government Persuasion
Journal Article The Mexican War on Drugs: Crime and the Limits of Government Persuasion Get access Vidal Romero, Vidal Romero 1Political Science Department, Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México, Mexico; 2Political Science Department, Stanford University, USA; 3The Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University, USA Vidal Romero (PhD, Stanford University, 2005) is professor at the Department of Political Science at the…
Delivering for Democracy: Why Results Matter
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 matte…
Challenges in creating humane and equitable policing: A focus on the Global South
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…
Las consecuencias económicas de la violencia del narcotráfico en México
En este estudio se argumenta que en México existe un umbral de violencia relacionada con el narcotráfico a partir del cual se contrae la actividad económica en general. Por debajo de este umbral de violencia, los individuos y las empresas internalizan el aumento en costos de seguridad y protección, y dichas decisiones se reflejan en el mercado laboral. Una vez que el conflicto violento ha escalado sustancialmente, las decisiones económicas de med…
La desobediencia civil en la democracia constitucional
La desobediencia civil en la democracia constitucional
Party Dominance and the Logic of Electoral Design in Mexico’s Transition to Democracy
This paper discusses the role of electoral institutional design in Mexico’s transition to democracy. Our argument is that electoral rules facilitated party dominance through two mechanisms: electoral rules disproportionately rewarded existing majorities and, at the same time, discouraged potential majorities from forming. More specifically, the rules rewarded parties that could win a majority of the vote in single-member districts; but at the sam…
Voting for Autocracy: Hegemonic Party Survival and its Demise in Mexico
This 2006 book provides a theory of the logic of survival of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), one of the most resilient autocratic regimes in the twentieth century. An autocratic regime hid behind the facade of elections that were held with clockwise precision. Although their outcome was totally predictable, elections were not hollow rituals. The PRI made millions of ordinary citizens vest their interests in the survival of the autocr…
Voting for Autocracy: Hegemonic Party Survival and Its Demise in Mexico
Voting for Autocracy' provides a theory of the logic of survival of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), one of the most resilient autocratic regimes in the 20th century
Clientelism and portfolio diversification: A model of electoral investment with applications to Mexico
Interest in the study of clientelism has reawakened in recent years. While the sociological and anthropological frameworks developed in the 1960s and 1970s still provide important insights into the logic of patron–client exchanges, a reckoning with the underlying political process that makes those forms of political linkage so prevalent is in order. Clientelism was then viewed as a phenomenon typical of underdeveloped political systems, usually a…
Credible Power-Sharing and the Longevity of Authoritarian Rule
To survive in office, dictators need to establish power-sharing arrangements with their ruling coalitions, which are often not credible. If dictators cannot commit to not abusing their “loyal friends”—those who choose to invest in the existing autocratic institutions rather than in forming subversive coalitions— they will be in permanent danger of being overthrown, both by members of the ruling elite and by outside rivals. This article explores t…
Partisan Cleavages, State Retrenchment, And Free Trade: Latin America in the 1990s
This article accounts for the role that partisan divisions played in shaping variation in mass preferences for market-oriented policies in Latin America during the 1990s. Most of the existing studies on attitudes toward market reforms have focused on issues such as the timing of reforms, the presence of economic crises, and how economic performance shaped citizens' preferences. Fewer studies have investigated whether partisan cleavages translated…
Patrons, Clients and Policies: Patterns of Democratic Accountability and Political Competition
Poverty, Inequality, and Democracy (II): Aiding Latin America's Poor
Social policy in Latin America has traditionally failed to benefit the poor. Throughout most of the twentieth century, the main redistributive efforts in the region went into building welfare states. Social insurance schemes generally foster a "reverse Robin Hood effect" in which the poor are made to pay for the benefit of the rich. In addition, subsidies—another form of social policy commonly used in Latin America—have historically tended to go …
Political Order and One-Party Rule
The second half of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first century have witnessed an unprecedented expansion of one-party autocracies. One-party regimes have become the most common type of authoritarian rule and have proved to be more stable and to grow faster than other types of authoritarianism. We review the literature on one-party rule and, using data from 1950–2006, suggest four avenues for future research: focusing on au…
The Game of Electoral Fraud and the Ousting of Authoritarian Rule
How can autocrats be restrained from rigging elections when they hold a huge military advantage over their opponents? This article suggests that even when opposition parties have no military capacity to win a revolt, opposition unity and a consequent threat of massive civil disobedience can compel autocrats to hold clean elections and leave office by triggering splits within the state apparatus and the defection of the armed forces. Opposition un…
Traditional Governance, Citizen Engagement, and Local Public Goods: Evidence from Mexico
Las consecuencias económicas de la violencia del narcotráfico en México
En este estudio se argumenta que en México existe un umbral de violencia relacionada con el narcotráfico a partir del cual se contrae la actividad económica en general. Por debajo de este umbral de violencia, los individuos y las empresas internalizan el aumento en costos de seguridad y protección, y dichas decisiones se reflejan en el mercado laboral. Una vez que el conflicto violento ha escalado sustancialmente, las decisiones económicas de med…
The Mexican War on Drugs: Crime and the Limits of Government Persuasion
Journal Article The Mexican War on Drugs: Crime and the Limits of Government Persuasion Get access Vidal Romero, Vidal Romero 1Political Science Department, Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México, Mexico; 2Political Science Department, Stanford University, USA; 3The Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University, USA Vidal Romero (PhD, Stanford University, 2005) is professor at the Department of Political Science at the…
Authoritarian Survival and Poverty Traps: Land Reform in Mexico
The Beheading of Criminal Organizations and the Dynamics of Violence in Mexico
In 2006, the Mexican government launched an aggressive campaign to weaken drug-trafficking organizations (DTOs). The security policies differed significantly from those of previous administrations in the use of a leadership strategy (the targeting for arrest of the highest levels or core leadership of criminal networks). While these strategies can play an important role in disrupting the targeted criminal organization, they can also have unintend…
Mexico in the Grip of Violence
[C]riminal groups are above the law because they have managed to capture and corrupt the state
The Political Logic of Poverty Relief: Electoral Strategies and Social Policy in Mexico
Poverty relief programs are shaped by politics. The particular design which social programs take is to a large extent determined by the existing institutional constrains and politicians' imperative to win elections. The Political Logic of Poverty Relief places elections and institutional design at the core of poverty alleviation. The authors develop a theory with applications to Mexico about how elections shape social programs aimed at aiding the…
How the Mexican drug war affects kids and schools? Evidence on effects and mechanisms
Presidential Approval and Public Security in Mexico's War on Crime
To fight criminal organizations effectively, governments require support from significant segments of society. Citizen support provides important leverage for executives, allowing them to continue their policies. Yet winning citizens' hearts and minds is not easy. Public security is a deeply complex issue. Responsibility is shared among different levels of government; information is highly mediated by mass media and individual acquaintances; and …
Public Good Provision and Traditional Governance in Indigenous Communities in Oaxaca, Mexico
Can ethnically distinct communities ruled through “traditional” assemblies provide public goods and services better, than when they are ruled by leaders elected through “modern” multiparty elections? We exploit a unique institutional feature in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico, where municipalities are ruled by traditional governance institutions, to explore the effect of these forms of governance on the provision of public goods. Using locality-level…
Legislatures and Policy Making in Authoritarian Regimes
Living in Fear: The Dynamics of Extortion in Mexico’s Drug War
Why do drug trafficking organizations (DTOs) sometimes prey on the communities in which they operate but sometimes provide assistance to these communities? What explains their strategies of extortion and co-optation toward civil society? Using new survey data from Mexico, including list experiments to elicit responses about potentially illegal behavior, this article measures the prevalence of extortion and assistance among DTOs. In support of our…
Killing in the Slums: Social Order, Criminal Governance, and Police Violence in Rio de Janeiro
State interventions against organized criminal groups (OCGs) sometimes work to improve security, but often exacerbate violence. To understand why, this article offers a theory about criminal governance in five types of criminal regimes-Insurgent, Bandit, Symbiotic, Predatory, and Split. These differ according to whether criminal groups confront or collude with state actors, abuse or cooperate with the community, and hold a monopoly or contest ter…
Institutionalized Police Brutality: Torture, the Militarization of Security, and the Reform of Inquisitorial Criminal Justice in Mexico
How can societies restrain their coercive institutions and transition to a more humane criminal justice system? We argue that two main factors explain why torture can persist as a generalized practice even in democratic societies: weak procedural protections and the militarization of policing, which introduces strategies, equipment, and mentality that treats criminal suspects as though they were enemies in wartime. Using a large survey of the Mex…
Political science (26 works) · Law (20 works) · Politics (18 works) · Economics (15 works) · Law (14 works) · Political economy (14 works) · Democracy (13 works) · Sociology (13 works) · Crime, Illicit Activities, and Governance (12 works) · Authoritarianism (8 works)