Research

My current research focuses on the bureaucratic politics of anti-deforestation enforcement, with a regional emphasis in Latin America. I also have ongoing interests in causal inference, individual-level adaptation to climate change, as well as the broader field of environmental politics. In the past I’ve also worked on topics related to direct democracy, citizenship, and distributive politics.

Working papers

Forbearance forgone: the electoral cost of enforcing the law. Latest version: August, 2025. Available upon request.

Abstract: Is enforcement costly? The literature on the politics of enforcement often assumes—rather than tests—that enforcement leads to an electoral punishment among those targeted, while giving little attention to the underlying mechanisms. I theorize three channels for this backlash: individual losses, network solidarity, and collective grievance. I focus on anti-deforestation enforcement in the Brazilian Amazon and rely on a combination of difference-in-differences, instrumental variables, regression discontinuity, and shift-share designs to estimate the electoral costs of enforcement. I find that the Workers’ Party, viewed as supportive of enforcement, experienced losses of 4–8% in targeted areas, while Jair Bolsonaro, critical of it, gained equivalent shares. Additionally, using the first large-scale individual-level test of the effects of enforcement on political behavior, I show that those targeted—especially directly—mobilized against the Workers’ Party. Finally, I find no evidence of an electoral reward for enforcement among its purported audience, against theoretical expectations.

Can you stand the heat? Ideology and individual-level climate adaptation in Brazil. with Preston Johnston. Latest version: March, 2025.

Abstract: How do people adapt to climate change? Although individuals have incentives to change their lifestyles and economic choices to reduce their exposure to climate risks, decades of research have also shown that risk perceptions and tolerance are shaped by social and political factors. We propose that just as politics may affect whether individuals develop concern for climate change, it may also affect the adaptive actions individuals take in response to climate trends. Studying the case of Brazil, a country which faces severe climate risks, we focus on one channel through which party politics may affect individual climate adaptation: differential risk tolerance. Leveraging a large representative survey of Brazilian households, we examine whether respondents living in conservative areas show lower elasticities of self-reported adaptation to climate risks such as drought, floods, temperature anomalies, and fires. If so, this may indicate that political ideology can moderate the relationship between risk and adaptation, possibly contributing to adaptation shortfalls in the developing world.

Eyes beneath the canopy: co-enforcing environmental crackdowns in the Brazilian Amazon. Latest version: April, 2024 Available upon request.

Abstract: How do state-society relations affect law enforcement crackdowns? I propose that sharp increases in state resources will be most effective wherever we find synergistic dynamics between officials and local groups. I argue that this pattern is the result of the two actors engaging in the co-production of law enforcement, where state agents provide technical expertise while communities offer their deep knowledge of the terrain. I test this theory by examining anti-deforestation policies in the Brazilian Amazon. Exploiting the blacklisting of municipalities between 2008 and 2019 I show that while the crackdown led to significant forest cover retention within indigenous lands, its effects outside of them were mixed. This pattern is the result of uneven shifts in the costs of crime: increases in enforcement are shaped by indigenous presence, which in turn affect future criminal behavior. Consequently, good environmental outcomes require a combination of formal policies and local support.

Published

Two paths towards the exceptional extension of national voting rights to non-citizen residents. (2023). with David Altman and Sergio Huertas-Hernández. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 49(10), pp. 2541-2560. DOI: 10.1080/1369183X.2023.2182713

Abstract: Only five countries have extended universal voting rights to non-citizen residents for all political spheres (local, intermediate and national): Uruguay in 1934, New Zealand in 1975, Chile in 1980, Malawi in 1994, and Ecuador in 2008. These cases constitute a unique intercontinental medley and an opportunity to study the conditions behind such revolutionary change. Through a calibrated comparative strategy based on most similar system designs (inspired by Mill’s method of difference) using QCA, this paper finds that the extension of national voting rights to non-citizen residents transpired in two distinct scenarios. The first setting (Chile, New Zealand, and Uruguay) took place within unitary states with already-existing local voting rights for non-citizen residents and settler trajectories, but that were not undergoing a liberalisation process. On the other hand, the second configuration (Ecuador and Malawi) developed within unitary states that recognised nationality by ius soli and were going through a process of liberalisation, but without previous local voting rights for non-citizen residents or a settler trajectory. To our best knowledge, this paper offers the first cross-national explanation that involves all cases that have broadened their respective political communities (demoi) to include national voting rights to all non-citizen residents.

Citizens at the polls: direct democracy in the world, 2020. (2021). with David Altman. Taiwan Journal of Democracy, 17(2), pp. 85-106.

Abstract: There is suggestive evidence that the growth of democracy has stagnated, and even some signs indicate that democracy is in retreat. In such a context, one might have expected to witness an increase in experimentation with democratic innovations such as direct democracy. This is not the case. While there is a spectacular and statistically significant increase in the uses of mechanisms of direct democracy (MDDs) since the early 1990s, 2020 remained notably similar to the previous years in terms of the level of direct democracy worldwide. In 2019, we witnessed less than half of the MDDs we saw in 2018 (eighteen vs. fifty), but, in 2020, the count bounced back to thirty. The COVID-19 pandemic did not halt the march of direct democracy, although it delayed some of its events. Beyond the specific number of popular votes in 2020, direct democracy still tracks almost perfectly with global electoral democracy trends. When all was said and done, however, thirty MDDs were held in 2020: fourteen obligatory referendums (eight in Liberia, two in Chile, and one in Algeria, Italy, Palau, and Northern Cyprus, respectively), six plebiscites (two in New Zealand, two in Liechtenstein, one in Russia, and one in Guinea), five popular initiatives (four in Switzerland and one in Liechtenstein), and five rejective referendums (all in Switzerland).