I am an Assistant Professor of Political Science at IE University’s School of Politics, Economics, and Global Affairs. I earned my PhD from the University of Texas at Austin’s Department of Government.
My research is in comparative politics, with a focus on authoritarian politics, law and courts, and Chinese politics. I study how authoritarian governments use legal institutions to manage political control, gather information, and build legitimacy.
My work uses original administrative data, survey experiments, causal inference, and computational methods. It has received support from CIVICA, the Texas Politics Project, the Ward Fellowship, and the Robert Strauss Center for International Security and Law.
Conditionally accepted, American Political Science Review
How do authoritarian regimes balance legitimacy through inclusion against control in legal institutions, and when do they prioritize one over the other? This paper studies how mass protests reshape lay judge appointments in China and whether appointing state-affiliated lay judges carries legitimacy costs.
Submitted
Does anti-corruption enforcement reduce the litigation advantages of politically connected firms? This paper studies whether removing high-ranking legal officials disrupts personal-network advantages among private firms while leaving the advantages of state-owned firms intact.
Why do autocrats construct detailed legal frameworks to administer violence against state enemies? This paper studies whether legal codification constrains coercive discretion and shifts influence toward rule-following bureaucratic agents in early Francoist Spain.
Available upon requestPhotographs from travel and fieldwork in China.