Alberto Diaz-Cayeros

Alberto Diaz-Cayeros joined the FSI faculty in 2013. He is also the Director of the Center for Latin American Studies. From 2008 to 2013 he was Associate Professor at the University of California, San Diego, and Director of the Center for US-Mexico Studies. He was an assistant professor of political science at Stanford from 2001-2008, before which he served as an assistant professor of political science at the University of California, Los Angeles. Diaz-Cayeros has also served as a researcher at Centro de Investigacion Para el Desarrollo, A.C. in Mexico from 1997-1999. He earned his PhD at Duke University in 1997. His work has focused on federalism, poverty and violence in Latin America, and Mexico in particular. He has published widely in Spanish and English. His book Federalism, Fiscal Authority and Centralization in Latin America was published by Cambridge University Press in 2007 (reprinted 2016). His latest book (with Federico Estevez and Beatriz Magaloni) is: The Political Logic of Poverty Relief Electoral Strategies and Social Policy in Mexico (2016).

King Center Supported Research

2021 - 2022 Academic Year | Global Development Research Funding

Populism and the Failure of Anti-Corruption Reforms in Post-Democratized Latin America

Why have institutional anti-corruption reforms largely failed in Latin America? To answer this question, Diaz-Cayeros' proposes a research agenda that identifies micro-dynamics linking institutional anti-corruption efforts with populism and citizen corruption perceptions, attitudes, and behavior. Using Mexico as the case study, Diaz-Cayeros first wishes to understand to what extent citizen perceptions of corruption are culturally or institutionally rooted using a RCT that leverages migration as a natural experiment. Then, Diaz-Cayeros wishes to uncover under what conditions institutional vs. populist frameworks deter citizens' willingness to engage in bribery through a lab-in-the-field experiment implemented along the US-Mexico border.