PhD, Political Science, University of Pennsylvania
M.A., Statistics, University of Pennsylvania
I'm a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance at Princeton University. I obtained my PhD in Political Science and Master in Statistics from the University of Pennsylvania. Before my graduate studies, I received my B.A. from the University of San Andres (Argentina), and my M.A. in International Studies from Torcuato Di Tella University (Argentina). Starting Fall 2024, I'll be an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
My research uses advanced statistical methods to explore the politics of norms adoption and resistance, focusing on the impact of external actors on policy change. I am also interested in LGBT politics, the role of non-state actors in international relaitons, and border politics. My research has been published or is forthcoming in International Studies Quarterly, Journal of Peace Research, Research and Politics, International Studies Perspectives, PS: Political Science and Politics, and Latin American Politics and Society.
I run, with Florencia Montal (University Torcuato Di Tella), a lab on the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. I have also founded and run the workshop Relaciones Internacionales Empíricas (Empirical International Relations), aimed at being a space to promote and strengthen research by IR scholars based in Latin America.
I grew up in Posadas, a Northern city in Argentina, capital of the Misiones province. Before coming to Penn, I worked in a consulting firm in Buenos Aires, Argentina on applied research on foreign aid and human rights, in the MERCOSUR Institute of Public Policy on Human Rights, and in the Argentine Council for International Relations, a top Latin American think-tank on foreign policy and international relations.
Peer-Reviewed Articles
(Forthcoming) "Mapping Advocacy Support: Geographic Proximity to Outgroups and Human Rights Promotion", Journal of Peace Research.
(2024) A Matter of Journal Choice: A Conjoint Experiment on Submission Choices of Latin American IR Scholars, International Studies Perspectives (with Florencia Montal and Patricio Yamin).
(2023) Shaping the Liberal International Order from the Inside: A Natural Experiment on China's Influence in the UN Human Rights Council, Research and Politics 10(3) (with Francisco Urdínez and Federico Merke).
(2022) Is the Bad News About Compliance Bad News About Human Rights? Evidence From the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, International Studies Quarterly 67(2) (with Florencia Montal).
(2022) Segmented Communities in the Global South: Where Do IR Argentine Scholars Publish and Why?, PS: Political Science and Politics 55(3), 519-524 (with Florencia Montal and Patricio Yamin).
(2021) New Donors, New Goals? Altruism, Self-Interest, and Domestic Political Support in Development Cooperation in Latin America, Latin American Politics and Society 63(4), 45-73.
(2015) In the shadow of the state: Think tanks and foreign policy in Latin America, International Journal: Canada’s Journal of Global Policy Analysis 70(4): 613-628 (with Federico Merke).
(2013) Theories of International Relations and the Explanation of Foreign Aid, Iberoamerican Journal of Development Studies 2(1): 72-92.
(2013) Foreign Policy and Human Rights Advocacy: An Exercise in Measurement and Explanation, Human Rights Review 14(2): 131-155 (with Federico Merke).
Book Chapters
(Forthcoming) International Human Rights Organizations: From Revolution to Irrelevance?, in Barnett, Michael and Duncan Snidal, Oxford Handbook of International Institutions, Oxford University Press (with Beth Simmons).
(2019) Foreign Aid’s Motivations: Theoretical Arguments and Empirical Evidence, in Olivié, Iliana and Aitor Pérez, Aid Power and Politics, Routledge.
(2017) South–South cooperation and the governance of development aid in South America, in Riggirozzi, Pia and Christopher Wylde, Handbook of South American Governance, Routledge.
Under Friendly Fire: A Study of Foreign Criticism Effects on LGBT Policy Change
[Book project]
The effect of human rights criticism on the adoption of progressive and restrictive human rights policies is a matter of scholarly debate. Some scholars argue that criticism can have a positive effect on human rights change, while others contend that it can lead to backlash. This project examines the ability of the international community to stop or exacerbate human rights violations through state-to-state non-material pressure in the form of public criticism. I argue that the ability of a country to influence another target country's policy depends on their social relations. Specifically, the effectiveness of international pressure depends on the social relationship a target country has with senders. When states criticize an ingroup, this sends a strong signal to other ingroup observers about the expected standard of behavior and potential social sanction of violating the norm. However, the public condemnation of an outgroup creates a sense of national identity threat and induces more norm violation.
I focus on LGBT rights as a case study of recent changes in rights protected and violated by states. While some countries have advanced rights in this area, others have witnessed a regression. This makes the issue of LGBT rights a contemporary contested issue in world politics where progress and backlash are both observed. I present a theory of state-to-state pressure to explain how criticism has both direct and indirect effects and can provoke positive as well as negative outcomes. I test my theory using a mixed-methods approach, combining quantitative analysis of a dataset of state-to-state human rights criticism, geocoded, text, and public opinion data with 50 interviews with diplomats, activists, bureaucrats, journalists, and scholars. My findings suggest that state-to-state criticism can be an effective tool for promoting human rights change, but its effectiveness depends on the social relationship between the sender and the target of criticism. This project contributes to the growing body of literature on the role of social relations in international relations. It also provides new insights into the effectiveness of state-to-state human rights criticism as a tool for promoting human rights change.
My job market paper summarizes my theory and main empirical findings.
Putting Judicialization on the Map: How Does Location Affect the Effectiveness of Claimants During International Adjudication Processes (with Florencia Montal)
The judicialization of international politics does not mean states will necessarily violate the law less frequently or that they will effectively remedy those affected by illegal actions. However, interested actors can mobilize resources in pursuance of their preferred outcomes. We explore how the location of those actors affect their ability to legally mobilize before international tribunals to obtain redress for human rights violations. Our approach starts by conceptualizing the process of international adjudication as four main bargains: the admission of the case, a settlement with the respondent state, the ruling on the merits, and compliance with remedy orders. At each of these points, claimants need to engage with either the adjudicators ---admission and ruling--- or states ---settlement and compliance. We theorize differences in outcomes when claimants are located near adjudicators or states and when they are not. To evaluate this general expectation we develop a series of hypothesis and test them against original data from the system of individual petitions of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. We use Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to generate a measure of access to key actors through geographic proximity and evaluate this against alternative explanations. We find that being close to the Inter-American Commission makes claimants more likely to get a favorable result, being the admission of their case or a higher number of reparations, while being close to the country capital makes compliance with remedy orders more likely.
When do International Organizations Praise or Criticize? Evidence from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (with Florencia Montal and María José Urzúa)
When are disputes taken to an international court? In the Inter-American Human Rights system (IAHRS), once the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACmHR) finds that a state violated human rights and recommends remedies, it has two choices: it either submits the case to the Inter-American Court (IACtHR) or publishes its findings and begins monitoring implementation of its original recommendations. Because the literature on the Inter-American regime has focused almost exclusively on the IACtHR, the decision to submit a case to the Court, while crucial, remains unexplored. While the commonplace explanation is that referrals are the Commission’s response to state non-compliance with initial, non-binding recommendations, we argue it is better understood as an opportunity to expand the stock of IACtHR case law on matters that are relatively less developed. We test this arguments using a database of IACmHR cases and find strong support for our hypothesis. In doing so, we advance our understanding of the factors that influence human rights litigation and the politics involved in the IAHRS.
Why Judicialize? Jurisprudence Expansion as a Driver of Referrals to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (with Florencia Montal)
When are disputes taken to an international court? In the Inter-American Human Rights system (IAHRS), once the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACmHR) finds that a state violated human rights and recommends remedies, it has two choices: it either submits the case to the Inter-American Court (IACtHR) or publishes its findings and begins monitoring implementation of its original recommendations. Because the literature on the Inter-American regime has focused almost exclusively on the IACtHR, the decision to submit a case to the Court, while crucial, remains unexplored. While the commonplace explanation is that referrals are the Commission’s response to state non-compliance with initial, non-binding recommendations, we argue it is better understood as an opportunity to expand the stock of IACtHR case law on matters that are relatively less developed. We test this arguments using a database of IACmHR cases and find strong support for our hypothesis. In doing so, we advance our understanding of the factors that influence human rights litigation and the politics involved in the IAHRS.
Borders as International Institutions: Shared Governance, Barriers to Entry, and Human Rights Outcomes at the Edge of State Sovereignty (with Beth Simmons)
Research on international borders in international law and relations has been dominated by the paradigm of state sovereignty, with an empirical focus on the politics of division and settlement. This article argues that if we take the idea of international borders seriously, we need to reexamine state obligations regarding how they are governed. New evidence is evaluated to assess the proposition that when borders are securitized unilaterally, human rights are at greater risk. Using spatial data on infant mortality rates, we find that border hardening is associated with high differentials in health outcomes in border zones throughout the world. One way to interpret this finding is that border hardening complicates access to potentially life-extending health support. This paper opens a new research agenda that documents and explains the varying ways in which the choices regarding border governance implicate human rights risks. We hope this agenda spurs discussions of cooperative governance modes that might preserve border security while minimizing the risks of violating a human right to health in borders zones.
Border Walls as Cooperation Failures (with Michael Kenwick and Beth Simmons)
The construction of physical walls and barriers is a defining trait of contemporary border politics. While existing theories of walling emphasize the importance of economic and security threats as the principal cause of walling, we argue that this phenomenon can be better understood through a theoretical lens which places trust and mistrust between neighbors at its center. States benefit from cooperative border governance, but these strategies require trust to be maintained. Walling emerges as a second-best option when a state cannot trust that their neighbor is willing or able to reciprocate cooperation in border governance. We therefore argue that walling is more likely at borders which separate international rivals, and along borders with high differentials in state capacity. We also anticipate that walling dictates the logic of where states choose to strategically locate their walls along their borders, arguing that rivalrous neighbors prioritize walling areas of potential security threats to the state, relative to non-rivals who are more sensitive to economic threats by comparison. We introduce a novel, geo-located data set of international border walls (1990-2020), uncovering strong empirical support for our claims.
Penn Prize for Excellence in Teaching by Graduate Students. Awarded to 10 graduate students across the University of Pennsylvania
Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching. Awarded to 10 graduate students across the University of Pennsylvania's School of Arts and Sciences
2011-2017, Teaching Assistant, 'Theories of International Relations' (undergraduate), University of San Andres (Argentina) [Instructor: Federico Merke]
2014-2016, Teaching Assistant, 'International Politics' (graduate), Foreign Service Institute, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Worship of Argentina [Instructor: Federico Merke]
2018, Teaching Assistant, 'International Political Economy' (undergraduate), University of Pennsylvania [Instructor: Ryan Brutger]
2019, Teaching Assistant, 'International Law & Institutions' (undergraduate), University of Pennsylvania [Instructor: Mark Pollack]
2019-2022 Teaching Assistant, 'International Law' (undergraduate), University of Pennsylvania [Instructor: Beth Simmons]
2020-2021, Instructor, 'Graduate Research Design Seminar' (gradute), University Torcuato Di Tella
2021, Instructor, 'Data Analysis for Development Cooperation' (gradute), National University of San Martín
2023, Instructor, 'Data Management and Analysis' (gradute), University of San Andrés
- 2017, December 6, "Cambiemos y las elecciones legislativas en Argentina" with Santiago Cunial, Foreign Affairs Latinoamérica (México)
- 2017, July 19, "El G-20, oportunidad para Argentina", El Estadista (Argentina)
- 2017, July 6, "Las relaciones Argentina-Europa en la presidencia de Macri" with Gonzalo Casais, Centre for the Analysis of Foreign Policy and International Security of Catalonia (Spain)
- 2017, May 18, "Volver al mundo, con todos adentro", El Estadista (Argentina)
- 2017, May 15, "Un viaje ideal y necesario", El Economista (Argentina)
- 2017, April 25, "Macri visita a Trump", Foreign Affairs Latinoamérica (México)
- 2016, November 24, "Los desafíos de Guterres", El Estadista (Argentina)
- 2016, November 9, "Trump y America Latina", Perfil (Argentina)
- 2016, August 26, "Asia, primer objetivo para la política exterior argentina" with Andres Schelp, La Nacion (Argentina)
- 2016, July 18, "Voler al mundo es más complejo" with Andrés Malamud, El Estadista (Argentina)
- 2016, May 23, "Malcorra a la ONU: ¿Acierto o jugada condenada al fracaso?", El Economista (Argentina)
- 2016, May 14, "¿Lo que se vive en Brasil es el fin del Mercosur?" with Gonzalo Casais, Perfil (Argentina)
- 2016, April 11, "La visita de Obama a Argentina", Foreign Affairs Latinoamérica (México)
- 2016, January 11, "Latinoamérica en 2016: entre la incertidumbre y la esperanza" with Andrei Serbin Pont, Foreign Affairs Latinoamérica (México)
- 2015, December 8, "¿Por qué los resultados de las elecciones venezolanas son importantes para la región?", La Nacion (Argentina)
- 2015, November 23, "Lo que vendrá en política exterior argentina con Macri", Foreign Affairs Latinoamérica (México)
- 2015, October 26, "Las elecciones argentinas y el voto para los parlamentarios del Mercosur" with Pedro Antenucci, Foreign Affairs Latinoamerica (México)
- 2015, October 25, "La política doméstica se trasladó al Mercosur" with Pedro Antenucci, Perfil (Argentina)
- 2015, February 4, "El escándalo argentino", Foreign Affairs Latinoamérica (México)
- 2014, September 7, "Principios o personas", Perfil (Argentina)
- 2014, August 27, "El ISIS y un cambio en el balance de poder regional", Infobae (Argentina)
- 2014, August 1, "Partnerstvo, Hùzhùhézuò and Default (Asociación, alianza y cesación de pagos)", Foreign Affairs Latinoamérica (México)
- 2014, June 29, "EE.UU., en la mirada de America latina: de la condena al ejemplo" with Federico Merke, La Nacion (Argentina)
- 2014, April 1, "La política exterior argentina de derechos humanos", Foreign Affairs Latinoamérica (México)