The Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law is pleased to share that Beatriz Magaloni, the Graham H. Stuart Professor of International Relations and director of CDDRL's Poverty, Violence, and Governance Lab (PovGov), has been awarded the Boris Mints Institute (BMI) Prize for her groundbreaking research on autocratic regimes and their electoral processes and the resurgence of autocracy at a global scale.

Professor Magaloni’s research addresses critical questions regarding why autocratic regimes opt for multi-party elections and the implications of these elections for democracy. She elucidates the nuanced threats posed by civilian leaders who ascend to power through electoral means rather than military coups, offering vital insights into electoral behavior and regime stability.

The BMI Prize is presented annually to an exceptional individual who has devoted his/her research and academic life to the solution of a strategic global challenge and whose research, public action, and ideas had transformative impacts on global policy formation and a proven contribution to the welfare of a significant number of communities worldwide.

The Boris Mints Institute shared the following statement on Professor Magaloni's selection:

The prize is awarded to Prof. Magaloni for her contribution to the field of the study of authoritarianism and its return as a global challenge. In her research, she explains why autocratic regimes hold multi-party elections. Her work provides a broad comparative framework and is now considered a “classic” in the field. Assigned in most undergraduate and graduate-level seminars on comparative politics, the themes and theories developed in her work set the agenda for conceptualizing multi-party autocracies, which have become the most common form of dictatorship worldwide. Her body of work also provides an understanding of the most insidious threats to democracy in the contemporary period, which do not come from military coups but from civilian leaders ascending to power through elections. Prof. Magaloni’s work on autocracies constitutes a key pillar for how subsequent scholars have come to understand and study multi-party autocracies, the role of elections in these systems, what shapes mass support and voting behavior in autocracies, the factors that explain why do autocratic rulers survive or die, when they democratize the electoral institutions and the conditions under which they might cede power to their opponents. Her work has appeared in the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, World Development, Comparative Political Studies, Annual Review of Political Science, Latin American Research Review, Journal of Theoretical Politics and other renowned journals.

Previous BMI laureates include Robert Axelrod, Nobel Prize laureate Michael Kremer, and Jeffrey D. Sachs.