Alberto Díaz-Cayeros

Alberto Diaz-Cayeros Headshot

Alberto Díaz-Cayeros, MA, PhD

  • Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
  • Professor, by courtesy, of Political Science
  • Affiliated faculty at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law
  • Director of the Center for Latin American Studies (2016 - 2023)

Encina Hall, C149
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305

(650) 725-0500 (voice)

Biography

Alberto Diaz-Cayeros joined the FSI faculty in 2013 after serving for five years as the director of the Center for US-Mexico studies at the University of California, San Diego. He earned his Ph.D at Duke University in 1997. 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. 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. His work has primarily focused on federalism, poverty and economic reform in Latin America, and Mexico in particular, with more recent work addressing crime and violence, youth-at-risk, and police professionalization. 

publications

Book Chapters
February 2023

Historical Persistence, Possibilism and Utopias in Latin America and the Caribbean

Author(s)
Historical Persistence, Possibilism and Utopias in Latin America and the Caribbean
Book Chapters
October 2021

The Future of Latin American and Caribbean Cities: Urban Bias and Political Fragments in Place (chapter in forthcoming, The Routledge Handbook of Urban Studies in Latin America and the Caribbean)

Author(s)
The Future of Latin American and Caribbean Cities: Urban Bias and Political Fragments in Place (chapter in forthcoming, The Routledge Handbook of Urban Studies in Latin America and the Caribbean)

In The News

Ricardo Brugada, Asunción, Paraguay
News

Conditional Cash Transfers, Poverty, and Democracy in Latin America: Successes and Challenges

CDDRL Research-in-Brief [4 minute read]
Conditional Cash Transfers, Poverty, and Democracy in Latin America: Successes and Challenges
Former Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos addressed a Stanford audience at a May 1 event.
News

Santos: Build Peace and Trust Through Dialogue

Former Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos shared insights on peace processes, leadership, and conflict transformation with a Stanford audience.
Santos: Build Peace and Trust Through Dialogue
Alberto Díaz-Cayeros presents his research in a CDDRL seminar.
News

Colonialism, Epidemics, and Resilience: Rethinking Demographic Collapse in Tepetlaoztoc

FSI Senior Fellow Alberto Díaz-Cayeros explores how demographic collapse, epidemic disease, and colonial rent extraction were interconnected in Tepetlaoztoc, a city-state in the Acolhua Kingdom of the Aztec Empire.
Colonialism, Epidemics, and Resilience: Rethinking Demographic Collapse in Tepetlaoztoc