Beatriz Magaloni

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Beatriz Magaloni, MA, PhD

  • Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
  • Graham H. Stuart Professor of International Relations
  • Professor of Political Science

Dept. of Political Science
Encina Hall, Room 436
Stanford University,
Stanford, CA

(650) 724-5949 (voice)

Biography

Beatriz Magaloni Magaloni is the Graham Stuart Professor of International Relations at the Department of Political Science. Magaloni is also a Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute, where she holds affiliations with the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) and the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC). She is also a Stanford’s King Center for Global Development faculty affiliate. Magaloni has taught at Stanford University for over two decades.

She leads the Poverty, Violence, and Governance Lab (Povgov). Founded by Magaloni in 2010, Povgov is one of Stanford University’s leading impact-driven knowledge production laboratories in the social sciences. Under her leadership, Povgov has innovated and advanced a host of cutting-edge research agendas to reduce violence and poverty and promote peace, security, and human rights.

Magaloni’s work has contributed to the study of authoritarian politics, poverty alleviation, indigenous governance, and, more recently, violence, crime, security institutions, and human rights. Her first book, Voting for Autocracy: Hegemonic Party Survival and its Demise in Mexico (Cambridge University Press, 2006) is widely recognized as a seminal study in the field of comparative politics. It received the 2007 Leon Epstein Award for the Best Book published in the previous two years in the area of political parties and organizations, as well as the Best Book Award from the American Political Science Association’s Comparative Democratization Section. Her second book The Politics of Poverty Relief: Strategies of Vote Buying and Social Policies in Mexico (with Alberto Diaz-Cayeros and Federico Estevez) (Cambridge University Press, 2016) explores how politics shapes poverty alleviation.

Magaloni’s work was published in leading journals, including the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Criminology & Public Policy, World Development, Comparative Political Studies, Annual Review of Political Science, Cambridge Journal of Evidence-Based Policing, Latin American Research Review, and others.

Magaloni received wide international acclaim for identifying innovative solutions for salient societal problems through impact-driven research. In 2023, she was named winner of the world-renowned Stockholm Prize in Criminology, considered an equivalent of the Nobel Prize in the field of criminology. The award recognized her extensive research on crime, policing, and human rights in Mexico and Brazil. Magaloni’s research production in this area was also recognized by the American Political Science Association, which named her recipient of the 2021 Heinz I. Eulau Award for the best article published in the American Political Science Review, the leading journal in the discipline.

She received her Ph.D. in political science from Duke University and holds a law degree from the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México.

publications

Journal Articles
August 2020

Institutionalized Police Brutality: Torture, the Militarization of Security, and the Reform of Inquisitorial Criminal Justice in Mexico

Author(s)
cover link Institutionalized Police Brutality: Torture, the Militarization of Security, and the Reform of Inquisitorial Criminal Justice in Mexico
Journal Articles
March 2020

Legislatures and Policy Making in Authoritarian Regimes

Author(s)
cover link Legislatures and Policy Making in Authoritarian Regimes
Working Papers
January 2020

Engaging, Empowering, and Enabling Youth to Lead Social Action in the Favelas of Rio de Janeiro

Author(s)
cover link Engaging, Empowering, and Enabling Youth to Lead Social Action in the Favelas of Rio de Janeiro

In The News

Presidential candidate Claudia Sheinbaum of ''Sigamos Haciendo Historia'' coalition waves at supporters after the first results released by the election authorities show that she leads the polls by wide margin after the presidential election at Zocalo Square on June 03, 2024 in Mexico City, Mexico.
Commentary

6 Insights on Mexico’s Historic Election: Stanford Scholars Explain What This Means for the Future of its Democracy

The Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law’s Poverty, Violence, and Governance Lab, in collaboration with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, invited a panel of scholars to discuss the implications of Mexico’s elections and to analyze the political context in which they were held.
cover link 6 Insights on Mexico’s Historic Election: Stanford Scholars Explain What This Means for the Future of its Democracy