Taxus Baccata

Sebastián L. Mazzuca is a professor of political science specializing in comparative politics at Johns Hopkins University.^[1] He is known for his research on state formation, state capacity, regime change, and political economy.^[2]

Career

Mazzuca earned his MA in Economics and his PhD in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley. He studied with David Collier and James A. Robinson.

After teaching at Harvard University (2010-12), and the National University of General San Martín in Buenos Aires (2013-14), in 2015 he began a position as Assistant Professor at Johns Hopkins University.^[3]

Research work

Mazzuca works in the field of comparative politics specializing in state formation, economic development, and democracy.

Books

Mazzuca published two books with major university presses:

I. Latecomer State Formation^[4] with Yale University Press (2021).

The book was positively reviewed in Foreign Affairs,^[5] and academic journals in English and Spanish, including Governance,^[6] Political Studies,^[7] Latin American Research Review,^[8] Política y Gobierno,^[9] and Araucaria.^[10]

The book argues that, in contrast to Europe, trade, not war, created the countries of Latin America. But trade created weaker countries than war. A key theoretical claim is that state formation (border demarcation) was incompatible with state building (capacity creation) in Latin America because the rush to incorporate the region into global commerce induced the emergence of countries with dysfunctional territories, i.e., combinations of subnational regions that in the long run proved economically unviable. This claim complements and refines the usual ideas that attribute all forms of economic and social backwardness in Latin America to colonial institutions.^[11][12]

Mazzuca's work on state formation and on economic development has been seen as a contribution to critical juncture theory.

II. A Middle-Quality Institutional Trap: Democracy and State Capacity in Latin America^[13] with Cambridge University Press, co-authored with Gerardo Munck (2020).

The book was reviewed by the Bulletin of Latin American Research,^[14] and the Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies.^[15]

The book argues that Latin America is currently caught in a middle-quality institutional trap, combining flawed democracies and low-to-medium capacity States. Yet, contrary to conventional wisdom, the sequence of development - Latin America has democratized before building capable States - does not explain the region's quandary. States can make democracy, but so too can democracy make States. Thus, the starting point of political developments is less important than whether the State-democracy relationship is a virtuous cycle, triggering causal mechanisms that reinforce each other. However, the State-democracy interaction generates a virtuous cycle only under certain macroconditions. In Latin America, the State-democracy interaction has not generated a virtuous cycle: problems regarding the State prevent full democratization and problems of democracy prevent the development of state capacity. Moreover, multiple macroconditions provide a foundation for this distinctive pattern of State-democracy interaction. The suboptimal political equilibrium in contemporary Latin America is a robust one.

Articles (incomplete list)

1. Dal Bó, Ernesto, Pablo Hernández-Lagos, and Sebastián Mazzuca. "The paradox of civilization: Preinstitutional sources of security and prosperity." American Political Science Review 116.1 (2022): 213-230.^[16]
2. Gans‐Morse, Jordan, Sebastian Mazzuca, and Simeon Nichter. "Varieties of clientelism: Machine politics during elections." American Journal of Political Science 58.2 (2014): 415-432.^[17]
3. “Capacidad, Autonomía y Legitimidad. Revisando (de nuevo) los Atributos del Estado Moderno,” Revista de Ciencia Política (UCA Chile), 32.3: 545-560. ^[18]
4. “Macrofoundations of Regime Change: Democracy, State Formation, and Capitalist Development.” Comparative Politics (2010b) 43.1: 1-19.^[19]
5. “Access to Power Versus Exercise of Power: Reconceptualizing the Quality of Democracy in Latin America.” Studies in Comparative International Development (2010a) 45.3: 334-357.^[20]

Mazzuca (2010a) is known for introducing the distinction between access to power and the exercise of power. He argues that the distinction between authoritarianism and democracy concerns the access to power dimension. In contrast, the distinction between patrimonialism and bureaucracy concerns the exercise of power dimension.

Public impact

• Latecomer State Formation was featured in The Economist, Foreign Affairs, Diario Perfil (Argentina), and El Comercio (Peru). ^{[21][22][23][24]}
• A Middle-Quality Institutional Trap: Democracy and State Capacity in Latin America (with Gerardo L. Munck; Cambridge University Press, 2020) was chosen as one of the best five books on Latin American Democracy by Prof. Joe Foweraker.^[25].^[26]
• His work and political analysis was featured in The Economist,^[27] Associated Press,^[28][29] Clarin,^[30] La Nación,^[31] Revista Seúl,^[32] among others.

References