I study political institutions in comparative perspective. My research addresses topics related to legislative politics, political parties, and public policy. In addition to my publications and projects listed below, I also work with the Brazilian Policy Agendas, a part of the Comparative Agendas Project that investigates policymaking trends across time. My work has received funding from the Rotary Foundation, the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, and the Program on the Latin America and the Caribbean (PLACA) at Syracuse University.
Dissertation
My dissertation identifies and explains in-country variation in individual legislative effectiveness in Latin America. I document this variation by adapting Craig Volden and Alan E. Wiseman's Legislative Effectiveness Score (LES) to the context of Brazil’s lower house (i.e., Chamber of Deputies). I propose that association with legislative member organizations (LMOs) is a key factor in explaining legislative effectiveness where political parties provide few incentives for active lawmaking. LMOs are cross-party organizations within legislatures centered on particular political issues or themes. The project adopts a mixed-methods approach with original data collected from extensive in-country fieldwork to examine this claim. Statistical analysis shows that legislators who belong to select LMOs are more effective than their peers who do not associate with those groups. Additionally, I rely on interviews with more than 50 politicians and extensive ethnographic research to process trace the lawmaking activities of legislators who belong to the rural, public security, and evangelical organizations in the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies. This qualitative portion of the project examines the causal mechanisms through which LMOs equip representatives to be more effective.
Publications
Works in Progress
Dissertation
My dissertation identifies and explains in-country variation in individual legislative effectiveness in Latin America. I document this variation by adapting Craig Volden and Alan E. Wiseman's Legislative Effectiveness Score (LES) to the context of Brazil’s lower house (i.e., Chamber of Deputies). I propose that association with legislative member organizations (LMOs) is a key factor in explaining legislative effectiveness where political parties provide few incentives for active lawmaking. LMOs are cross-party organizations within legislatures centered on particular political issues or themes. The project adopts a mixed-methods approach with original data collected from extensive in-country fieldwork to examine this claim. Statistical analysis shows that legislators who belong to select LMOs are more effective than their peers who do not associate with those groups. Additionally, I rely on interviews with more than 50 politicians and extensive ethnographic research to process trace the lawmaking activities of legislators who belong to the rural, public security, and evangelical organizations in the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies. This qualitative portion of the project examines the causal mechanisms through which LMOs equip representatives to be more effective.
Publications
- Baumgartner, Frank R., Marcello Carammia, Derek A. Epp, Ben Noble, Beatriz Rey, and Tevfik Murat Yildirim. "Budgetary change in authoritarian and democratic regimes." Journal of European Public Policy 24, no. 6 (2017): 792-808.
- Rey, Beatriz. "Horizontal social movements and agenda-setting: evidence from Brazil." Agenda Política 4, no. 1 (2016): 130-151.
Works in Progress
- "Legislative Effectiveness in Latin America: The Role of Legislative Member Organizations in Brazil, 2011-2018" (Working Paper)
- "Legislative Effectiveness in a Comparative Perspective: Adapting the Legislative Effectiveness Score (LES) outside the United States" (Working Paper)
- "Religion in Congress: The Evangelical Bloc in Brazil" (Working Paper)
- “Candidate Selection Methods and Legislative Effectiveness in Mexico” (Working Paper co-authored with Matthew R. Cleary)