Jorge Mangonnet

Welcome! I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Vanderbilt University. I study comparative politics and political economy, focusing on how states and societies create property rights and how these rights influence institutions, development, conflict, and behavior. My research primarily centers on Latin America.

Before joining Vanderbilt, I was a Postdoctoral Prize Research Fellow in Politics in Nuffield College, University of Oxford. I graduated with a Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University in 2020.

Family Ties, Social Control, and Authoritarian Distribution to Elites (with Antonella Bandiera and Horacio Larreguy). American Political Science Review. Forthcoming (FirstView).  

Public Goods Provision and Elite Centrality: Evidence from Paraguay's Democratic Transition (with Antonella Bandiera, Horacio Larreguy, and José Luis Pérez Castellanos). In Roots of Underdevelopment: A New Economic and Political History of Latin America and the Caribbean (Vol II.) (F. Valencia Caicedo, ed.). Forthcoming.

Peasant Resistance in Times of Economic Affluence: Lessons from Paraguay (with Rocío Liliana Duarte Recalde, Germán Feierherd, and M. Victoria Murillo). 2025. Comparative Political Studies 58(3): 494-525.  

Playing Politics with Environmental Protection: The Political Economy of Designating Protected Areas (with Jacob Kopas and Johannes Urpelainen). 2022. Journal of Politics 84(3): 1453-1468.
- Winner of the 2023 Evan Ringquist Award for the Best Article in Science, Technology, and Environmental Politics, American Politial Science Association.

Protests of Abundance: Distributive Conflict over Agricultural Rents during the Commodities Boom in Argentina, 2003–2013 (with M. Victoria Murillo). 2020. Comparative Political Studies 53(8): 1223-1258.  

Local Economic Voting and the Agricultural Boom in Argentina, 2007-2015 (with M. Victoria Murillo and Julia M. Rubio). 2018. Latin American Politics and Society 60(8): 27-53.  

Argentina: Voters' Influence and Electoral Alternation (with M. Victoria Murillo and Julia M. Rubio). 2018. Revista de Ciencia Política 36(1): 3-26.  

Competitiveness, Partisanship, and Subnational Protest in Argentina (with Moises Arce). 2013. Comparative Political Studies 46(8): 895-919.  

How Elites Rewrote Property Law in Post-Emancipation Americas, 1830-1900.
- Winner of the 2021 Mancur Olson Award for the Best Dissertation in Political Economy, American Politial Science Association.

Economic Shocks, Political Influence, and Rural Unrest (with M. Victoria Murillo). Cambridge University Press, Elements in Politics of Development. Under advanced contract.

Emancipation, Labor Control, and Property Rights Formation (draft available upon request).
- Winner of the 2019 Lanahan Award for the Best Graduate Student Paper, Northeastern Politial Science Association.

Why Landed Elites Support Property Rights: Surviving Emancipation in Imperial Brazil.

From Slaveholders to Landholders: Race, Labor, and Land Tenure in the Postbellum South.

The Long Coercive Shadow of Slavery: Evidence from Brazil (draft available upon request).

The Historical Roots of Indigenous Rights Litigation in the Argentine Northeast (with Sofia Berrospi and Ezequiel González-Ocantos).

Triggering Events, Local News, and Slave Resistance in the American South (with Colette Marcellin).

Vanderbilt University (instructor)
• Historical Political Economy (graduate)
• The Politics of Global Inequality (undergraduate)
• Political Protest (graduate)

University of Oxford (co-instructor & tutor)
• Comparative Government (graduate)
• Latin American Politics (undergraduate)