Associate Professor at the Institute of Political Science, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. PhD in Political Science, Princeton University. She obtained her BA in Political Science at the Universidad del Salvador, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Her research focuses on institutional analysis, legislative policy, bargianing between the branches of government, transitional justice, memory and reconciliation, with a focus on Latin American politics. In the area of ​​methodology and methods, she is interested in research design and quantitative and experimental methods.

Her book Checking Presidential Power: Executive Decrees and the Legislative Process in New Democracies (Cambridge University Press, 2019), explains why presidents vary in their use of executive decrees to enact legislation. The book addresses the cases of Argentina and Brazil in depth, and carries out comparative analysis of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Nicaragua, and Peru. The author argues that the explanation lies in differences in politicians’ institutional commitment across countries, and she elaborates on what this institutional commitment is and how it is formed.

In general terms, her research addresses the legislative process from various angles and through the analysis of various institutional mechanisms, always with a comparative motivation, although using specific case studies. Thus, in addition to analyzing the use of the executive decree, she has researched the use of the presidential veto in the legislative process in different Latin American countries – Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and the presidential use of legislative urgency in Chile, Ecuador, and other countries in the region.

In response to the Chilean uprisings and constitutional reform attempts, she has devoted attention to the analysis of the Chilean constitutional system, emphasizing that it must be analyzed recognizing the effects of a system in equilibrium, and the importance of carrying out reforms based on diagnoses that are validated empirically and aligned towards solving the underlying institutional problems.

Other topics she has addressed include the impact of variations in the levels of institutionalization of Congress (in collaboration with Mariano Tommasi and Carlos Scartascini), the effects of constitutional reforms in Third Wave democracies (with Sergio Huertas and Patricia Sotomayor), the prerogative of fast track, which in Latin America usually takes the form of legislative urgency, the analysis of the impact of visits to memorial museums in promoting reconciliation after political conflicts (with Laia Balcells and Elsa Voytas), among others.

Her work has been published in journals such as Comparative Political Studies, Revista de Ciencia Política, Legislative Studies Quarterly, Global Constitutionalism and the Journal of Politics. She is also co-author of the book Congress, Presidency and Justice (Editorial Temas, Argentina 1999, with Guillermo Molinelli and Gisela Sin).

In 2009 she was Visiting Fellow at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies, University of Notre Dame.

She was Head of the PhD Program in Political Science (2014-2016) and Deputy Director of the Institute and Head of Undergraduate Studies (2019-2022).  She is currently the Dean of the Faculty of History, Geography and Political Science UC.

Courses Taught

PhD

• Instituciones Políticas Comparadas

• Instituciones del Proceso Legislativo

• Diseño de Investigación

• Dirección de Tesis

Magister

• El Proceso Legislativo en Perspectiva Comparada

• Proyecto de Graduación

Undergraduate

• Procesos Políticos en América Latina

• Instituciones y Comportamiento estratégico

• Seminario América Latina en el siglo XX

• Seminario de Grado

Recent Publications