Sebastián Mazzuca

Sebastián L. Mazzuca is a professor of political science specializing in comparative politics at Johns Hopkins University. He is known for his research on state formation.

Sebastián L. Mazzuca
Born	Buenos Aires, Argentina
Alma mater	University of California, Berkeley
Known for	Comparative politics state formation
Scientific career
Academic advisors	Max Weber · Guillermo O'Donnell · Tulio Halperín Donghi

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, and the National University of General San Martín in Buenos Aires, he returned to the United States and began teaching at Johns Hopkins University.

Research work

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

Mazzuca 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.

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

Selected publications

Books

• Latecomer State Formation: Political Geography and Capacity Failure in Latin America (Yale University Press, 2021).
• A Middle-Quality Institutional Trap: Democracy and State Capacity in Latin America (with Gerardo L. Munck; Cambridge University Press, 2020).

Articles

• "The Paradox of Civilization: Pre-Institutional Sources of Security and Prosperity", with Ernesto Dal Bo and Pablo Hernandez-Lagos. NBER Working Paper No. w21829.
• "Critical Juncture and Legacies: State Formation and Economic Performance in Latin America", Qualitative & Multi-Method Research 15, 1 (2017): 29–35.
• "State or Democracy First? Alternative Perspectives on the State-Democracy Nexus", with Gerardo L. Munck. Democratization 21, 7 (2014): 1221–43.
• "Varieties of clientelism: Machine politics during elections," with J Gans‐Morse and S Nichter. American Journal of Political Science 58, 2 (2014): 415–32.
• "Lessons from Latin America: The Rise of Rentier Populism", Journal of Democracy 24,2 (2014): 108–22.
• "Access to power versus exercise of power: Reconceptualizing the quality of democracy in Latin America", Studies in Comparative International Development 45, 3 (2010): 334–57.
• "Macrofoundations of Regime Change: Democracy, State Formation, and Capitalist Development", Comparative Politics 43, 1 (2010): 1–19.
• "Political conflict and power sharing in the origins of modern Colombia," with James A. Robinson. Hispanic American Historical Review 89, 2 (2009): 285–321.