Julieta Casas

Welcome! 

I am the Einstein-Moos postdoctoral fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University. I received my Ph.D. in Political Science from the Johns Hopkins University in June 2024.

I study comparative political institutions with a focus on state-building, regime change, and political parties in the U.S. and Latin America. My research agenda centers on institution-building efforts in nascent democracies, examining both historical and contemporary contexts. 


In my book project, Building Bureaucratic Capacity: The Political Origins of Civil Service Reforms, I trace the origins of bureaucratic reform to different types of patronage and identify the conditions under which countries can significantly reduce the politicization of the bureaucracy. This research relies on a mixed methods design that draws from an in-depth case study of the United States, Argentina, and Chile in the nineteenth century and from the study of broad patterns in bureaucratic reform across the Americas. You can see more about my book project here.

In addition, my other areas of research include gender & politics and historical political economy. Most of my projects involve retrieving and digitizing original archival materials that would otherwise be lost in the archives to produce new data sources. You can see more about my research here.

The American Political Science Association Centennial Grants and the Johns Hopkins Suveges Fellowship have supported my research. 

Curriculum vitae

Contact: jcasas2@stanford.edu