Alejandra López Villegas
About Me
I am a Ph.D. Candidate at Michigan State University (MSU). Broadly speaking, my research examines democratic backsliding, gender and politics, and their intersection. More specifically, I look into how elite dynamics within the ruling party can enable democratic backsliding, and how anti-democratic leaders instrumentalize women’s rights. While I have regional expertise in Latin America, I have a broad interest in examining democratic backsliding and its gender dynamics elsewhere, including in Africa and Eastern Europe. Methodologically, I focus on quantitative approaches to research methods, such as time series analysis, text analysis, survey experiments, and hierarchical linear modeling.
My dissertation, a book project titled “Women’s Rights on Their Own Terms: The Gender Dynamics of Democratic Backsliding,” argues that left-wing leaders who aspire to consolidate power in Latin America tend to instrumentalize women’s rights to help them in their authoritarian endeavors. While these leaders advance some aspects of women’s rights (such as women’s descriptive representation), they also contribute to the undermining of other aspects of these rights (such as undermining feminist activism, undoing feminist policies, or slashing the budget of women’s rights organizations). I argue that these seemingly contradictory actions are part of a broader strategy by which incumbents seek to undermine dissent across the regime without being reprimanded for it.
I test my argument using a mixed-methods approach in which I combine qualitative and quantitative techniques. I compare Mexico and Brazil using a most similar systems design. Qualitatively, I examine presidential speeches, budgetary allocations, news articles, and conduct semi-structured interviews. Quantitatively, I use large language models and text-analysis techniques to help me trace gendered patterns in presidential speeches. Additionally, I conduct a conjoint survey experiment in Mexico to assess the public’s reactions to an incumbent using an anti-women’s rights rhetoric. I show that left-wing anti-democratic incumbents are likelier to engage in an anti-women’s rights rhetoric than left-wing democratic incumbents and examine citizens’ reactions to this type of speechmaking.
My research has been funded by the MSU Center for Gender in Global Context and by the Dr. Karen Klomparens Endowment in Support of Graduate Fellowships. My work has been published by Elgar Edward Publishing.
I also work as replication analyst for the Journal of Politics. Prior to beginning my degree at MSU, I completed my B.A. in International Relations at Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM) and my M.A. in International Development at Sciences Po Paris.
Research & Teaching Interests
Comparative Politics, Institutions, Latin America, Democratic Backsliding, Gender and Politics, Research Design, Quantitative Methods
Contact
Michigan State University
Department of Political Science
368 Farm Lane, 234, East Lansing MI, 48823
Phone (517)-763-1577
Personal Webpage:
https://alejandralopezvillegas.com/
E-mail Address:
lopezvi7@msu.edu
