Gabriela Fischer Armani

Welcome! I am a Ph.D. student in Political Science at Harvard University. I study comparative politics and political economy, focusing on institutions and elites' behavior.

 

I am broadly interested in electoral representation, governance, corruption, money in politics, interbranch relations, ideology, and accountability institutions in post-authoritarian democracies.

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My research agenda seeks to explain the causes and consequences of accountability institutions, such as: How do democratization processes shape electoral governance and (anti-)corruption dynamics? And what are the effects of these institutional settings on contemporary representation, governance, and political competition?

 

My primary work to address such questions has focused on the role of judicial and legislative bodies in constraining elected officials' right to run, act, and remain in office in Latin America.

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Methodologically, I am mostly interested in employing causal inference methods and machine learning to advance work with observational data. I have also combined them with elite interviews and qualitative coding.

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Before joining Harvard, I worked on projects related to elections, corruption, the justice system, and the provision of public goods in research assistant positions at the University of São Paulo, Princeton, Georgetown, and Stanford. My previous experience includes projects partnered with agencies of the Brazilian justice system and legal assistance for labor and gender rights. I hold a Bachelor of Laws (summa cum laude) from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul and a Master's in Political Science from the University of São Paulo, both in Brazil, where I lived until moving to Cambridge.