Research

Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador during a presidential campaign rally in Texcoco, Mexico, June 17, 2018 (AP photo by Marco Ugarte).

My current research agenda in comparative politics stems from an interest in understanding the micro-foundations of two different yet interwined political phenomena that endager the quality, stability and survival of democracy in Latin American democracies: political polarization and the electoral success of populist authoritarian political parties and politicians. I use a variety of methods to empirically test hypotheses related to the aforementioned phenomena including in-person and online survey experiments, develop survey tools and analyze geo-spatial and large panel data sets to better understand their aggregate and micro-level relationships.

In addition, I have published a number of papers that analyze how International Financial Institutions (IFIs) interact with domestic political institutions to influence political outcomes -like protests- and economic policies -financial openess.- I also enjoy witting code. To that end, I have co-authored a number of R and Python packages that are available in public repositories..

Peer-Reviewed Publications

Béjar, Sergio. 2024. “Determinants of Affective Polarization in Mexico’s 2018 Presidential Election,” Revista Latinoamericana de Opinión Pública 13.

Béjar, Sergio and Bumba Mukherjee. 2024. “Domestic Financial Intermediaries, Dictatorship, and Social Spending,” Studies in Comparative International Development.

Moraes, J.A., and Sergio Béjar. 2023. “Electoral Volatility and Political Polarization in Developing Democracies: Evidence from Latin America, 1993-2016.” Party Politics.

Bolte, B., Nicolás Schmidt, Sergio Béjar, Nguyen Huynh, and Bumba Mukherjee. 2021. “BayesSPsurv: An R Package to Estimate Bayesian (Spatial) Split-Population Survival Models.” R Journal 13(1): 595.

Huynh, Nguyen, Sergio Béjar, Vineeta Yadav, and Bumba Mukherjee. 2021. “IDCeMPy: Python Package for Inflated Discrete Choice Models.’ Journal of Open Source Software 6 (63), 3322

Joo, Minnie M., Nicolás Schmidt, Sergio Béjar, Vineeta Yadav, and Bumba Mukherjee. 2020. “BayesMFSurv: An R Package to Estimate Bayesian Split-Population Survival Models With (and Without) Misclassified Failure Events.” Journal of Open Source Software 5(48): 2164.

Béjar, Sergio, Santiago López-Cariboni, and J.A. Moraes . 2020. “Elite Polarization and Voting Turnout in Latin America, 1993-2010.” Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties 30(1): 1-21.

Béjar, Sergio, and J.A. Moraes. 2016. “The IMF, Party System Institutionalization and Protest in Latin America.” Latin American Politics and Society 58(2): 26-48.

Mukherjee, Bumba, Vineete Yadav and Sergio Béjar. 2014. “Electoral Particularism, Bank Concentration and Capital Account Liberalization in Developing Democracies.” Comparative Political Studies 47(6): 851-77.

Mukherjee, Bumba, Vineete Yadav and Sergio Béjar. 2014 “Candidate-Centered Systems, Public Banks and Equity Market Restrictions in Developing Countries.” Review of International Political Economy 21(3): 670-709.

Béjar, Sergio and David Ortiz. 2013. “IMF-sponsored Economic Programs and Contentious Collective Action in Latin America, 1980-2007.” Conflict Management and Peace Science 30(5): 492-515.

Béjar, Sergio and Bumba Mukherjee. 2011. “Electoral Institutions and Growth Volatility: Theory and Evidence. International Political Science Review 32(4): 458-479.

Béjar, Sergio, Bumba Mukherjee and Will H. Moore. 2011. “Time Horizons Matter: Coalition Governments, Replacement Risk and the Size of Government.” Economics of Governance 12(3): 201-235.

Book Chapters

Moraes, J.A., and Sergio Béjar. 2024. “Latin America: Affective Polarization and Weak Partisan Institutions.” Handbook of Affective Polarization, Edward Elgar, Eelco Harteveld and Mariano Torcal, eds.

Software

Package	Description	Downloads
BayesSPsurv	Fits Bayesian spatial split-population (SP) survival models for clustered event processes.
BayesMFSurv	Fits Bayesian split-population (SP) survival models with and wihout misclassified failured events.
IDCeMPy	Fits a number of Inflated Discrete Choice Models (ZIOP/C, MIOP/C, GIMNL).

Works in Progress

Bolte, Brandon, Nguyen Huyhn, Bumba Mukherjee, Sergio Béjar and Nicolás Schmidt. “Bayesian Spatial Split-Population Models for the Social Sciences.”

Mukherjee, Bumba, Vineeta Yadav and Sergio Béjar. “Party-Centered Democracies, Agricultural Workers and Agricultural Trade Policy Reform.”