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

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.”