Research Interests

Transparency and accountability, democratization, governance and participation, social and environmental policy, transnational civil society, immigration and youth civic/political engagement. Current projects address reform strategies for trasparency, participation and accountability, with a focus on the global South.

Selected Publications

• [with Jeffrey Hallock and Nicholas Chen] "USAID's Locally‐Led Development Agenda: Open Government and Independent Monitoring," Public Administration and Development, 2025
• [with Carlos Garcia-Jimenez] "Farmer Movement Oversight of the Mexican Government's Scaled-Up Fertilizer Program," Journal of Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems, 49(7), 2025
• [with Jeffrey Hallock] "Open Government and US Development Cooperation in Colombia: Lessons for Locally-Led Develoment," Development Policy Review, 42(5) 2024
• [with Rachel Sullivan Robinson and Naomi Hossain] "Pathways to Power-Shifting: State-Society Synergy," World Development, 172, 2023
• [with Julia Fischer-Mackey], "Pitfalls of Slippery Indicators: The Importance of Reading Between the Lines,"Development in Practice, 33(6), 2022
• [with Xochitl Bada] "Persistent Rurality in Mexico and ‘The Right to Stay Home,’" Journal of Peasant Studies, 49(1), 2022
• "Accountability Keywords," Accountability Working Paper, 11, January 2022
• "Contested Terrain: International Development Projects and Countervailing Power for the Excluded," World Development, 133, Sept., 2020
• "The Political Construction of Accountability Keywords," IDS Bulletin, 49(2), March, 2018
• "Scaling Accountability Through Vertically Integrated Civil Society Policy Monitoring and Advocacy," IDS Working Paper, Dec. 2016
• [with Joy Aceron] "Doing Accountability Differently: A Proposal for the Vertical Integration of Civil Society Monitoring and Advocacy," U4 Issue Paper, No. 4, Bergen: Chr Michelsen Institute, 2016
• [co-authored with Tiago Peixoto] "When Does ICT-Enabled Citizen Voice Lead to Governmental Responsiveness?" 2016 World Development Report Background Paper, January 2016 (also published, abridged, in IDS Bulletin, 47(1) January 2016)
• "Social Accountability: What Does the Evidence Really Say?," World Development, No. 72, August, 2015
• "Social Accountability: What Does the Evidence Really Say?," GPSA Working Paper, No. 1, Sept. 2014 (Global Partnership for Social Accountability - also in Arabic, Spanish and French translations)
• Co-editor, Oaxacalifornian Reporting Team, Voices of Indigenous Oaxacan Youth in the Central Valley: Creating Our Sense of Belonging in California, UC Center for Collaborative Research for an Equitable California, 2013.
• Co-editor, Subsidizing Inequality: Mexican Corn Policy Since NAFTA, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars/CIDE/UC Santa Cruz, 2010.
• Co-editor, Context Matters: Latino Civic Engagement in Nine U.S. Cities, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 2010.
• Co-author, “Rural Democratization in Mexico’s Deep South: Grassroots Right-to-Know Campaigns in Guerrero,” Journal of Peasant Studies, 36(2), 2009.
• Co-author, “Migrant Organization and Hometown Impacts in Rural Mexico,” Journal of Agrarian Change, 8(2-3), May, 2008.
• Accountability Politics: Power and Voice in Rural Mexico, Oxford University Press, 2007.
• Co-editor, Mexico’s Right-to-Know Reforms: Civil Society Perspectives, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars/Fundar, 2007.