Candelaria Garay

This profile was current as of 2021, when she was part of the on-campus Kellogg community.

Candelaria Garay is a Senior Fellow at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, where she was a faculty member between 2011 and 2020.

Garay’s first book, Social Policy Expansion in Latin America (Cambridge University Press, 2016), examines the recent expansion and cross-country variation in social policy programs such as income transfers, pensions, and health-care services to populations historically excluded from social protection in Latin America. The book received the 2017 Robert A. Dahl Award of the American Political Science Association and an honorable mention for the 2018 Bryce Wood Book Award of the Latin American Studies Association.

While at the Kellogg Institute, Garay will finish a second book, Labor Coalitions in Unequal Democracies, under advance contract with Cambridge University Press, that explains why coalitions between labor unions and social movements of informal and/or rural workers have formed in some developing countries and not in others. She explores how these coalitions are established and analyzes their connections with political parties.

Garay’s other research projects address the implementation of environmental legislation, disparities in local health care services, and the interaction of political parties and social organizations in new democracies. She received an MA and PhD in political science from the University of California, Berkeley.