Congratulations to former PhD Fellow Ezequiel González Ocantos (PhD '12) and former Dissertation Year Fellow Nara Pavão (PhD '15) whose co-authored book Prosecutors, Voters, and the Criminalisation of Corruption in Latin America (Cambridge University Press, 2023) won the Charles Levine Memorial Book Prize and received an honorable mention from the Donna Lee Van Cott Best Book Award committee. The book's other coauthors are Paula Muñoz and Viviana Baraybar.
The Charles Levine Memorial Book Prize is awarded every year by the International Political Science Association () to a book that makes a contribution of considerable theoretical or practical significance to public policy and administration, takes an explicitly comparative perspective and is written in an accessible style. It is named in honor of Charles H. Levine, who was an outstanding scholar in the fields of public policy and administration.
The Donna Lee Van Cott Best Book Award is presented by the Political Institutions section of the Latin American Studies Association, recognizing books that make significant contributions in the area of political institutions.
The book centers on Lava Jato, a transnational bribery case that started in Brazil and spread throughout Latin America, upending elections and collapsing governments. The book explores why the investigation gain momentum in some countries but not others, tracing reforms that enhanced prosecutors' capacity to combat white-collar crime and showing that Lava Jato became a full-blown anti-corruption crusade. For some, prosecutors' unconventional methods were necessary and justified. Others saw dangerous affronts to due process and democracy. Given these controversies, the book looks at voter reactions and asks whether prosecutors can trigger hope or if aggressive prosecution erodes the tacit consensus around the merits of anti-corruption. Prosecutors, Voters and The Criminalization of Corruption in Latin America is a study of the impact of accountability through criminalization, one that dissects the drivers and dilemmas of resolute transparency efforts.
González Ocantos is professor of comparative and judicial politics in the Department of Politics and International Relations and a professorial fellow of Nuffield College at Oxford University. His research is in the field of comparative judicial politics, with a particular interest in the determinants of judicial and prosecutorial behavior in high-stakes cases of macro-criminality, including human rights violations and grand corruption.
Pavao is associate professor in the Political Science Department at the Federal University of Pernambuco in Recife, Brazil. Her research centers on the intersections of political behavior, public opinion, and comparative politics. It explores how individuals engage with information about the political world, develop perspectives on pertinent issues, and ultimately navigate decision-making processes within politics.