Kellogg PhD Fellow Victor Hernández-Huerta has been named the winner of the 2015 International IDEA/EIP Award for his paper "Disputed Elections in Presidential Democracies: Challenging Electoral Outcomes as a Negotiation Strategy."

The award is presented to the author of the best graduate student paper on strategic interventions to strengthen electoral integrity, with an emphasis on the works potential significance—both theoretical and policymaking—to the study of some aspect of the election cycle.

The competition, now in its second year, is sponsored by International IDEA and the Electoral Integrity Project (EIP). The award committee, which included Annette Fath-Lihic (International IDEA), Ferran Martínez I Coma (University of Sydney), and Alessandro Nai (University of Geneva/University of Sydney), noted that the paper represented a significant contribution to scholarships understanding of electoral integrity in elections in authoritarian states.

A PhD candidate in political science, Hernández-Huerta studies institutions, elections and electoral justice, with a regional specialization on Latin America and a current focus on post-election disputes in democracies. His dissertation explores the behavior of losing candidates and parties. Committee: Faculty Fellows Scott Mainwaring (chair), Guillermo Trejo, and Michael Coppedge.

Hernández-Huertas paper has been published as part of the International IDEA and Electoral Integrity Project working paper series (link above). In addition, he received funding to present the paper at the workshop "What Works? Strengthening Electoral Integrity." Sponsored by EIP, International IDEA, and the Elections, Public Opinion, and Voting Behavior organized section (EPOVB), the pre-APSA workshop will be held on September 2, 2015, in San Francisco.