Former Phd Fellow and Dissertation Year Fellow Laura Gamboa (Phd '16) has won the 2022 Donna Lee Van Cott Award for her book Resisting Backsliding: Opposition Strategies against the Erosion of Democracy (Cambridge University Press, 2022).
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.
Resisting Backsliding looks at how, in the past two decades, democratically elected executives across the world have used their popularity to push for legislation that, over time, destroys systems of checks and balances, hinders free and fair elections, and undermines political rights and civil liberties. Gamboa Gutierrez explores why, in these situations, some countries become competitive authoritarian regimes while others resist democratic backsliding, comparing as case studies Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and Alvaro Uribe in Colombia.
The award citation calls the book "theoretically insightful and empirically rich," stating further, "Gamboa’s book uses a masterful research design that exemplifies the best use of mixed methods for testing powerful ideas with novel quantitative and qualitative data. "
Gamboa is an assistant professor at the University of Utah whose research focuses on institutions, regimes, and regime change in Latin America.