Guillermo Toral

Faculty Affiliate

Guillermo is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Vanderbilt University. He is Faculty Affiliate at MIT GOV/LAB and holds a PhD in Political Science from MIT. His research focuses on relationships among state actors (politicians, bureaucrats, and anti-corruption agents) and how they shape public service delivery and human development. His work uses big administrative datasets, surveys, and extensive qualitative fieldwork to shed light on dynamics of within-government accountability. Guillermo is writing a book on “The political logics of patronage,” or the different ways in which local politicians in Brazil use public employment, and what those strategies mean for the quality of public services like education and healthcare. As part of that project and with MIT GOV/LAB support, he implemented surveys of bureaucrats and politicians, as well as a field experiment in partnership with the State Audit Court of Rio Grande do Norte.