Guillermo Toral

Guillermo Toral is Assistant Professor of Political Science at in the School of Politics, Economics & Global Affairs at IE University, and a Faculty Affiliate at MIT GOV/LAB. He obtained his PhD from MIT in 2020, and spent two years as tenure-track Assistant Professor at Vanderbilt University before joining IE in 2022. Prior to joining MIT, he spent several years working on education policy and human development programs at the World Bank in Washington DC and across Latin America.

Guillermo works in the fields of comparative politics and political economy, with a regional focus on Latin America and Southern Europe, and a substantive focus on issues of development, governance, and corruption.  His research agenda centers on relationships among state actors (politicians, bureaucrats, and anti-corruption agents) and how they shape public service delivery and human development.

In his work, Guillermo uses big administrative datasets, surveys, and extensive qualitative fieldwork to shed light on dynamics of government accountability and public service delivery. He is writing a book on the political uses of public employment, based on his dissertation which won the American Political Science Association’s Harold D. Lasswell Award for the best dissertation in the field of public policy. Some of his work has been published or is forthcoming in the American Journal of Political Science and the Journal of Politics.

ACADEMIC BACKGROUND

• PhD in Political Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA, 2020

• MPhil in Comparative Government, University of Oxford, UK, 2011

• Licenciatura in Political Science and Public Administration, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain, 2009

ACADEMIC EXPERIENCE

• Assistant Professor (tenure track), IE University, 2022 – Present

• Assistant Professor (tenure track), Vanderbilt University, 2020 – 2022

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

• Consultant, World Bank, 2014

• Junior Professional Associate, World Bank, 2011-2013

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

• Toral, G. (2022). “How Patronage Delivers: Political Appointments, Bureaucratic Accountability, and Service Delivery in Brazil.” American Journal of Political Science

• Boas, T., Hidalgo, D., Toral, G. (2021). “Competence versus Priorities: Negative Electoral Responses to Education Quality in Brazil.” Journal of Politics, Vol. 83.4: 1417 – 1431