People at ILR

Candelaria Garay is an associate professor in the Department of Global Labor and Work at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations. Her research interests include social policy and redistribution, labor and social movements, and environmental and health policy. Her research has appeared in journals such as Comparative Political Studies, Comparative Politics, Politics & Society, Studies in Comparative International Development, and World Development. In her book, "Social Policy Expansion in Latin America" (Cambridge University Press, 2016), she characterizes and explains the expansion and cross-country variation in social policy programs (income transfers, pensions and health care services) for populations historically excluded from social protection in Latin America. The book received the 2017 Robert A. Dahl Award of the American Political Science Association and an honorable mention for the 2018 Bryce Wood Book Award of the Latin American Studies Association. Garay's second book project titled Labor Coalitions in Unequal Societies, will explain why coalitions between labor unions and movements of informal-sector, rural and/or unemployed workers have formed in some developing countries but not others. In another book project, she studies social policy expansion in Latin America and other regions of the Global South. Before coming to Cornell University, Candelaria was an associate professor at Universidad Torcuato Di Tella in Argentina and an associate and assistant professor at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.

• Ph.D., Political Science (University of California, Berkeley)
• B.A., Sociology (Universidad de Buenos Aires)

Publications

“Social Movements and Policy Entrenchment” (with Santiago Anria and Jessica Rich), Comparative Politics (forthcoming).

“Permissive Regulations and Forest Protection,” Studies in Comparative International Development, special issue on Local Environmental Governance, edited by Moises Arce and Maiah Jaskoski (forthcoming).

“Redefining Labor Organizing in Latin America” in Centeno, Miguel and Agustín Ferraro (eds.), State and Nation Making in Latin America and Spain: The Neoliberal State and Beyond (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2023).

“Argentina 2022: Desafíos Profundos y Continuidad Política” (with Emilia Simison) Revista de Ciencia Política 43 No 2 (August 2023).
“When Mayors Deliver: Political Alignment and Well-being” (with Emilia Simison), Studies in Comparative International Development 57 (September 2022): 303–336.

“Including Outsiders in Latin America” in Kapiszewski, Diana, Steven Levitsky, and Deborah Yashar (eds.), The Inclusionary Turn: Democracy and Citizenship in Latin America (New York: Cambridge University Press 2021).

“Incentives for Organizational Participation: A Recruitment Experiment in Mexico” (with Brian Palmer-Rubin and Mathias Poertner), Comparative Political Studies 54, No 1 (January 2021): 110-143.

“Organizational and Partisan Brokerage of Social Benefits: Evidence of Social Policy Linkages in Mexico” (with Brian Palmer-Rubin & Mathias Poertner) World Development 136 (Dec 2020).

“The Multilevel Politics of Enforcement: Environmental Institutions in Argentina” (with Belén Fernández-Milmanda), Politics & Society 48, No 1 (March 2020): 3-26.

“A Multilevel Approach to Enforcement: Forest Protection in the Argentine Chaco” (with Belén Fernández-Milmanda), Brinks, Daniel, Steven Levitsky & Victoria Murillo (eds.), Understanding Weak Institutions: Lessons from Latin America (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2020).

“Local Health Care Provision as a Territorial Power-Building Strategy: Non-Aligned Mayors in Argentina” (with María Marta Maroto), Comparative Politics 52, No 1 (October 2019): 105-125.

“Subnational Variation in Forest Protection in the Argentine Chaco” (with Belén Fernández-Milmanda), World Development 118 (June 2019): 79-90.

“Redistribution under the Right in Latin America: Electoral Competition and Organized Actors in Policymaking” (with Tasha Fairfield), Comparative Political Studies 50, No 14 (December 2017): 1871-1906.

“Los movimientos de desocupados en el Conurbano: Protesta, política social y política partidaria” in Zarazaga, Rodrigo and Lucas Ronconi (eds.), Conurbano infinito (Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI, 2017).

“Argentina’s Left Populism in Comparative Perspective” (with Sebastian Etchemendy) in Levitsky, Steven and Kenneth Roberts (eds.), The Resurgence of the Latin American Left (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011).

“Associational Linkages to Labor Unions and Political Parties” in Collier, Ruth Berins and Samuel Handlin (eds.), Reorganizing Popular Politics: Participation and the New Interest Regime in Latin America (Pennsylvania: Penn State University Press, 2009).

“Social Policy and Collective Action: Unemployed Workers, Community Associations and Protest in Argentina,” Politics & Society 35, No 2 (June 2007): 301-328.