Sebastián Raphael Priego

I am a DPhil candidate in Politics at the University of Oxford. My research interests include comparative politics, civil–military relations, and political institutions, with a regional focus on Latin America. My research examines the coexistence of democratic politics and militarization across the region’s democratic trajectories. I use a range of qualitative and quantitative methods, including extensive fieldwork, elite interviews, process tracing, qualitative causal inference, and survey experiments.

In my dissertation, State Capacity by Other Means? The Politics of Incumbent-Led Militarization in Latin America, I examine why and how democratically elected incumbents expand military participation in domestic governance in Latin America, with particular attention to Mexico and Brazil. I study how democratic institutions shape presidents’ authority to use the armed forces domestically, the conditions under which they choose to exercise that authority across different policy domains, and the consequences for civilian institutions, state capacity, and military power.

The dissertation draws on two years of fieldwork in Mexico and Brazil and more than 100 interviews with former presidents, cabinet ministers, senior military officers, legislators, civil servants, and civil-society leaders. This evidence allows me to reconstruct the decisions, negotiations, and institutional processes through which incumbent-led militarization develops.

My research has been supported by the Leverhulme Trust, CONAHCYT, the Institute for Humane Studies, and Oxford’s Cyril Foster and Norman Chester Funds. In 2026, I was selected as one of 12 participants from more than 250 applicants for the Institute for Qualitative and Multi-Method Research (IQMR) at Syracuse University. I have presented my research at the American Political Science Association and the Latin American Studies Association and have held research affiliations with CIDE in Mexico and Fundação Getúlio Vargas in Brazil. In 2027, I will be a Visiting Graduate Student at the Center for US-Mexican Studies (USMEX) at the University of California, San Diego.

Before beginning the DPhil, I completed an MSc in Latin American Studies at St Antony’s College, Oxford, and studied Political Science and International Relations at Leiden University College and the Australian National University. Prior to my doctoral studies, I served as an Area Director at the Mexican Foreign Ministry.