Katherine Bersch

I am a doctoral candidate in the Department of Government of the University of Texas at Austin. My fields of study are comparative politics and methodology, with a regional emphasis on Latin America. I am conducting research on my doctoral dissertation which focuses on state reforms, party competition, and accountability. Specifically, my research focuses on corruption in public contracts. Given that "good governance laws" are adopted, under what political conditions are they translated into operational rules, executed, and enforced? Under what political conditions does the modernization of state institutions advance effective governance? In order to answer these and other related research questions, I analyze the cases of Argentina and Brazil at the national level. I compliment this study with a subnational analysis of public contracting reforms. My field research is funded by a Boren Fellowship.