Martín Gou is a PhD candidate in political science at Vanderbilt University specializing in comparative political behavior, with a regional focus on Latin America. His dissertation, “Who Draws the Line? The Interaction Between Horizontal and Vertical Accountability in Democratic Backsliding”, investigates how citizens recognize democratic violations and under what conditions institutional actions trigger public responses. The project combines focus groups, survey experiments, and cross-national comparisons to develop a theory of democratic norm enforcement. As part of this work, Gou will use support from the Fund for Latino Scholarship to conduct structured focus groups in Mexico. These sessions will explore how citizens define democracy, evaluate institutional legitimacy, and interpret ambiguous government actions, providing a crucial foundation for subsequent experimental chapters. Before beginning graduate study, Gou worked in Mexico for public institutions directly engaged in accountability processes, including the National Electoral Institute and the National Anticorruption System. A first-generation student born in Argentina and raised in Mexico, he brings both scholarly and lived experience to the study of democracy and accountability. His long-term commitment is to advance rigorous research that is attentive to citizen perspectives and to contribute to public scholarship in Latin America.
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He’s great human being, I’m very proud of him.