Professor Ezequiel González Ocantos and Viviana Baraybar Hidalgo win awards for co-authored book on criminalization
The Department’s Professor of Comparative & Judicial Politics Ezequiel González Ocantos and Postdoctoral Prize Research Fellow in Politics Viviana Baraybar Hidalgo have won two top awards for their co-authored book Prosecutors, Voters, and the Criminalisation of Corruption in Latin America.
The book – which analyses the causes and impact of corruption prosecutions – won the Charles H Levine Memorial Book Prize from the International Political Science Association.
According to the committee,
“Prosecutors, Voters, and the Criminalisation of Corruption in Latin America is a tour de force that impresses with its dynamic perspective on structural and contingent aspects of anti-corruption crusades, systematic comparisons across countries, and skillful combination of various methods and data.”
It also achieved an Honourable Mention for the 2024 Donna Lee Van Cott Best Book Award, given each year by the Latin American Studies Association’s Political Institutions Section.
In the book, Professor Ocantos and Viviana explore the nature and dynamics of anti-corruption investigations in five Latin American nations in what is the first comparative, multimethod study of public reactions to major anti-corruption efforts
Professor Gonzalez-Ocantos said:
"I really enjoyed writing this book, among other things, because I got to collaborate with my brilliant former student and now Postdoctoral Prize Research Fellow, Viviana Baraybar. We are delighted that two different award committees chose to recognise our work.”
Viviana commented:
“It was an honour to work with such amazing people on this project. It was an extremely enriching experience, and I was specially honoured to have worked with my former supervisor Ezequiel. We are all extremely happy for the recognition the book is getting.”
