MAGGIE SHUM
I received my PhD in Political Science at the University of Notre Dame, specializing in comparative politics with a regional focus in Latin America and Brazil. I am specifically interested in participatory policies, policy diffusion, and political party organizations.
My dissertation “The Politics of Policy Diffusion: Party Organization Versus Individual Motivations in the Diffusion of Participatory Budgeting in Brazil” focuses how participatory budgeting (PB) – a program that is heavily associated with the Workers’ Party (PT) and the leftist values it embraces – managed to spread across Brazil, and adopted by politicians from both the left and the right. I constitute a theory of diffusion that takes into account the various pathways in which diffusion can occur with the Brazilian experience of PB. I depart from the policy diffusion literature that predominately focuses on individual-driven motivations to explain diffusion. Instead, I emphasize the role of institutional settings, in particular party organizations, in conditioning the type and scope of policy diffusion.
My dissertation “The Politics of Policy Diffusion: Party Organization Versus Individual Motivations in the Diffusion of Participatory Budgeting in Brazil” focuses how participatory budgeting (PB) – a program that is heavily associated with the Workers’ Party (PT) and the leftist values it embraces – managed to spread across Brazil, and adopted by politicians from both the left and the right. I constitute a theory of diffusion that takes into account the various pathways in which diffusion can occur with the Brazilian experience of PB. I depart from the policy diffusion literature that predominately focuses on individual-driven motivations to explain diffusion. Instead, I emphasize the role of institutional settings, in particular party organizations, in conditioning the type and scope of policy diffusion.
My broad research interests include the relation between social movement and measurement of democracy. Co-authoring with Omar Coronel (University of Notre Dame), we analyze how the level of political protest is related to party system institutionalization, as well as different dimensions of democracy using data from the Variety of Democracy (V-Dem) in Latin America.
I earned my B.A. in Political Science and Communication at Michigan State University (MSU) in 2008. I then worked as a research intern at the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) from 2008 to 2009. I continued my academic career at New York University (NYU) and obtained my M.A in Politics in 2011. Prior to coming to Notre Dame, I interned at Freedom House and worked on several reports which include: Freedom in the World (Hong Kong, China and Tibet), Freedom in the Net (China), and the China Media Bulletin.
I earned my B.A. in Political Science and Communication at Michigan State University (MSU) in 2008. I then worked as a research intern at the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) from 2008 to 2009. I continued my academic career at New York University (NYU) and obtained my M.A in Politics in 2011. Prior to coming to Notre Dame, I interned at Freedom House and worked on several reports which include: Freedom in the World (Hong Kong, China and Tibet), Freedom in the Net (China), and the China Media Bulletin.