My research focuses on corruption, anti-corruption and state formation in Venezuela, 1908-1948. It begins with the story of how officials in the government of Juan Vicente Gomez (1908-1935) used public authority to pursue private profit by dealing in cattle, liquor and oil, and ends with an analysis of corruption trials in the mid-1940s. In broad terms, I'm interested in the changing relationship between the state and Venezuelan society during the 20th century.

Select Publications

Book:  A Coffee Frontier: Land, Society and Politics in Duaca Venezuela, 1830-1936 (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997).

Refereed Articles:

"Public Opinion and Modernity in Venezuela’s Anti-Corruption Trials, 1945-1948," Journal of Latin American Studies, vol. 51 no. 1 (2019): 59-83.

“Venezuelan Presidents’ Discretionary Payments to Allies and Followers: Neopatrimonialism and Gray Corruption, 1919-1948,” Südost-Forschungen, vol. 77 (2018): 95-120.

"Tax Farming, Liquor and the Quest for Fiscal Modernity in Venezuela, 1908-1935," Hispanic American Historical Review vol. 94 no. 2 (2014): 237-267.

"Political Transition in an Age of Extremes: Venezuela in the 1930s," in Paulo Drinot and Alan Knight eds., The Great Depression in Latin America (Durham: Duke University Press 2014) 160-187.

"Cattle, Corruption and State Formation in Venezuela during the Regime of Juan Vicente Gomez, 1908-1935,"  Latin American Research Review vol. 38 no. 2 (2003): 9-33.

"The Vestey Cattle Enterprise and the Regime of Juan Vicente Gomez, 1908-1935," Journal of Latin American Studies vol. 35 (2003): 89-115.