My colleagues and friends at Rice have been a fantastic source of inspiration.
They all helped me tremendously during my hardest times at the beginning, making the
transition to a new life much healthier. They also heard hundreds of hours of speeches
about strange countries in Latin America and amazing processes of institutional reform
in their well-known Argentine province of Chaco. Victor Marin, David GoodmanrCarlos
Cuellar, Akitaka "Samurai" Matsuo, Greg Vonnahme, Tiffany Bames, and Jonathan
Robinson are some of the many helpful colleagues that can't be absent in the list of
gratitude. Within the former list, Tiffany deserves special credit for the edition of this
WorkzWithoutwhichitwouldhavelookedlikeaSpanglishmanifesto.
My Argentine friends in academia have enormously helped me in many different
ways. Julieta Suarez Cao deserves a particular paragraph, for her very early trust,
encouragement and support. Her careful reading of this thesis' early drafts had me do
the right adjustments in the right moment. Gracias amiga! Also, the interaction with
Juan Negri Malbran, Lucas Gonzalez, German Lodola, Agustina Giraudy, Juan Olmeda
and Carlos Gervasoni, among others, enriched my work substantively. To all of them,
my most sincere thanks and my recognition to their high academic standards. A number
of really nice senior colleagues in the subfield have also contributed to my professional
development. Eduardo Aleman, Tim Hellwig, Edward Gibson, Misha Taylor-Robinson,
Joy Langston, Anibal Perez Linan, Tulia Falleti, Sebastian Saiegh, Allyson Benton,
Victoria Murillo and Ozge Kemahlioglu offered me varying kinds of opportunities,
advices, comments, hints and suggestions that removed many drawbacks from my way.
I also greatly enjoyed the comments and criticisms given by the audiences of the
Universities of Houston, New Mexico, Notre Dame, Texas A&M, Universidad Torcuato
Di Telia and Universidad de San Andres. I am particularly thankful to Scott Mainwaring
for his critical approach to the core of my arguments, and also for his predisposition to
accept my disagreement with some of his points.
My friends and mentors in the Argentine academia must also be highlighted.
Very especially, Miguel De Luca and Marcelo Escolar played a substantive role during
my first steps as a researcher. Miguel gave me the first opportunities for teaching and
introduced me to the world of empirical approaches to Argentine politics. His obsessive
devotion to the empirical verification of conventional statements marked me for the rest