Columbia SIPA Welcomes Cesar Zucco to Faculty

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Columbia SIPA is pleased to announce the appointment of Cesar Zucco as the Lemann Family Foundation Professor of Brazilian Studies and professor of international and public affairs. Zucco is a renowned scholar of comparative politics, whose research focuses on voting behavior, ideology, and the political economy of Latin America. 

Zucco comes to SIPA with a joint appointment with Columbia’s Department of Political Science. He previously served as a professor of politics and public policy at FGV/EBAPE (Escola Brasileira de Administração Pública e de Empresas/The Brazilian School of Public and Business Administration) in Rio de Janeiro, and before that as an assistant professor at Rutgers University. He has held visiting appointments at Nuffield College, Princeton University, Yale University, and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

His academic papers have been published in leading political science and area studies journals, and he is also the coauthor of two well-reviewed books published by Cambridge University Press: The Volatility Curse (2020), which examines how economic volatility affects democratic accountability; and Partisans, Antipartisans, and Nonpartisans (2018), which analyzes the development and political consequences of partisanship and antipartisanship in Brazil. 

“I am excited to join the SIPA faculty and to bring my research on comparative politics and public policy in Latin America to the classroom,” said Zucco. “With all the change and uncertainty in the Western Hemisphere, this is a perfect time to be teaching younger generations about the region's current and past political dynamics and how it has dealt with the socioeconomic challenges it faces.”

Zucco is teaching the course, Inequality, Poverty, and Politics, which offers a theoretical and empirical overview of policies addressing poverty and inequality in the developing world, with a focus on Brazil. 

“It’s hard to think of a scholar whose work is more relevant to understanding political dynamics in the Western Hemisphere,” said SIPA Dean Keren Yarhi-Milo. “We are so lucky to have Cesar here at SIPA. I know our students will benefit immensely from his unique perspective and expertise on Latin American politics.”