Francisco Garfias Looks to the Past for Insights into How Governments Take Shape

As he peers into the past, Francisco Garfias counts upon the meticulous record-keeping of colonial Spain during the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries to shine a light so he can better understand the present and anticipate the future. “The way that Spanish authorities governed their colonies, particularly in what’s now Mexico, created a lot of records,” said Garfias, who joined the Department of Political Science as an associate professor. “That highly bureaucratized approach, as a side product, allows researchers like myself to understand a bit more about this period than we otherwise would.” 

Garfias has built his scholarship around seeking insights from the tangible records of history, with a particular focus on learning lessons about the political economy of development, especially in Latin America. His early experiences growing up in Mexico shaped his interest in the intersection of economics and political science. He observed the inequalities in his community and witnessed the Zapatista movement in southern Mexico in the mid-1990s, which coincided with increased democratization and reforms to land rights.  

While these modern experiences sparked his interest in political economy, Garfias’ research spans both present and past, some dating back as far as 400 years. As he immersed himself in the field, his interests went beyond those courses that were solely based on theory. “Once I started to engage with actual evidence from the real world, to put a mirror to those theories and really examine them, that was what really excited me about a career in research,” he said. “I’m understanding something new about this period, but also about the big questions that I think were very important back then and are still important today.” 

Garfias has found the colonial period in Mexico to be a fertile period to test theories about state formation and gain a greater understanding of how state institutions develop. His research has expanded geographically and into other time periods, increasingly triangulating around the broader processes of state building. He has examined property taxation practices in Brazil and exploring the promotion of business formalization in Colombia. He’s currently looking at the factors that can influence tax compliance to better understand why people pay taxes and how it relates to the ability of the government to provide services and public goods.  

“I’ve carried a parallel agenda that focuses on more contemporary issues but is also related to state building and the day-to-day tasks of the state, like taxation, that are central to state institutions,” he said. “I try to focus on theoretical mechanisms that shaped the development of state institutions in the past, but that one can see operating in similar ways both across societies and historical periods, including today.” 

As a teacher, Garfias motivates students by helping them see the connections between the academic material they are learning and how it plays out in the real world. This is drawn in part from the time he spent teaching remedial mathematics to high school students, when motivation was key, and the realization that even students at higher levels of education may need assistance in understanding the relevance of what they are learning. “I see it as part of my job to offer a case for ‘why,’” he said. 

Garfias is thrilled to join a department that has first-rate faculty and a strong reputation, particularly in the study of political economy. Department Chair Pablo Baramendi said that the department is in the middle of a transition across all its fields, and the addition of Garfias, along with fellow new faculty members Allison Anoll and Jiawei Fu, is a major step forward to secure generational replacement and intellectual continuity in core areas of strength. 

"Together they are an exceptionally talented group of scholars that will make us better and raise our profile in the years to come," Baramendi said. "Francisco Garfias brings fresh energy into our core focus on political institutions and political economy with a regional specialization in Latin America, an area in which we have traditionally had significant strength. His arrival solidifies Duke’s presence in a rising branch in the discipline — historical political economy."