José Fernández Albertos

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José Fernández-Albertos holds a Ph.D in Political Science from Harvard Univeristy (2007), and is MA (2002) and doctor-member (2007) from the Center for Advanced Research in the Social Sciences of the Juan March Institute. He holds a BA in Political Science and Administration from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid.

His doctoral dissertation, entitled “Domestic Institutions and Exchange Rate Politics in the Open Economy”, analyzes the institutional determinants of the relationship between economic openness and political preferences for different exchange rate regimes.

He currently conducts research in the intersection of the fields of international and comparative political economy and comparative politics, and is currently leading a project on policy substitution, which tries to understand the choices of governments when different policy alternatives can achieve the same objectives.

He has been research fellow at Harvard’s Center for International Development and Center for Basic Research in the Social Sciences, and visiting fellow at the Department of Political Studies at the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (CIDE) in Mexico City.

From 2007 to 2009 he was assistant professor at the Institut Barcelona d’Estudis Internacionals (IBEI), where he taught courses on International Political Economy, Political Economy of Development, and Research Methods for Social Sciences, at the IBEI’s MA in International Relations. He has been thesis advisor at the IBEI, at the Catalan Open University (UOC), and at the Postgraduate Diploma on Political Science and Constitutional Law at the Centro de Estudios Políticos y Constitucionales.

He has worked as external consultant for the World Bank’s World Development Report (2006), and as a researcher in the project “Markets, the State and the dynamics of inequality: how to advance inclusive growth”, funded by United Nations Development Program (UNDP) for Latin America. From 2009 he is principal researcher of the project “Understanding Policy Substitution”, funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (VI National Plan for Fundamental Research, CSO2009-12620).

Parts of his work have been presented at the Annual Meetings of the American Political Science Association, the Midwest Political Science Association, the International Political Economy Society, and the European Consortium for Political Research’s Joint Sessions and General Conferences, among others.

His paper “Why is There No Compensation? Trade Liberalization, Exchange Rate Regimes and Public Spending in Latin America” was awarded with the Rudolf Wildenmann prize to the best paper presented at the Joint Sessions of the European Consortium for Political Research, and his article “Dividir lo indivisible. Soberanía popular y separación de poderes en James Madison”, published by Revista de Estudios Políticos, was selected as finalist of the Journal of American History David Thelen Award, given by the Organization of American Historians to the best paper on U.S. history not written in English.

He has served as reviewer for International Studies Quarterly, British Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, Review of International Political Economy, Revista de Estudios Políticos, Revista Internacional de Sociología, and Revista Española de Ciencia Política. He is a member of the Editorial Board of the “Opiniones y Actitudes” series of the Spanish Center for Sociological Research (CIS), and participales as external methodological advisor for the Real Instituto Elcano in the elaboration of the “Elcano Index” of global presence.

Recent Selected Publications:



1. 2010. “Doomed to Disagree? Divided Government, Party-Voter Discipline, and Policy Gridlock” (with Víctor Lapuente Giné), Party Politics, forthcoming.

2. 2010. Democracia, instituciones y política económica. Una introducción a la economía política (with Dulce Manzano), Madrid: Alianza Editorial, forthcoming.

3. 2008. “Business and Labor Market Policies” CEACS, Instituto Juan March Working Paper 2008/237.

4. 2006. “Does Internationalization Blur Responsibility? Economic Voting and Economic Openness in 15 European Countries”, West European Politics, 29(1): 28-46.

5. 2005. “La opinión en la UE-15 sobre la ampliación” (with Ignacio Sánchez-Cuenca), Papeles de Economía Española, 105: 42-52.

6. 2005. “Dividir lo indivisible. Soberanía popular y separación de poderes en James Madison”, Revista de Estudios Políticos, 128: 293-316.

7. 2002. “Votar en Dos Dimensiones: El Peso del Nacionalismo y la Ideología en el Comportamiento Electoral Vasco, 1993-2001”, Revista Española de Ciencia Política, 6: 153- 181.