James W. McGuire specializes in comparative politics, focusing on democracy, social welfare policies, and public health in Latin America and East Asia.

James W. McGuire received a BA from Swarthmore and a PhD in political science from the University of California, Berkeley. His research and teaching focuses on democracy, social welfare policies, and public health, especially in Latin America and East Asia. McGuire is a member of Wesleyan’s Latin American Studies program, a recipient of the Binswanger Prize for Excellence in Teaching, and the author of three books. Peronism without Perón (Stanford, 1997) related the Peronist movement’s organizational structure to Argentina’s late 20th century political instability. Wealth, Health, and Democracy in East Asia and Latin America (Cambridge, 2010) showed how democracy and basic health service provision help to explain why some countries do better than others at lowering infant mortality. It won the 2011 Stein Rokkan Prize for Comparative Social Science Research. Democracy and Population Health (Cambridge, 2020) explored how democracy has affected population health and how population health has affected democracy. McGuire’s most recent publications are “The Trump Vote and Covid-19 Vaccination Across US States, US Counties, and Connecticut Towns” (Regional and Federal Studies, 2023) and “Autocratization and Health Outcomes,” Routledge Handbook of Autocratization (in press).