Profile

James W. McGuire, Professor in the Department of Government at Wesleyan University, received his BA from Swarthmore and his PhD in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley. He specializes in comparative politics, focusing on democracy, social welfare policies, and public health in Latin America and East Asia. He is a core faculty member of Wesleyan’s Latin American Studies Program and is a recipient of Wesleyan’s Binswanger Prize for Excellence in Teaching.

McGuire is the author of Peronism without Perón (Stanford, 1997) and of articles and chapters on Argentine politics and labor unions;  social welfare policies; transitions from authoritarianism; and economic growth, income inequality, and mortality decline, particularly in East Asia and Latin America. Wealth, Health, and Democracy in East Asia and Latin America (Cambridge, 2010) explores why some countries do better than others at raising life expectancy and reducing infant mortality. It was named a Choice Outstanding Academic Title and won the Stein Rokkan Prize for Comparative Social Science Research. Democracy and Population Health (Cambridge, 2020) reviews the rise of scholarly interest in the association between the two phenomena, evaluates alternative indicators of democracy and of population health, assesses how particular dimensions of democracy have affected population health, and explores how population health has affected democracy. McGuire’s other publications are listed on his Google Scholar page.