Dr Allyson Benton

Overview

Dr. Benton is a Senior Lecturer in International Political Economy in the Department of International Politics at City, University of London. She is also currently serving as Deputy Head of Department. A native of Southern California, she received a BA in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley and a PhD in Political Science from the University of California, Los Angeles. Before joining City, Dr. Benton was a member of the Department of Political Studies at the Center for Research and Teaching in Economics (CIDE) in Mexico City. She has also been a visiting professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of São Paulo, Brazil and a visiting scholar in the Institute of Latin American Studies at the German Institute of Global and Area Studies in Hamburg, Germany.

Qualifications

1. PhD, University of California, Los Angeles, United States
2. MA, University of California, Los Angeles, United States
3. BA, University of California, Berkeley, United States

Employment

1. Full Professor, Center for Research and Teaching in Economics (CIDE), Aug 2001 – Sep 2019

Languages

English (can read, write, speak, understand spoken and peer review), Portuguese (can read and peer review) and Spanish - Latin American (can read, write, speak, understand spoken and peer review).

Expertise

Geographic Areas

• Americas - Central
• Americas - Latin
• Americas - North
• Americas - South

Research in International Political Economy

Dr. Benton's international political economy research examines the impact of economic policy statements on financial markets. In a forthcoming article, “Does @theRealDonaldTrump Really Affect Financial Markets?” (American Journal of Political Science), Dr. Benton and her coauthor Dr. Andrew Philips (University of Colorado, Boulder) examine the impact of economic policy statements made by US President Donald J. Trump (via the microblogging site Twitter) on financial markets. Research on politics and financial markets suggests that Trump’s economic policy “tweets” should not matter to markets, because each merely restates his well-known policy views. In contrast, Dr. Benton and Dr. Philips argue that Trump's policy tweets should affect financial markets because they clarify his level of commitment to his economic policy goals. They test this argument using data on Trump's Mexico-related policy tweets and the US dollar/Mexican peso exchange rate. They find that Trump's Mexico-related tweets raised US dollar/Mexican peso exchange rate volatility both when his views were first becoming known, as well as thereafter, in line with our expectations. This research contributes to our understanding about the influence of social media on financial markets.

Research in Comparative Political Economy

Dr. Benton's comparative political economy research examines political budget cycles, especially how political ambition affects subnational fiscal policy choice. She examines the logic behind what I call “subnational partisan fiscal policy interdependence.” Dr. Benton argues that political ambition drives copartisan subnational leaders to compete with one another to appeal to higher-level party leaders’ fiscal policy preferences, in their pursuit of building successful political careers. Political careerism thus produces complex partisan networks of policy interdependence across space and time. In a first paper (Journal of Politics 2019), Dr. Benton explains how political ambition drives vertical partisan fiscal policy interdependence. In a second paper (being prepared for submission), she explains how political ambition also drives horizontal partisan fiscal policy interdependence. In a related project, Dr. Benton and Lorena Barberia (University of São Paulo, Brazil) examine the impact of incumbency on subnational fiscal spending. This research contributes to knowledge about how partisanship affects subnational political budget cycles.

Research in Comparative Local Governance

In addition to examining topics in political economy, Dr. Benton has also conducted research on subnational authoritarian rule. Inspired by her long time living and traveling in Mexico, Dr. Benton has examined how participatory political institutions contribute to local governance. Her research in Mexico shows that participatory institutions have been used by subnational authoritarian leaders to boost their political control, producing what I call “authoritarian participatory governance.” The best-known case in Mexico is the state of Oaxaca, whose government assigned participatory institutions to many of its 570 municipalities in 1995, before the transition to national democracy (2000). Dr. Benton shows that these institutions were assigned by state autocrats to municipalities whose mayors could be trusted to work for the state-level regime (Democratization 2017), and that these mayors used these institutions to manage electoral participation and generate winning margins (Comparative Politics 2012; Journal of Politics in Latin America 2016). This allowed Oaxaca’s subnational authoritarian rulers to survive in power even national democratization. This research contributes to our understanding about how participatory institutions are used in non-democratic settings.

Expertise in Latin America

Dr. Benton has deep regional expertise in Latin American political economy and politics. This regional expertise is the result of 18 years living and working in Mexico City, Mexico (2001-19), as well as numerous trips to and extended stays in other countries in the region (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Venezuela). Most recently, Dr. Benton spent her sabbatical year in São Paulo, Brazil (2018-19). Her regional expertise is enhanced by experience working as a political risk analyst in New York and Mexico City, where she assessed Latin American political and policy risk for financial institutions, multinational corporations, oil majors, credit ratings agencies, and governments.

Research students

Publications by category