PASOTTI, Eleonora

MWP Visiting Fellow, 2008-2009

Assistant Professor of Politics
University of California
Santa Cruz

Email pasotti@ucsc.edu   
 

 

 

Eleonora Pasotti is an Assistant Professor of Politics at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She earned her Ph.D. degree in Political Science from Columbia University and has a M.Sc. in Philosophy of the Social Sciences and B.Sc. in Economics from the London School of Economics. Since 2000, she has been a Public Policy fellow at Columbia University, a German Marshall Fund of the United States fellow, and a post-doctoral fellow at the Centre on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University.

Her current research explores the dynamics of preference formation through an analysis of the shift from patronage to public opinion politics. In her book manuscript Branding Cities: Post-Machine Politics in Naples, Chicago and Bogotá (under review at Cambridge University Press), Pasotti argues that the joint presence of direct elections, low party discipline, and high rates of municipal fiscal self-reliance facilitates the shift to a new form of governance taking hold in cities. Under these conditions, mayors find that traditional payroll patronage and mass parties are no longer useful or available tools to win elections and turn to brand politics. They create and attract highly visible events that become the trademarks for their brands, elaborate catchy slogans and logos that stick in voters’ minds, and launch reforms that turn their cities into regional models. Following her first book manuscript on executives, at EUI Pasotti develops a new book manuscript about the issue of citizen representation in comparative urban politics.Eleonora Pasotti’s research on Italian municipal politics appeared in South European Society & Politics. She is Editor of the Newsletter for the Conference Group on Italian Politics and Society (CONGRIPS).