Sergio Huertas Hernández

Ph.D. Candidate at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile
📍 Santiago, Chile
📧 sahuertas@uc.cl
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About me

Welcome! I am a Ph.D. Candidate in Political Science at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, an Adjunct Researcher at the Millennium Nucleus for the Study of Political Crises in Latin America (CRISPOL), and a Research Fellow at the Latin America Regional Center of the Varieties of Democracy Project (V-Dem).

My research is driven by a fundamental question: how can we assess the functioning of democracy through its institutions? This question has led me to examine the incentives that shape the strategic behavior of political actors within complex and evolving institutional frameworks. I specialize in the analysis of political institutions, focusing on executive-legislative relations, mechanisms of legislative oversight, and regime transformations in Latin America. In particular, I investigate the role of opposition forces, institutional checks and balances, and the structural conditions that enable—or undermine—democratic resilience. My research agenda seeks not only to explain institutional design and performance, but also to uncover their broader political consequences.

Methodologically, I adopt a multi-method approach that blends quantitative rigor with qualitative depth. I draw on game theory, Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA), archival research, and natural language processing (NLP) to analyze large corpora of political texts and explore legislative processes, institutional norms, and strategic interactions from multiple angles. This is complemented by the use of a broad array of statistical models, including logit, OLS, multinomial logit, ordered logit, and survival analysis, among others. This toolkit allows me to combine analytical nuance in the comparative study of complex political phenomena.

My work has been published in journals such as Political Research Quarterly, Journal of Legislative Studies, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, PS: Political Science & Politics, and Revista de Ciencia Política, among others. I have contributed to several Democracy Reports from the V-Dem Institute and participated in multiple research projects funded by FONDECYT through the Chilean National Research and Development Agency (ANID).

I was born and raised in Colombia, where I earned my B.A. in Political Science from Universidad del Tolima. I also hold two master’s degrees: one in Comparative Politics from FLACSO-Ecuador, and another in Political Science from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.

Feel free to explore this site to learn more about my publications, current projects, teaching experience, and how to get in touch.