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About
Dr Santiago Quintero joined the Department of Social Policy as an LSE Fellow in 2025. His research and teaching engage with questions at the intersection of subnational politics and governance, environmental policy, and political methodology.
He received his PhD in Political Economy from King’s College London (KCL) and is currently part of the Executive Committee of the Sustainable Social Policy and Welfare States Research Hub. Santiago also held positions as a Guest Teacher in the LSE School of Public Policy, a Graduate Teaching Assistant in the Department of Political Economy at KCL, and an HP Lecturer at the Universidad Autónoma Latinoamericana. He was also a visiting scholar at the LSE Cañada-Blanch Centre and the Center for Environmental Policy and Behavior at the University of California, Davis.
Santiago holds an MSc in Social Research Methods from LSE, as well as an MSc in Applied Economics and a BA in Political Science from EAFIT University. He has applied experience as a researcher and consultant for the World Bank, the Colombian National Government, and the Metropolitan Area of Medellín.
Publications
Quintero, S. (2025). Short-Term Patronage: Job Uncertainty and Temporary Employment in Politicized Bureaucracies. Public Performance & Management Review, 48(2), 373–407. https://doi.org/10.1080/15309576.2024.2445615
Research
Santiago’s research focuses on the politics of environmental governance systems, particularly on how bureaucratic structures, decentralisation processes, and subnational politics shape natural resource management in contexts of fragmentation, politicisation, and inequality. His doctoral dissertation examined how political patronage shapes the processes and outcomes of environmental policy networks in Colombia. He is also currently engaged in projects studying decentralisation and intermunicipal collaboration in Latin America, preferences for climate adaptation policies in the UK, and the influence of AI on the public’s support for climate taxes and investment in the UK and Germany.
Beyond his substantive research, Santiago is also interested in political methodology and in developing approaches that combine computational and quantitative methods, especially Social Network Analysis, Text-as-Data, and causal inference. He is also enthusiastic about bridging quantitative research with the qualitative and historical analysis of regulatory changes.