Professor Vilaça’s work cuts across Sociology of Law, Organizations, and Politics, and seeks to explain the causes of corruption prosecutions. His research examines this question from two angles. The first one, the topic of his book project Politicians Behind Bars, focuses on how prosecutors’ cultural and organizational practices shape their effectiveness to prosecute economic and political elites. This work draws on more than 120 in-depth interviews with federal prosecutors and other judicial actors in Brazil.
His second project explains how judges make decisions in corruption trials. This research uses quantitative analyses to analyze whether sentencing and appeals are affected by judges’ ideology, defendants’ political affiliation, and social movement mobilization.
Professor Vilaça’s articles have appeared in the American Journal of Political Science, Social Forces, Social Problems, Law & Society Review, Sociology of Development, Mobilization, among other venues.
