Livio Silva-Muller

Academy Scholar, The Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies.
PhD in Sociology, Department of Anthropology and Sociology, The Geneva Graduate Institute.
Affiliate, Weatherhead Research Cluster on Comparative Inequality and Inclusion (2025-2027).
Headshot of Livio Silva-Muller in front of a grey background
livio_silvamueller@fas.harvard.edu
Personal website

Research interests: Decarbonization and redistribution in global and comparative perspectives, with an emphasis on Latin America.

Research summary: My research focuses on challenges related to decarbonization, development, and democracy in global and comparative perspective. More specifically, I am interested in questions of bureaucratic capacity and elite resistance; how global and domestic forces (e.g. international organizations or democratic backsliding) enable and constrain these state-building processes; and how the worldviews of political, economic, and bureaucratic elites influence these trajectories. I am trained in both qualitative and computational methods and take great pleasure in learning, using and teaching new methods.

In a book project with Prof. Graziella Moraes Silva, we explore the interaction between material conditions and symbolic processes underpinning elites' support for redistribution. We designed, fielded, and analysed a unique survey with random samples of CEOs, legislators, and high-level bureaucrats in South Africa and Brazil. We asked them about their views of poverty and the poor, merit, and trust. This is the work I hope to develop further with the cluster.

My own research, in turn, unpacks environmental state-building in the Brazilian Amazon Rainforest since 1985. You can read more on my website (www.silvamuller.com).

This information is accurate as of the affiliate year indicated. (last updated 09.01.2026)