COMET LATAM-EU

2025-2026
Comparative Observatory of Municipal Electoral Turnout in Latin America and the European Union

I am the international scientific coordinator of COMET, co-led by Prof. Andrea Bussoletti and Prof. Monica Montano.
The project stems from a collaboration between the University of Perugia, the University of Guadalajara (Mexico), and the University of Buenos Aires (Argentina).
COMET is a replication study of the research conducted by Silvia Bolgherini, Selena Grimaldi, and Aldo Paparo, which resulted in the book 
Local Electoral Participation in Europe. The Roots of Municipal Politics, Palgrave, 2024.

COMET has been financed by the University of Guadalajara (Mexico) for a one-year grant (Call: CIVAAI 2025)
The project proposes the first large-scale investigation into municipal-level electoral participation in Latin America, comparing it both between countries in the region and, for the first time at this level, with Europe. To this end, it proposes to compile and analyze electoral and contextual data (population size, degree of urbanization, among others) at the municipal level in Latin American countries to identify the determinants that explain the variation in citizen participation in both municipal and national elections. This proposal responds to a critical gap in the comparative literature, where local studies are often limited to individual cases and extensive comparative analyses are rarely conducted. Through a robust quantitative approach—based on statistical models and an original database—and the use of innovative methodological tools such as multivariable typology and multilevel congruence, a new perspective will be brought to the study of local democracy. 

In this first year, electoral and socio-economic data for 6 countries (Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Guatemala, Chile) have been retrieved and put into the dataset.