Armando David Rodriguez ’18

Contactarmandodavid@berkeley.edu

Link to Personal Websitewww.linkedin.com/in/armando-david-rodr%C3%ADguez-m-04815567/

Dissertation Committee: Robert D. Cooter (Chair), John Yoo (public law), and Alison E. Post (political economy and regulation)

Dissertation Topic: Pending Governance Challenges in the Mexican Oil Industry: A Case for Checks and Balances

Research Interests: Administrative Law and Regulated Industries, Institutional Design and Regulatory Governance, Checks and Balances in the Administrative State, State-building and Development Studies, Political Economy applied to Public Law Institutions, Political Theory

Previous Degrees:

U.C. Berkeley School of Law, Doctor of the Science of Law (J.S.D.) (2018)
U.C. Berkeley School of Law, Master of Laws (LL.M.) (2012)
Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (CIDE), Graduate Diploma in Strategic Political Analysis (2010)
Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM), Licenciado en Derecho (LL.B.), Summa Cum Laude (2009)

BiographyArmando David Rodríguez Maldonado is a doctoral graduate from Berkeley Law. His research interests lie at the intersection of institutional design and regulatory governance, focusing on the law and politics of the administrative state in regulated industries. In terms of method, Dr. Rodríguez favors a multidisciplinary approach involving the connection of law and policy analysis with political economy insights and strategic risk assessment. His J.S.D. dissertation addresses the structure of checks and balances present in the administrative state policing the upstream petroleum sector in Mexico, highlighting those legal and institutional deficiencies that might jeopardize the ‘liberalization’ of the oil and gas sector from being complete.

Instead of a self-referential attitude toward the study of the law, Armando strongly believes in the active involvement of legal scholars in public policy deliberation, so that jurists contribute to the governance of real-world problems.

In 2014, Dr. Rodríguez published the book titled “Poder ejecutivo y Estado administrativo: El caso comparado de México y los Estados Unidos” (Tirant Lo Blanch), in which he analyzes the formal sphere of power granted to the Executive power and independent regulatory agencies, as well their tensions with Congress and the judiciary in Mexico, and then compares them with the constitutional understanding of those institutions in the United States.

Prior to his doctoral studies at Berkeley Law, Armando served as government official at the Attorney General Office for Fiscal Affairs in the Mexican Ministry of Finance, where he was part of the legal team counseling the Minister and the President in the design and approval of the Executive’s reform proposals – both constitutional and legislative – on government budget, economic competition, the hydrocarbon sector, special economic zones, infrastructure, and on anticorruption.

Also, Dr. Rodríguez has held research positions at two of the forefront higher education institutions in Mexico, ITAM and CIDE, where he collaborated in the development of several consulting projects concerning the telecommunications reform (2013), public administration reform (2013), oil and gas regulation (2012), and the public health care system (2010), all of which were delivered for different federal government agencies of Mexico.

PublicationsRodríguez Maldonado, Armando David, “Poder ejecutivo y Estado administrativo: El caso comparado de México y los Estados Unidos”, Tirant Lo Blanch, México, 2014, 164 pp., 164 pp., ISBN13:9788490539057

Rodríguez Maldonado, Armando David, “Pending Governance Challenges in the Mexican Oil Industry: A Case for Checks and Balances”, Dissertation Submitted to obtain the degree of Doctor of the Science of Law, U.C. Berkeley School of Law, 2018, 223 pp., (forthcoming).