Magaloni’s work has gained considerable international recognition for its substantial contributions to both comparative politics and criminology.
Her research interests include authoritarian regimes, violence, human rights, poverty alleviation, distribution of public goods, and indigenous governance.
[5][6] Magaloni's first book Voting for Autocracy: Hegemonic Party Survival and its Demise in Mexico (2006), was awarded the 2007 Leon Epstein Award for the Best Book published in the previous two years in the area of political parties and organizations and winner of the Best Book Award from the Comparative Democratization Section of the American Political Science Association.
Magaloni was awarded the 2021 Heinz I. Eulau Award for the best article published in American Political Science Review for her paper “Killing in the Slums: The Problems of Social Order, Criminal Governance and Police Violence in Rio de Janeiro” (2020) (co-authored with Edgar Franco and Vanessa Melo).
The jury motivated the award by highlighting that Magaloni is: “ (…) the leading scholar in the world for demonstrating that major changes in policing can increase compliance with the rule of law under the challenges of high violence levels and strong popular demand to reduce crime" [7]