Mazzuca wrote Latecomer State Formation (Yale University Press, 2021),[4] co-authored with Gerardo Munck Middle-Quality Institutional Trap (Cambridge University Press, 2020),[5] published over a dozen articles in journals of political science in the US and the rest of the world, and edited three volumes on the relation between political institutions and economic development for CAF (Banco Latinoamericano de Desarrollo).

[6][7][8] Mazzuca co-authored with Nobel prize-winner economist James A. Robinson[9][10] the article "Political Conflict and Power Sharing in the Origins of Modern Colombia.

A key theoretical claim is that state formation (border demarcation) was incompatible with state building (capacity creation) in Latin America because the rush to incorporate the region into global commerce induced the emergence of countries with dysfunctional territories, i.e., combinations of subnational regions that in the long run proved economically nonviable.

This claim complements and refines the usual ideas that attribute all forms of economic and social backwardness in Latin America to colonial institutions.

(1) In the "port-driven pathway" - followed by Argentina and Brazil - territorial consolidation and violence monopolization were achieved simultaneously by a political entrepreneur deriving logistical and material resources from the main commercial port of the emerging country.

Yet, contrary to conventional wisdom, the sequence of development - Latin America has democratized before building capable States - does not explain the region's quandary.

Thus, the starting point of political developments is less important than whether the State-democracy relationship is a virtuous cycle, triggering causal mechanisms that reinforce each other.

[25] This distinction was used in a range of works, from scholarly books like Democrats and Autocrats by Professor Agustina Giraudy[26] to opinion pieces in major Spanish-speaking newspapers.

The article was featured in CEPR [29] and was recommended as a "Must Read" by Professor Bradford DeLong for the Washington Center for Equitable Growth.