Comparative welfare states, comparative federalism (including intergovernmental relations, multilevel governance, and decentralization), Europeanization, governance (international and domestic).
Prof. López-Santana received her PhD from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in 2006. Prior to joining George Mason University as an Assistant Professor of Politics and Government she was a Max Weber Post-Doctoral Fellow at the European University Institute (Florence, Italy). In addition, in 2010 she was an Erasmus Mundus MAPP Visiting Scholar in Barcelona.
Her main fields of study are Comparative Politics, as well as International Relations. Her research and teaching interests include comparative welfare states and social policy; comparative federalism (including intergovernmental relations, multilevel governance and decentralization); European Union Politics and Europeanization; new modes of governance and soft law. She has written various articles on soft law, Europeanization, social policy and intergovernmental relations (see Selected Publications and CV).
Her book entitled The New Governance of Welfare States in the United States and Europe: Between Decentralization and Centralization in the Activation Era will soon get published by SUNY Press.
For additional publications, please see my CV.
The New Governance of Welfare States in the United States and Europe: Between Decentralization and Centralization in the Activation Era (forthcoming, SUNY Press).
"Decentralising the Active Welfare State: The Relevance of Intergovernmental Structures" (with Rossella Moyer) Journal of Social Policy (2012) 41 (4): 769-788.
“Soft Europeanization?: The Differential Influence of the European Employment Strategy in Belgium, Spain, and Sweden.” In Heidenreich, M. and Zeitlin, J. (eds.) (2009) Changing European Welfare and Employment Regimes: The Influence of the Open Method of Coordination on National Labour Market and Social Welfare Reforms (EUI/Routledge Studies on the Political Economy of Welfare, Routledge).
“Having a Say and Acting: Assessing the effectiveness of the European Employment Strategy as an intra-governmental coordinative instrument,” European Integration Online Papers (2009) 13.
“Framing and Transmitting Change in Employment Policy: Domestic Implications of European Soft Law on Member States,” Journal of European Public Policy (2006) 13 (4): 481-499.