John Polga-Hecimovich is Associate Professor of Political Science at the U.S. Naval Academy and an associated researcher at the Instituto de Iberoamérica at the Universidad de Salamanca (Spain). His research focuses on democracy and comparative politics institutions. He has written and published widely in both English and Spanish, and was co-editor of Authoritarian Consolidation in Time of Crisis: Venezuela under Nicolás Maduro (Routledge, 2025).