Marcus Kurtz has research and teaching interests in the areas of comparative politics, democratization,  political economy and development, with a focus on Latin America. His publications have appeared in such journals as American Journal of Political Science, World Politics, Comparative Politics, Comparative Political Studies, International Organization, International Studies Quarterly, Journal of Politics, Politics & Society, Comparative Studies in Society and History, and Theory and Society. Both of his books, entitled Free Market Democracy and the Chilean and Mexican Countryside (2004) and Latin American State Building in Comparative Perspective: Social Foundations of Institutional Order (2013) are available at Cambridge University Press.

Dr. Kurtz's other ongoing research examines the causes and consequences of differing strategies of international economic integration in Latin America, the role of the state in economic development, the cross-national measurement of state capability or governance, the relationship between natural resource wealth and political regime, as well as the effects of free market developmental strategies on the problem of democratic consolidation.