Spain
How do Spanish leaders read opportunity and constraint as the country moves toward a larger role in European energy supply?
- Political psychology
- International relations
- Foreign policy
- Elite decision-making
- Natural resource competition
Julian Rubalcava
Doctoral researcher examining how political leaders make strategic decisions under resource dependence, uncertainty, and geopolitical pressure.
Investigador Predoctoral, Department of Political Science and Public Law, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
My research sits at the intersection of political psychology and international relations. I study how leaders perceive risk, frame dependence, and choose among alignment, hedging, and resistance when energy and strategic-resource access becomes uncertain. My doctoral project compares Spain, Germany, and Hungary to explain how political interpretation shapes national responses to shared geopolitical pressure.
Research focus
Elite decision-making
How leaders’ beliefs, risk perceptions, and political constraints shape strategic choices.
Resource dependence
How energy and critical-resource vulnerabilities affect power, autonomy, and policy.
European geopolitics
Why member states respond differently to common external pressures.
Doctoral project
Power Without Resources
How do European political leaders make strategic decisions when access to energy and critical resources becomes uncertain or contested?
Access to energy and critical resources is becoming one of the central problems in European politics, and it is not going away. We know a great deal about supply chains and dependencies, and very little about how a handful of leaders process that pressure and make decisions their countries will live with for generations. This project works on that gap, comparing Spain, Germany, and Hungary.
Comparative cases
Three European states under related pressure, studied as open empirical questions.
Germany
How do German leaders interpret and absorb the political consequences of concentrated energy dependence after disruption?
Hungary
How do sovereignty narratives and domestic incentives shape Hungarian bargaining over resource relationships inside the European Union?
Research projects
Academic and applied work completed before the doctorate, across political behavior, foreign policy, media effects, leader assessment, and strategic competition.
United States
Latino vote choice in California
Survey research examining why a Latino electorate that reports socially conservative attitudes has continued to vote reliably Democratic in California. Built on an original instrument rather than secondary analysis, with question wording designed to separate stated ideology from partisan attachment and vote intention.
United States and Spain
U.S.–Spain relations
Analysis of the bilateral relationship between the United States and Spain, covering immigration policy, negotiated agreements, and the strategic case for the partnership. Recommendations were written as options, with the political cost of each stated on both sides.
Middle East
Media effects and conflict framing
An experimental study of how audiences respond to leader communication and framing in coverage of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Format was held constant and source varied, to test how far response tracks message content versus the identity of the speaker.
Africa
African leadership trends to 2030
A comparative forecasting study of leadership trajectories and external influence in Africa, built on case studies of Burkina Faso and South Africa. Russian influence activity and Chinese investment were tracked as running variables across both cases.
Western Balkans
Bosnia and Herzegovina conflict analysis
Conflict analysis of Bosnia and Herzegovina combined with a political-psychology assessment of a senior political figure and options for reducing political friction. Profiling worked from the public record and treated the assessment as testable expectations about behavior rather than a diagnosis.
Spain and Latin America
Biopolitics and dictatorship
A historical-theoretical study of how population, religious authority, and propaganda operated as instruments of political control across Francoist Spain and Spanish colonial rule in Latin America. Reading the two settings together surfaces continuity in technique across very different periods.
United States
Campaign strategy design
Applied work developing campaign strategy, message architecture, and audience segmentation for political communication. Audiences were segmented by persuadability rather than demographics alone, with message development treated as a testable hypothesis about response.
Education
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2026 — present
PhD, Politics, Public Policies and International Relations
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Department of Political Science and Public Law
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2024
M.A., Political Psychology
Arizona State University
School of Politics and Global Studies
-
2021
B.S., Public Service and Public Policy
Arizona State University
Summa cum laude · GPA 3.99
School of Public Affairs, Watts College of Public Service and Community Solutions
Certificate in Public Administration and Public Management
Contact
Open to research collaboration, academic enquiries, and speaking on political psychology, elite decision-making, and natural resource competition.