2019 Apr 02
Climate Policy/Politics in Brazil: Recent Trajectories and Prospectives
12:00pm
Location: 
CGIS South, S250, 1730 Cambridge Street
Speaker: Eduardo Viola, Professor of International Relations, University of Brasilia; Senior Researcher of the Brazilian Council for Scientific and Technological Development
Moderator: Steven Levitsky, Professor of Government...
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2019 Mar 12
Voting for Victors: Why Violent Actors Win Postwar Elections
12:00pm to 2:00pm
Location: 
CGIS South, S250, 1730 Cambridge Street
This project seeks to understand political life after episodes of mass violence. After suffering wartime atrocities and winning peace, millions of people around the world elect to live under the rule of political actors with deep roots in the violent organizations of the past. This book analyzes why citizens vote for...
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2019 Mar 05
The Politics of Visibility: How Local Elections Undermine Representation in Brazil
12:00pm to 2:00pm
Location: 
CGIS South, S250, 1730 Cambridge Street

Speaker: Peter Johannessen, Postdoctoral Fellow, Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at the Harvard Kennedy School
Moderator: Steven Levitsky, Professor of Government, Harvard University
...
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2019 Feb 26
Venezuela: Understanding the Crisis. Building a Sustainable Solution
12:00pm
Location: 
CGIS South, S020, 1730 Cambridge Street
Speaker: Temir Porras Ponceleon, CEO, Ventuari Partners
Moderator: Steven Levitsky, Professor of Government, Harvard University
Temir Porras Ponceleon began his public service career in the Republic of France and continued in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. He specialized in foreign policy, sovereign credit, and oil. He has brokered and negotiated political and trade deals at the presidential level for more than 10 years in Latin...
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2019 Feb 19
Homicidal Ecologies: Illicit Economies and Complicit States in Latin America
12:00pm to 2:00pm
Location: 
CGIS South, S250, 1730 Cambridge Street

Speaker: Deborah Yashar, Professor of Politics & International Affairs, Princeton University; Editor of World Politics
Moderator: Steven Levitsky, Professor of Government, Harvard University
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2018 Nov 27
Expanding Social Policy Equity in Latin America (1990-2013)
12:00pm
Location: 
CGIS South, S250, 1730 Cambridge Street
Speaker: Rossana Castiglioni, Associate Professor of the Political Science School, Universidad Diego Portales in Santiago, Chile
Since the beginning of the late 1990s, Latin American countries made great advances in terms of equitable social policy. Access increased markedly across policy areas as well as levels of coverage and benefits. In analyzing the causes of this social policy shift, a large part of the literature has emphasized the relevance of the “left turn.” My research challenges dominant views regarding social policy development in Latin...
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2018 Nov 20
Crisis en Nicaragua: Causas y siguientes pasos
12:00pm
Location: 
CGIS South, S250, 1730 Cambridge Street
Speaker: Edmundo Jarquín
Edmundo Jarquín graduated with a law degree and a Master’s Degree in Economics from the University of Chile. In Nicaragua he taught at the Universidad Centroamericana (UCA) and was one of the founders of UDEL, the democratic opposition movement led by Pedro Joaquín Chamorro against the Somoza dictatorship. He served in the FSLN government as Minister of External Cooperation (1981-84) as well as ambassador to Mexico (1984-88) and later Spain (1988-1990). He was a member of the Nicaraguan National Assembly (1990-1992)...
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2018 Nov 13
Lawyers, Guns, and Money: Brazilian State Formation in Comparative Perspective
12:00pm
Location: 
CGIS South, S250, 1730 Cambridge Street
Speaker: Anthony Pereira, Director, King's Brazil Institute, King's College London 
The Brazilian state in the 21st century appears to be a curious combination of high and low capacity. For example, it collects roughly 35 percent of GDP in tax revenue and coordinates the commanding heights of the economy in the service of domestic industry and export promotion. It also has sophisticated agencies at the central level to administer social policy, and robust accountability institutions. But it appears to be a low capacity state when it comes to the...
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2018 Nov 06
Labor Unions and Social Movements in Unequal Democracies
12:00pm
Location: 
CGIS South, S250, 1730 Cambridge Street
Speaker: Candelaria Garay, Ford Foundation Associate Professor of Democracy, Harvard Kennedy School of Government
Candelaria Garay is a Ford Foundation Associate Professor of Democracy at the Kennedy School of Government. Her research focuses on social policy, collective action, and party politics in Latin America. She received a Ph.D. and a M.A. in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley, and holds a B.A. in Sociology from the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Her book, Social Policy Expansion in Latin...
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2018 Oct 30
Draining the Swamp? Partisan Bias in the Prosecution of Former Latin American Leaders
12:00pm
Location: 
CGIS South, S250, 1730 Cambridge Street
Speaker: Gretchen Helmke, Professor of Political Science, University of Rochester
This paper introduces and analyzes an original dataset, Latin American Leaders on Trial, which examines the extended post-tenure legal fates of 119 Latin American presidents over the last three and a half decades. Because we can only observe whether, when, and for what crimes former leaders are charged, but not whether such crimes were actually committed, our analysis of whether the rule of law is functioning or being manipulated in any given case is limited in important...
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2018 Oct 23
Can Access to Information Increase Community Monitoring & Service Provision? Evidence from a School Intervention in Mexico
12:00pm
Location: 
CGIS South, S250, 1730 Cambridge Street
Speaker: Ana De la O, Associate Professor of Political Science, Yale University
Ana Lorena De La O is associate professor of Political Science at Yale University, where she is affiliated with the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies, the Institution of Social and Policy Studies, and the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs. Her research relates to the political economy of poverty alleviation, clientelism and the provision of...
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2018 Oct 16
The 2018 Elections in Brazil
12:00pm
Location: 
CGIS South, S020, 1730 Cambridge Street
Speakers: Scott Mainwaring, Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor of Brazil Studies, Faculty Co-chair of the Harvard Brazil Studies Program; Fernando Bizzarro, Graduate Student Affiliate, PhD Candidate, Department of Government, Harvard University
Moderator: Steve Levitsky,  Professor of Government at Harvard University.  
After experiencing the world's largest corruption scandal and the country's worst economic crisis, Brazilians voted in what many have called "the most important elections since...
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2018 Oct 02
Changing Course? Understanding Mexico's 2018 Election
12:00pm
Location: 
CGIS South, S250, 1730 Cambridge Street
Speaker: Gustavo Flores Macías, Associate Professor of Government, Cornell University
Moderators: Steve Levitsky, Professor of Government and Fran Hagopian, Jorge Paulo Lemann Senior Lecturer on Government
Gustavo A. Flores-Macías is Associate Professor of Government at Cornell University and the 2017-18 Democracy and Development Fellow at Princeton University. He is the author of After Neoliberalism? The Left and Economic Reforms in Latin America (Oxford University Press, 2012) and editor of the volume The...
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2018 Sep 25
Colombia's 2018 Elections: Implications for the Peace Process and Criminal Dynamics
12:00pm
Location: 
CGIS South, S250, 1730 Cambridge Street
Speaker: Angelica Duran-Martinez, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Massachusetts, Lowell
Angélica Durán-Martínez is an assistant professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell. She obtained a Ph.D. in Political Science at Brown University, a B.A. from Universidad Nacional de Colombia and an M.A. from New York University. She is the author of “The Politics of Drug Violence: Criminals, Cops, and Politicians in Colombia and Mexico” (Oxford University Press, 2018). Her...
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2018 Sep 18
Human Rights and Transformative Constitutionalism in Latin America: The Impact of the Inter-American System
12:00pm
Location: 
CGIS South, S250, 1730 Cambridge Street
Speaker: Flávia Piovesan, Professor of Constitutional Law and Human Rights, Catholic University of São Paulo
Latin America is characterized by high levels of exclusion and violence, in addition to democracies that are still in a consolidation phase. In this context, the Inter-American System can contribute to establishing human rights standards, offsetting national deficits and fostering a new power dynamic among social actors. It can play a transformative role in strengthening human rights, democracy and the rule of law in the region. The...
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2018 Sep 11
Tuesday Seminar Series: Republican Shields in Times of Executive Excesses: Revisiting the Uruguayan Collegial Governments (1952-1966)
12:00pm
Location: 
CGIS South, S250, 1730 Cambridge Street
Speaker: David Altman, Professor, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile; Luksic Visiting Scholar
Moderators: Steve Levitsky, Professor of Government, Harvard University and Fran Hagopian, Jorge Paulo Lemann Senior Lecturer on Government, Harvard University
How do you limit the temptations and excesses of government chief executives in a democratic context? Theoretically, systems in which multiple people share executive power –collegial executives – might be one way to prevent abuses of power by leaders who concentrate authority...
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2018 Apr 24
Puerto Rico: An Exclave in Decline
12:00pm to 2:00pm
Location: 
CGIS South, S250, 1730 Cambridge Street
Speaker: Hiram Ramirez-Rangel, Divisional Executive Vice-President and Co-Branch Manager of AXA Advisors, LLC, Puerto Rico
Moderator: Steven Levitsky, Professor of Government at Harvard University
Puerto Rico’s current financial and economic crisis is examined firstly by examining the geopolitical dynamics that once sustained its role as an American exclave, and which gradually changed, giving way to a period of decline in strategic importance. As its importance as exclave began to decline,...
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2018 Apr 17
Rediscovering Duties in the Age of Rights: Latin America’s Contributions
12:00pm to 2:00pm
Location: 
CGIS South, S250, 1730 Cambridge Street
Speaker: Kathryn Sikkink, Ryan Family Professor of Human Rights Policy, John F. Kennedy School of Government; Carol K. Pforzheimer Professor, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University
Moderator: Steven Levitsky, Professor of Government at Harvard University
Responsibility constitutes a thread running through a number of topical public policy subjects, including sovereignty-as-responsibility, corporate social responsibility, and common but differentiated responsibility within...
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2018 Apr 10
Contention, Coalitions, and the Politics of Education Reform in Latin America
12:00pm to 2:00pm
Location: 
CGIS South, S250, 1730 Cambridge Street
Speaker: Ben Ross Schneider, Ford International Professor of Political Science, MIT; Director of the MIT-Brazil Program
Moderator: Steven Levitsky, Professor of Government at Harvard University
Access to education in Latin America expanded rapidly in recent decades, but education quality still lags. To tackle the quality challenge, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Mexico, and some states in Brazil enacted in the 2010s ambitious and promising reforms, often in the face of fierce opposition, especially from teacher unions and...
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2018 Apr 03
Why Bother? Rethinking Participation in Elections and Protests
12:00pm to 2:00pm
Location: 
CGIS South, S250, 1730 Cambridge Street
Speaker: Susan Stokes, Chair, Council on Latin American and Iberian Studies; John S. Saden Professor of Political Science; Director, Yale Program on Democracy, Yale University
...
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