Chile Presidential Elections

Date: 

Tuesday, November 30, 2021, 12:00pm to 1:20pm


For a recording of this event, please click here.

On November 21, 2021, Chile will hold its first presidential election since a massive wave of protest shook the country and ushered in a period of far-reaching constitutional change. What do the results of the Chilean election tell us about the country’s changing politics--and what do they portend for the future?

Speakers: Juan Pablo Luna, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile; Kathya Araujo, Universidad de Santiago de Chile; Peter Siavelis, Wake Forest University
Moderated by: Steven Levitsky, Director, David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies; Professor of Government, Harvard University

Kathya Araujo has a PhD in American Studies and is a Professor at the Institute of Advanced Studies (IDEA) of the Universidad de Santiago de Chile. She is Director of The Nucleus Millennium Center Authority and Power Asymmetries. Her main research fields are individuation and subject configuration; the relationship of individuals with norms; social theory and psychoanalysis. She has been invited as visiting professor and researcher to several universities in North and South America and Europe, among them the Free University of Berlin, the EHESS of Paris and the State University of Rio de Janeiro. Her research work has received grants from several Funders like OXFAM- GB, Ford Foundation, CONICYT (Chile), CNPq (Brasil), Humboldt Foundation and Thyssen Foundation (Germany), among others. In the past years, she has conducted several empirical research projects on the effects of the structural transformations Chilean society has undergone in the last decades upon individuals and the social and political bond. Currently she conducts research on individualism and authority. She is author of 20 books, among them Habitar lo social. Usos y abusos en la vida cotidiana en el Chile actual (Inhabiting the social. Uses and abuses in everyday life in Chile. LOM, 2009), Desafíos Comunes. Retrato de la sociedad chilena y sus individuos (Shared challenges. Portrait of Chilean Society and its Individuals, with D. Martuccelli, 2 Vols. LOM, 2012) , El miedo a los subordinados. Una teoría de la autoridad (Fear from subordinates. A theory of authority. LOM, 2016).and editor of ¿Se acata pero no se cumple? Estudios sobre las normas en América Latina (¿Se acata pero no se cumple? Studies on Norms in Latin America. LOM, 2009) and Legitimization in World Society (with A. Mascareño, Ashgate, 2012); Hilos Tensados. Para leer el octubre chileno (Ed. USACH, 2019); Las Calles. Un estudio sobre Santiago de Chile (LOM, 2019). Her last published book is ¿Cómo estudiar la autoridad? (How to study authority?. Ed. USACH, 2021).

Juan Pablo Luna is an associate professor of political science at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. His research interests include the analysis of political party systems and political representation, the political effects of inequality, status, and research methodology in political science, with a focus on mixed methods approach. He has led projects including the Latin American Public Opinion Project-Chile survey, developed by Vanderbilt University, and the creation of the Latin American Political Economy Network REPAL. Luna has been a visiting professor at Princeton University, Brown University, Harvard University, the University of Salamanca, and the Paris Institute of Political Studies. He obtained a post-doctoral fellowship at the Latin American Studies Program at the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars in 2008, the same year his doctoral thesis was awarded the Juan Linz Prize for Best Thesis from the Comparative Democratization Section of the American Political Science Association. Luna earned a PhD in political science from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Peter M. Siavelis is a Professor in the Department of Politics and International Affairs at Wake University. He received his PhD from Georgetown University. He has published on many aspects of Latin American and Chilean politics including candidate selection, election systems, presidencies and informal institutions. His most recent edited book is Democratic Chile: The Politics and Policies of a Historic Coalition (with Kirsten Sehnbruch) and he has published in journals including Comparative Politics, Comparative Political Studies, Electoral Studies, Presidential Studies Quarterly, and Latin American Research Review.

Steven Levitsky is the Director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University. As the David Rockefeller Professor of Latin American Studies and Professor of Government, his research focuses on democratization, authoritarianism, political parties, and weak and informal institutions. He is author (with Daniel Ziblatt) of How Democracies Die (Crown, 2018), a New York Times Best-Seller that has been published in 25 languages, Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes after the Cold War (with Lucan Way) (Cambridge, 2010), and Transforming Labor-Based Parties in Latin America: Argentine Peronism in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge, 2003), and co-editor of Informal Institutions and Democracy in Latin America (with Gretchen Helmke) and The Resurgence of the Latin American Left (with Kenneth Roberts). He has written frequently for the New York Times, Foreign Affairs, Vox, The New Republic, The Monkey Cage, La República (Peru) and Folha de São Paulo (Brazil). He is currently writing a book (with Lucan Way) on the durability of revolutionary regimes. Levitsky received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley.

Presented in collaboration with Weatherhead Center for International Affairs