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Speaker: Deborah Yashar, Professor of Politics & International Affairs, Princeton University; Editor of World Politics
Moderator: Steven Levitsky, Professor of Government, Harvard University
Homicidal violence has spiked in Latin America’s contemporary democracies, with some countries claiming among the highest homicide rates in the world. Drawing on her recent book, Homicidal Ecologies, Yashar analyzes the region’s uneven homicide levels and maps out a theoretical agenda that analyzes the (historical and endogenous) relationship between illicit political economies; state incapacity and complicity; and organizational competition to control illicit territorial enclaves.
Her research has focused on regime politics, citizenship rights, social movements, ethnic politics, state formation, violence, and immigration politics. She is author of three books: Homicidal Ecologies: Illicit Economies and Complicit States in Latin America (Cambridge University Press, 2018); Contesting Citizenship in Latin America: The Rise of Indigenous Movements and the Postliberal Challenge (Cambridge University Press, 2005); and Demanding Democracy: Reform and Reaction in Costa Rica and Guatemala (Stanford University Press, 1997). She is also coeditor of three volumes: States in the Developing World (Cambridge University Press, 2017, with Miguel A. Centeno and Atul Kohli); Parties Movements and Democracy in the Developing World (Cambridge University Press, 2016, with Nancy Bermeo); and Routledge Handbook of Latin American Politics (Routledge, 2012, with Peter Kingstone).