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This event is hybrid. To register for the in-person session, click here. To register for the virtual session, click here.
Speaker: Carlos Alvarado Quesada, 48th President of the Republic of Costa Rica; Professor of Practice of Diplomacy, Tufts University
Moderated by: Steve Levitsky, Professor of Government, Harvard University; Director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies
Carlos Alvarado Quesada served as the 48th President of the Republic of Costa Rica from May 2018 to May 2022, when his constitutionally limited term ended. Under President Alvarado's leadership, Costa Rica contributed to global efforts to combat climate change and defended human rights, democracy, and multilateralism. President Alvarado is a recipient of the 2022 Planetary Leadership Award by the National Geographic Society for his outstanding commitment and action toward protecting the ocean and in September 2019 he received on behalf of his country the Champion on the Earth Award for policy leadership, presented by the United Nations Environment Program. In November 2019, he was named one of TIME’s 100 Next emerging leaders around the world who are shaping the future and defining the next generation of leadership. President Alvarado's prior government leadership service includes a tenure as Minister of Labor and Social Security (2016-2018) and as Minister of Human Development and Social Inclusion (2014 – 2016) and Executive President of the Joint Social Welfare Institute, responsible for implementing social protection and promoting poverty alleviation programs. Before entering politics, he worked for Procter and Gamble, Latin America.
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