The Political Economy of Assassinations

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Speaker: Mariana Carvalho, Postdoctoral Fellow, Brown University
Moderated by: Steve Levitsky, Professor of Government, Harvard University; Director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies

Assassinations of politicians are prevalent in many developing countries. With a central focus on Brazil, Mariana Carvalho will discuss the causes of assassinations of local politicians and why corruption is a key determinant.

Mariana Carvalho is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Brown University. She studies comparative politics and political economy with a focus on violence, organized crime, and corruption. Mariana received a PhD in Political Science at the University of California, San Diego. She graduated from Fundação Getulio Vargas with a BA in Economics and a MA in Public Administration. Mariana is also the co-founder of Rede A Ponte, an initiative that supports women in politics. 

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