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Speaker: James Loxton, Senior Lecturer in Comparative Politics, University of Sydney; Visiting Research Scholar at the Program in Latin American Studies, Princeton University
Moderated by: Steve Levitsky, Professor of Government, Harvard University; Director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies
In the three decades since the U.S. invasion that overthrew the dictatorship of General Manuel Noriega, Panama has undergone a remarkable transformation. It has remained a stable democracy in an age of democratic backsliding, and its economy has grown faster than that of any other country in Latin America. This talk examines Panama’s rise and highlights four especially puzzling features: 1) it is a rare case of democratization by military invasion; 2) it is home to an extremely unlikely case of authoritarian successor party regeneration; 3) it is a standout instance of effective resource management by a state-owned enterprise; and 4) it has achieved rapid economic development despite very high levels of corruption.
James Loxton is a Senior Lecturer in Comparative Politics at the University of Sydney. He is currently a Visiting Research Scholar at the Program in Latin American Studies at Princeton University. His research focuses on authoritarian regimes, democratization, and political parties. He is the author of the award-winning Conservative Party-Building in Latin America (Oxford University Press, 2021), and the co-editor of Life after Dictatorship: Authoritarian Successor Parties Worldwide (Cambridge University Press, 2018) and Challenges of Party-Building in Latin America (Cambridge University Press, 2016). He holds a PhD in Government from Harvard University.
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