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Speakers: Alison Post, Associate Professor of Political Science and Global Metropolitan Studies, University of California, Berkeley; Alice Xu, Postdoctoral Associate in Political Economy, Yale University; Alyssa Huberts, Adjunct Professor, Georgetown University
Moderated by: Alisha Holland, Associate Professor of Government Department, Harvard University
More than 80 percent of Latin Americans live in cities. Citizens have taken to the streets to protest the poor quality of services from buses to police to healthcare in urban areas. This panels explores why and how governments improve urban services, and how these policies vary across Latin American cities.
Alison Post is Associate Professor of Political Science and Global Metropolitan Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research examines urban politics and policy and other political economy themes. She works principally in Latin America, and recently in India and the United States as well. She is the author of Foreign and Domestic Investment in Argentina: The Politics of Privatized Infrastructure (Cambridge University Press, 2014) and numerous articles. She is a former President of the Urban and Local Politics section of the American Political Science Association, Former Co-Director of the Global Metropolitan Studies Program at U.C. Berkeley, and currently Chair of the Steering Committee for the Red de Economía Política de America Latina (Repal).
Alice Xu is a Postdoctoral Associate in Political Economy at Yale University. She studies the comparative political economy of development with a focus on urban and distributive politics, inequality and social policy, and environmental politics in Latin America. Starting July 2023, she will be an Assistant Professor at University of Pennsylvania’s School of Social Policy and Department of Political Science. Her current research includes a book project on the historical political causes of slum formation (favelização) and urban segregation and the political and distributive consequences of such class- and race-based segregation across cities in Brazil. Her other research interests include race, identity and ethnic politics, informal labor markets, federalism and inter-governmental relations, and quantitative and spatial methods for studying inequality. Xu is getting her PhD in Government from Harvard University (2023) and holds a BA in Economics-Political Science and Sustainable Development from Columbia University.
Alyssa Huberts has a PhD in political science from the Harvard University Government Department. She is interested in the provision of basic urban services like piped water, public transit, and trash collection, and in applying evidence to inform urban policy making. Before doing her PhD, Alyssa worked at Ashoka Mexico and the InterAmerican Development Bank.
Alisha Holland is an Associate Professor (untenured) in the Government Department at Harvard University. Before joining the Harvard faculty, she was an Assistant Professor in the Politics Department at Princeton University and a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows. She studies the comparative political economy of development with a focus on urban politics, social policy, and Latin America. Her book, Forbearance as Redistribution: The Politics of Informal Welfare in Latin America (Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics), looks at the politics of enforcement against property law violations by the poor, such as squatting, street vending, and electricity theft. Her current book project focuses on the politics of large infrastructure projects in Latin America. Her other research interests include law, migration, crime control, and subnational governance. Her articles have appeared in the American Journal of Political Science, American Political Science Review, Comparative Political Studies, International Organization, Latin American Research Review, Perspectives on Politics, and World Politics. Holland hold an AB from Princeton University (2007) and a PhD from Harvard University (2014).
Presented in collaboration with Weatherhead Center for International Affairs