Speaker: Rossana Castiglioni, Associate Professor of the Political Science School, Universidad Diego Portales in Santiago, Chile

Since the beginning of the late 1990s, Latin American countries made great advances in terms of equitable social policy. Access increased markedly across policy areas as well as levels of coverage and benefits. In analyzing the causes of this social policy shift, a large part of the literature has emphasized the relevance of the “left turn.” My research challenges...

Speaker: Anthony Pereira, Director, King's Brazil Institute, King's College London 

The Brazilian state in the 21st century appears to be a curious combination of high and low capacity. For example, it collects roughly 35 percent of GDP in tax revenue and coordinates the commanding heights of the economy in the service of domestic industry and export promotion. It also has sophisticated agencies at the central level to administer social policy, and robust accountability institutions. But it appears to be a low capacity state when it comes to the...

Speaker: Ana De la O, Associate Professor of Political Science, Yale University

Ana Lorena De La O is associate professor of Political Science at Yale University, where she is affiliated with the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies, the Institution of Social and Policy Studies, and the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs. Her research relates to the political economy of poverty alleviation, clientelism and the provision of...

Speaker: Benjamin Lessing, Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Chicago

Throughout the Americas, prison gangs have learned to establish governance over street-level actors from behind bars. The leading example is Brazil’s Primerio Comando da Capital (PCC), which since 2001 imposes social order and alternative justice throughout São Paulo's urban periphery. It has also expanded territorially, establishing cells in all 27 Brazilian states, reshaping criminal subworlds across the country. The PCC's...

Speaker: Gustavo Flores Macías, Associate Professor of Government, Cornell University

Gustavo A. Flores-Macías is Associate Professor of Government at Cornell University and the 2017-18 Democracy and Development Fellow at Princeton University. He is the author of After Neoliberalism? The Left and Economic Reforms in Latin America (Oxford University Press, 2012) and editor of the volume The Political Economy of Taxation in Latin America (forthcoming with Cambridge University Press). Before academia, he served as Director of Public Affairs in...

Speaker: Angelica Duran-Martinez, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Massachusetts, Lowell

Angélica Durán-Martínez is an assistant professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell. She obtained a Ph.D. in Political Science at Brown University, a B.A. from Universidad Nacional de Colombia and an M.A. from New York University. She is the author of...

Speaker: Alejandra Bronfman, Associate Professor in the Department of Latin American, Caribbean and US Latino Studies, at the University at Albany-SUNY

Moderator: Alejandro de la Fuente, Robert Woods Bliss Professor of Latin American History and Economics
Professor of African and African American Studies and of History 
Director, Afro-Latin American Research Institute, Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University

Cuba was a center of the Caribbean “radio wars” of the...

Speaker: Mariana Batista, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Federal University of Pernambuco; Visiting Fellow, Harvard University

Moderator: Frances Hagopian, Jorge Paulo Lemann Senior Lecturer on Government, Harvard University

How presidents coalesce in multiparty systems? This talk explores the role of issue salience in presidential power-sharing strategies, showing how they keep control over policy while coalition partners get control over particularistic expenditures.

Mariana Batista...