Tulane University
Populism and Social Policy in Latin America
December 7th, 2011
5:00 PM
Location
Greenleaf Conference Room, 100a Jones Hall
A Lecture Featuring Kurt Weyland.
Populism and Social Policy in Latin America
Professor Kurt Weyland will examine the relationship between populism and social policy in contemporary Latin America to close the CIPR Fall 2011 Seminar Series. Weyland will compare the populist administrations of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela (1999-present) and Alberto Fujimori in Peru (1990-2000) with the non-populist, reformist government of Luis Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil (2003-10) and the center-left Concertación coalition in Chile. He argues that, essentially, populist governments have some advantages in their social policy making, but the disadvantages end up being more significant.
Populist leaders concentrate power and tend to use it for creating substantial social programs quickly. By allocating significant financial resources, they try to alleviate pressing needs fast. But since populist leaders exercise their power in a discretionary, haphazard fashion, these new social programs often suffer from inefficiency, problematic design, politicization, and deficient implementation and are subject to setbacks and reversals. As a result of this, their accomplishments tend not to last. Whereas left-leaning presidents who are not populists construct their reforms brick by brick, populist leaders build sandcastles that rise quickly, but are as quickly washed away by the waves of changing economic or political conjunctures.
Kurt Weyland is Professor of Government and Lozano Long Professor of Latin American Politics at the University of Texas at Austin. He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Stanford (1991) and has conducted research in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Peru, and Venezuela. Based on his investigations, he has published Democracy without Equity: Failures of Reform in Brazil (Pittsburgh, 1996); The Politics of Market Reform in Fragile Democracies (Princeton, 2002); Bounded Rationality and Policy Diffusion: Social Sector Reform in Latin America (Princeton, 2007); a volume co-edited with his UT colleagues Raúl Madrid and Wendy Hunter, Leftist Governments in Latin America: Successes and Shortcomings (Cambridge, 2010); and many articles and book chapters on democratization, neoliberalism, populism, and social policy in Latin America.
LATEST SITE UPDATES
NEWS
- Feoli and MacKinnon's book on representation and effectiveness in Latin America published
- Carmelo Mesa presents on Raul Castro's reforms in Cuba
- CIPR Post-doctoral Fellow Jessica Rich Publishes Article in LAPS Journal
- Carmelo Mesa Lago discusses Pension Reform in Cuba
- Edesio Fernandes Presents on Informal Urban Land Development
- Eduardo Silva's book on transnational activism and national movements published
- Nora Lustig at Yale Center for the Study of Globalization
- The Commitment to Equity Project (CEQ) launches a new website
- Nora Lustig article featured in Current History
EVENTS
- Rethinking State-Society Relations in Contemporary Latin America
- Dr. Manuel Alcántara: Politicians
- Publishing in Cuba: Past, Present & Future
- Latin American Political Economy Scholarship- April 11, 2013
- Carmelo Mesa Lago to lecture on Cuba and Pensions
- Talk with Edésio Fernandes on Urban Land Development
- David Snow Lecture: Living on the Streets in Four Global Cities: A Comparative Study of Homelessness in Los Angeles, Paris, Sao Paulo, and Tokyo
- Opening of the General Rafael E. Melgar Collection of manuscripts at The Latin American Library
- ExPatria - A Reading and Discussion with Pianist Gabriela Montero
- A Talk with Paulo Affonso Leme Machado
MEDIA
- Carmelo Mesa Lago: The Return of the State to Privatized Pension Systems
- Carmelo Mesa Lago: Raul Castro's Economic and Social Reforms in Cuba
- Edésio Fernandes: Informal Urban Land Developme
- Paulo Affonso Leme Machado: A Reforma da legislaçao florestal no Brasil
- Timothy Power discusses Brazilian Democracy and Presidents
BLOG POSTS
Upcoming Events
Rethinking State-Society Relations in Contemporary Latin America
The emergence, crisis, and collapse of neoliberalism gave way to new types of political regimes that set themselves the task of redefining state-society relationships to promote more socially inclusive polities. The accomplishments and shortcomings of those processes need yet to be evaluated, particularly from an encompassing, historically-informed perspective that is not afraid of challenging established assumptions and mainstream understandings of Latin America to do justice to current developments. What are the continuities/ discontinuities in terms of state-society linkages that the various processes of change experienced since the return to democracy introduced in the Latin American landscape? Is Latin America moving towards a more democratic and inclusive society? What is the nature of the new patterns of state-society interaction? Have they drastically altered the legacy of populism, bureaucratic-authoritarianism, and neoliberalism?, in which specific ways? Are emerging regimes promoting new patterns of exclusion or novel forms of authoritarianism?
A group of scholars from different disciplines, country expertise drawn from Latin America, the US and Europe will meet on May 24th at Tulane University to debate empirically and theoretically informed articles that address these questions.
SCHEDULE
10:00 AM-10:15 AM – Introduction and welcoming
10:15 AM-10.45 AM – Justice and politics: the dialogic alternative by Roberto Gargarella
10:45 AM-11:15 AM – The political economy of post-neoliberal Latin America: Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay development regimes by Christopher Wylde
11:15 AM-11:45 AM – The impact of taxes and social spending on inequality and poverty in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Mexico and Peru: a synthesis of results by Nora Lustig, George Gray-Molina, Sean Higgins, Miguel Jaramillo, Wilson Jiménez, Veronica Paz, Claudiney Pereira, Carola Pessino, John Scott, and Ernesto Yañez
12:00 PM -1:30 PM – LUNCH
1:45 PM -2:15 PM – Participatory developments and democratic representation in South America by Leonardo Avritzer and Enrique Peruzzotti
2:15 PM -2:45 PM – The second wave of incorporation and territorialized politics in Argentina and Brazil by Federico M. Rossi
2:45 PM -3:15 PM – Indigenous-state relations in Ecuador and Bolivia: challenges and opportunities by Roberta Rice
3:15 PM-3:30 PM – COFFEE BREAK
3:30 PM -4:00 PM – Gender, power, and women's political inclusion in Argentina and Chile by Susan Franceschet
4:00 PM -4:30 PM – Viral politics, the post-liberal imaginary and #Yosoy132 in Mexico by Benjamín Arditi
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