Please join us on Friday, May 30th for the seminar: Towards New Logics of Representation in Latin America 9:30am – 12:30pm in the Greenleaf Conference Room (see attached agenda).
Parties around the world experience a decline in their capacity to act in the best interests of the public. Politicians struggle to fulfil their representational role in reflecting the democratic mandate decided by citizens in elections. Hence, it is not surprising that other sources of representation have increased their prevalence. Civil society organizations—such as unions, peasant and farmers’ organizations, students’ associations, and neighborhood groups—are channeling the preferences of individuals, acting on their behalf, and even building successful parties like MAS in Bolivia and Frente Amplio in Chile. Yet populist leaders have also resonated with citizens’ aspirations, winning presidential elections in Argentina, Brazil, and El Salvador. If parties fail to be vehicles of representation, who is assuming this crucial role in democracies? Under what circumstances does the inability of parties to represent citizens open the gates for populist leaders? How is the crisis of representation related to democratic backsliding and the emergence of non-democratic attitudes? How do technological advances and virtual networks create new spaces of interaction that shape what citizens expect from being represented? This workshop addresses these and other questions in light of the Latin American context. It offers a platform to interact, discuss, and connect ideas about representation in Latin American countries and beyond.
Contact CIPR Post-Doctoral Fellow Gonzalo Contreras Aguirre to schedule an afternoon meeting with our guest panelists.
Guests:
Michelle Bachelet – Former President of Chile for two terms (2006–2010 and 2014–2018) and United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. Earlier, she was appointed the first Executive Director of the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women. Pres. Bachelet will attend remotely.
Marcela Ríos – Director for Latin America and the Caribbean at the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance. She is a former Minister of Justice and Human Rights in Chile (2022–2023). Previously, she served as Deputy Representative and Governance Coordinator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Chile for more than 14 years, where she led multiple studies and reports on governance and the state of democracy, contributing to the processing of political reforms.
Patricio Navia – Clinical Professor of Liberal Studies and Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at New York University. He has published books as well as scholarly and press articles on democratization, electoral rules, and democratic institutions in Latin America.
Manuel Alcántara – Director of the Centro Internacional de Estudios Políticos y Sociales AIP – Panamá (CIEPS). Professor Alcántara’s research has made crucial contributions to Latin American political studies, focusing on parliamentary elites, electoral processes, and the relationship between legislative and executive powers in Latin America. He has worked as a professor at the University of Salamanca, where he also directed the Institute of Ibero-America.