Course Overview: This course explores modern Latin American politics. We consider how major political and economic actors, events, and ideas from the colonial period through the present contribute to strengthening or weakening representative government and economic growth in the region. Focusing on the cases of Argentina, Brazil, and Chile students learn about mass politics and populism; regime breakdown and military rule; the twin challenges of democratic transitions and development under neoliberal reforms; and finally, ongoing challenges and opportunities that include poverty and inequality; illiberal democracy; dysfunctional parties and elections; and the rise of new social movements.
Category: Uncategorized
Course Overview: Why are politics and public life in contemporary Latin America so violent? Political violence is inherent to revolutions, civil wars, and authoritarian regimes. In contrast, one of the merits of democracy is that it facilitates the peaceful allocation resources and power among competing actors. In theory, “losers” do not have to resort to violence to achieve their demands, while “winners” recognize that they might become losers and do not resort to violence to maintain the status quo. For much of the 20th century, Latin America struggled with insurgencies, civil war, and repressive authoritarian regimes. The 1980s and 1990s brought about a wave of democratic transitions throughout the region and renewed hope for peace, justice, the protection of civil liberties, and representative government. Following this turn to democracy, however, political violence persists throughout the region. In many countries it has even intensified and spread.
This course examines the puzzling persistence of political violence in democratic Latin America through the study of three countries in the region: El Salvador, Guatemala, and Mexico. To better understand the sources of violence in these countries and throughout the region, we explore politics in each case both before and after their transitions to democracy. Through in-class discussions, presentations, and short writing exercises, we strengthen our understanding of the role and sources of violence in contemporary democracies, and how and why we might reduce this violence. Finally students use the concepts, theories and analytical methods we learn through the study of the three cases to conduct independent research on political violence in a country of their own choice.
In this course, students consider the principal theories and methods for studying comparative politics. What is the state and how did it come about? What characterizes a democratic regime and how is it different from a non-democratic regime? How and why do some regimes become authoritarian and why do some regimes undergo successful democratic transition? What have been the primary approaches to economic development and its relationship to political development? How do countries approach redistributive economic policy? What is the role of identity in global politics? How and why do people mobilize and when does mobilization result in revolution or political violence?
Currently I am working with Daniel Tepler, a Bates undergraduate on a project titled “U.S.-Mexico Migration and Mexico’s Local Electoral Politics: Why do Return Migrants Run for Office and Win?,” which examines why Mexican immigrants run for mayor in their origin communities after returning from living in the United States, as well as under what conditions they win or lose. The first phase of this project involves carrying out semi-structured, in-depth interviews with numerous return-migrants who ran for local office between 2006 and 2018. We also interview other officials who worked with these return-migrants or in their municipality at the time that they ran for office.
I am specifically interested in shedding light on three important, yet underexplored, dynamics. These are: How experiences abroad interact with pre- and post-migration experiences within Mexico to influence decisions to run for office as well as electoral success; 2) How elections involving return-migrants are distinct from those involving nonmigrants; and, 3) Differences in the experiences of return migrants who compete in municipalities governed by national political parties and elections versus customary indigenous laws (Sistemas Normativas Indígenas).
Violent Democracies and their Emigrants
In 2014 a group of Mexican migrants living in the United States remitted an estimated $250 thousand dollars to support one of numerous non-state vigilante groups that formed in their origin community to combat the Caballeros Templarios, a particularly violent drug trafficking organization that appeared in 2011 (Calderón 2014). Several return migrants who served as leaders of the many vigilante groups that emerged that year now hold national elected offices (Ochoa 2014). Overseas Filipino Workers (OFW) were key to Rodrigo Duterte’s presidential victory in May of 2016, and Duterte’s aggressive, yet controversial, crime-fighting approach continues to win him widespread support among this constituency (Quinsaat, forthcoming). Furthermore, the motorcycle club Saturdah evolved from a local club made up of Indonesian immigrants living in the Netherlands into a transnational gang whose members enjoy high-level political patronage within Indonesia and serve both in the police and military (Wilson 2015).
How do the myriad forms of violence occurring in sending democracies condition the particularities of government and state-to-emigrant outreach as well as emigrant support for, demands and expectations of, and interactions with, their origin state, government and political leaders? How do migrants’ interactions with citizens and institutions in their with violent origin democracies affect politics there indirectly?
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