Programs : Ethics, Culture, Development : The Left in Latin America
Seminars/Conferences : The Left in Latin America
12/17/07: The Witherspoon Institute announces the conclusion of its recent conference on "Globalization and the Rise of the Left in Latin America." Participants found the conference very fruitful and hoped that collaboration between Latin American politicians, opinion leaders, and academics would continue in the future.A conference of the Witherspoon Institute
Co-sponsored by the Woodrow Wilson School
of Public and International Policy at Princeton University
Bowl 16, Robertson Hall, Princeton University
Princeton, New Jersey • December 6-8, 2007
Participants • Schedule • Conference Map
N.B.: The Thursday 4:30pm session will take place in Friend Center Room 101; all other sessions will be in Bowl 16 of Robertson Hall. Please see Conference Map for locations.
Inspiration
The resurgence of the Left in Latin America is a development that has received far too little serious attention, apart from oil concerns, in most media and many academic outlets. What forms of political organization have fueled the electoral success of the Left in, for example, Venezuela? The Witherspoon Institute has convened a group of speakers and discussants from across the ideological spectrum to share their thoughts about what drives the Left’s resurgence. These participants comprise academics, politicians, and policy-makers from both Latin America and the United States; all groups stand to benefit substantially from the others’ insights.
Organization
The conference will consist of a series of plenary sessions, papers, and moderated discussions between Thursday, December 6 and Saturday, December 8, 2007 at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University. The town of Princeton, New Jersey is easily accessible from Washington, DC, New York, Boston, and Philadelphia.
English and Spanish simultaneous translation will be provided in order to engage all participants at the conference more fully. In addition, translation into Spanish will allow for the more rapid dissemination of the proceedings to the Latin American public.
Professors John Londregan, Margarita Mooney, and Magaly Sanchez are the directors of the conference. Dr. Londregan holds appointments in the Politics Department as well as in the Wilson School, and is a Senior Fellow of the Witherspoon Institute. He specializes in the development of democracy and of political and economic freedom in the United States and Latin America. Dr. Mooney is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill and a Fellow of the Witherspoon Institute. Her research focuses on the intersection of international migration, economic development, religion, and Latin America. Dr. Sanchez is Professor of Urban Sociology at the Instituto de Urbanismo at the Universidad Central de Venezuela and is also currently Senior Researcher at the Office of Population Research at Princeton University. She has done research on International Latino migration to the USA and the effects on children of urban problems in Latin America.
Content
Paper and plenary sessions will parse the conference’s overarching question of the identity, origin, and future of the Left(s) currently active in Latin America. Are the governments currently in power expanding or contracting the economic freedoms and democratic institutions that have been built in Latin America over the last few decades? The variety of experience in different countries points to an intricate answer.
In Chile, for example, numerous left-leaning parties, notably the PPD (Partido por la Democracia) and PS (Partido Socialista), as well as the Greens and the Communists, have spent the seventeen years since the end of military rule organizing marginal voters—but so has the right-leaning UDI (Union Democrática Independiente). Because Chilean parties of all stripes have been involved in building popular support, the Left, which currently holds presidential power, must cooperate with parties of the Right to maintain their own popular and electoral support. By contrast, in other part of Latin America such as Venezuela, the Right has not maintained popular support, allowing the Left to enjoy much larger electoral gains and to dominate the national conversation.
In other countries, such as Argentina, the Left has regained its popularity because the public identifies market-oriented reforms with failure; in turn voters embrace more populist and statist solutions to poverty. Chilean and Mexican voters have not hesitated, however, to support more centrist or even rightist parties when market solutions have stimulated economic growth. In some instances the Left has successfully responded to the political viability of market solutions by offering moderated “New Left” platforms that seek to work within the framework of global economic competition and respect for democratic institutions. This is the case with Brazil’s Lula and with the Concertación candidates of Chile. These moderated platforms contrast with those of Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, Nestor Kirchner of Argentina, and Evo Morales of Bolivia, whose nationalizing of major industries and concentration of power in the executive branch resemble more classically populist agendas.
Clearly, the Left(s) of Latin America cannot be understood in isolation, and the conference will therefore attend to the question of a “New Right”. Seeking to break old associations between the traditional Right and military regimes, this new movement involves young intellectuals and politicians confident in the ability of democratic and market-oriented reforms to solve the region’s economic problems. The examples of El Salvador and Mexico offer opportunities to consider how this New Right reaches out to the poorest sections of the population through movements like the National Youth Institute of Mexico’s PAN (Partido de la Acción Nacional).
CONFERENCE PARTICIPANTS
Barry Ames, Andrew W. Mellow Professor of Comparative Politics, University of Pittsburgh.
• Respondent, “Legislative Politics”
Cristián Castaño Contreras, Mexican Federal Delegate (Partido de la Acción Nacional), Former director of the PAN National Youth Institute.
• Respondent, “Political Parties”
Arturo Cruz, Nicaraguan historian and current Nicaraguan Ambassador to Washington, D.C.
• Respondent, “Distributive Politics”
Scott Desposato, Professor of Political Science, University of California, San Diego.
• Speaker, “Public Opinion, Media, & Communication”
Facundo Guardado, former guerilla in El Salvador, current member of Salvadoran Congress.
• Respondent, “Legislative Politics”
Margarita López Maya, Professor at CENDES, Universidad Central de Venezuela.
• Speaker, “Legislative Politics”
Ricardo López Murphy, former Minister of Defense and of the Economy, Argentina; economist.
• Speaker, plenary session #1, “Are There Two (or More?) Lefts in
Latin America?”
Beatriz Magaloni, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Stanford University.
• Speaker, “Distributive Politics”
Carlos Alberto Montaner, syndicated columnist, author and political analyst; Cuban national residing in Spain.
• Speaker, plenary session #2, “Are There Two (or More?) Lefts in
Latin America?”
• Respondent, “Public Opinion”
Scott Morgenstern, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Pittsburgh.
• Speaker, “Political Parties”
Patricio Navia, Master Teacher, General Studies Program and Adjunct Professor of Latin American Studies, New York University; Professor of Political Science, Universidad Diego Portales (Chile).
• Speaker, “Are There Two Lefts in Latin America?” (academic
session)
Paulo Paiva, former Minister of Labor, Brazil; former Vice President, Inter-American Developing Bank.
• Speaker, plenary session #2, “Are There Two (or More?) Lefts in
Latin America?”
Teodoro Petkoff, Venezuelan politician, former Minister of Economic Planning; editor, Tal Cual, formerly of the party Movimiento al Socialismo.
• Speaker, plenary session #2, “Are There Two (or More?) Lefts in
Latin America?”
• Respondent, “Are There Two (or More?) Lefts in Latin
America?” (academic session)
Sergio Ramírez, Nicaraguan politician and writer; former Vice President of Nicaragua.
• Respondent, “Are There Two (or More?) Lefts in Latin
America?” (academic session)
Francisco Rodríguez, Professor of Economics and Latin American Studies, Wesleyan University.
• Speaker, “Distributive Politics”
Sebastián Saiegh, Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of California, San Diego.
• Speaker, “Legislative Politics”
Susan Stokes, John S. Saden Professor of Political Science and Director of the Yale Program on Democracy, Yale University.
• Speaker, “Public Opinion”
About the Witherspoon Institute
The Witherspoon Institute is a 501(c)(3) research center that works to enhance public understanding of the political, moral, and philosophical principles of free and democratic societies. It also promotes the application of these principles to contemporary problems.
The Institute is named for John Witherspoon, a leading member of the Continental Congress, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, the sixth President of Princeton University and a mentor to James Madison. However important these credentials and his other notable accomplishments are, it is foremost Witherspoon’s commitment to liberal education and his recognition of the dignity of human freedom—whether it be personal, political, or religious—which inspire this Institute’s name.
In furtherance of its educational mission, the Witherspoon Institute supports a variety of scholarly activities. It sponsors research and teaching by means of a fellowship program. It organizes conferences, lectures, and colloquia. It encourages and assists scholarly relations and collaborations among individuals sharing the Institute’s interest in the foundations of a free society. The Witherspoon Institute also serves as a resource for the media and other organizations seeking speakers and public comment on matters of concern to the Institute and its associated scholars.
THE WITHERSPOON INSTITUTE
16 Stockton Street
Princeton, NJ 08540
tel: 609.688.8779 | fax: 609.688.1027
Please direct inquiries to Duncan Sahner (dsahner@winst.org).
Seminars/Conferences : The Left in Latin America
12/17/07: The Witherspoon Institute announces the conclusion of its recent conference on "Globalization and the Rise of the Left in Latin America." Participants found the conference very fruitful and hoped that collaboration between Latin American politicians, opinion leaders, and academics would continue in the future.
Globalization and the Rise of the Left in Latin America
Co-sponsored by the Woodrow Wilson School
of Public and International Policy at Princeton University
Princeton, New Jersey • December 6-8, 2007
N.B.: The Thursday 4:30pm session will take place in Friend Center Room 101; all other sessions will be in Bowl 16 of Robertson Hall. Please see Conference Map for locations.
Inspiration
The resurgence of the Left in Latin America is a development that has received far too little serious attention, apart from oil concerns, in most media and many academic outlets. What forms of political organization have fueled the electoral success of the Left in, for example, Venezuela? The Witherspoon Institute has convened a group of speakers and discussants from across the ideological spectrum to share their thoughts about what drives the Left’s resurgence. These participants comprise academics, politicians, and policy-makers from both Latin America and the United States; all groups stand to benefit substantially from the others’ insights.
Organization
The conference will consist of a series of plenary sessions, papers, and moderated discussions between Thursday, December 6 and Saturday, December 8, 2007 at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University. The town of Princeton, New Jersey is easily accessible from Washington, DC, New York, Boston, and Philadelphia.
English and Spanish simultaneous translation will be provided in order to engage all participants at the conference more fully. In addition, translation into Spanish will allow for the more rapid dissemination of the proceedings to the Latin American public.
Professors John Londregan, Margarita Mooney, and Magaly Sanchez are the directors of the conference. Dr. Londregan holds appointments in the Politics Department as well as in the Wilson School, and is a Senior Fellow of the Witherspoon Institute. He specializes in the development of democracy and of political and economic freedom in the United States and Latin America. Dr. Mooney is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill and a Fellow of the Witherspoon Institute. Her research focuses on the intersection of international migration, economic development, religion, and Latin America. Dr. Sanchez is Professor of Urban Sociology at the Instituto de Urbanismo at the Universidad Central de Venezuela and is also currently Senior Researcher at the Office of Population Research at Princeton University. She has done research on International Latino migration to the USA and the effects on children of urban problems in Latin America.
Content
Paper and plenary sessions will parse the conference’s overarching question of the identity, origin, and future of the Left(s) currently active in Latin America. Are the governments currently in power expanding or contracting the economic freedoms and democratic institutions that have been built in Latin America over the last few decades? The variety of experience in different countries points to an intricate answer.
In Chile, for example, numerous left-leaning parties, notably the PPD (Partido por la Democracia) and PS (Partido Socialista), as well as the Greens and the Communists, have spent the seventeen years since the end of military rule organizing marginal voters—but so has the right-leaning UDI (Union Democrática Independiente). Because Chilean parties of all stripes have been involved in building popular support, the Left, which currently holds presidential power, must cooperate with parties of the Right to maintain their own popular and electoral support. By contrast, in other part of Latin America such as Venezuela, the Right has not maintained popular support, allowing the Left to enjoy much larger electoral gains and to dominate the national conversation.
In other countries, such as Argentina, the Left has regained its popularity because the public identifies market-oriented reforms with failure; in turn voters embrace more populist and statist solutions to poverty. Chilean and Mexican voters have not hesitated, however, to support more centrist or even rightist parties when market solutions have stimulated economic growth. In some instances the Left has successfully responded to the political viability of market solutions by offering moderated “New Left” platforms that seek to work within the framework of global economic competition and respect for democratic institutions. This is the case with Brazil’s Lula and with the Concertación candidates of Chile. These moderated platforms contrast with those of Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, Nestor Kirchner of Argentina, and Evo Morales of Bolivia, whose nationalizing of major industries and concentration of power in the executive branch resemble more classically populist agendas.
Clearly, the Left(s) of Latin America cannot be understood in isolation, and the conference will therefore attend to the question of a “New Right”. Seeking to break old associations between the traditional Right and military regimes, this new movement involves young intellectuals and politicians confident in the ability of democratic and market-oriented reforms to solve the region’s economic problems. The examples of El Salvador and Mexico offer opportunities to consider how this New Right reaches out to the poorest sections of the population through movements like the National Youth Institute of Mexico’s PAN (Partido de la Acción Nacional).
Barry Ames, Andrew W. Mellow Professor of Comparative Politics, University of Pittsburgh.
• Respondent, “Legislative Politics”
Cristián Castaño Contreras, Mexican Federal Delegate (Partido de la Acción Nacional), Former director of the PAN National Youth Institute.
• Respondent, “Political Parties”
Arturo Cruz, Nicaraguan historian and current Nicaraguan Ambassador to Washington, D.C.
• Respondent, “Distributive Politics”
Scott Desposato, Professor of Political Science, University of California, San Diego.
• Speaker, “Public Opinion, Media, & Communication”
Facundo Guardado, former guerilla in El Salvador, current member of Salvadoran Congress.
• Respondent, “Legislative Politics”
Margarita López Maya, Professor at CENDES, Universidad Central de Venezuela.
• Speaker, “Legislative Politics”
Ricardo López Murphy, former Minister of Defense and of the Economy, Argentina; economist.
• Speaker, plenary session #1, “Are There Two (or More?) Lefts in
Latin America?”
Beatriz Magaloni, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Stanford University.
• Speaker, “Distributive Politics”
Carlos Alberto Montaner, syndicated columnist, author and political analyst; Cuban national residing in Spain.
• Speaker, plenary session #2, “Are There Two (or More?) Lefts in
Latin America?”
• Respondent, “Public Opinion”
Scott Morgenstern, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Pittsburgh.
• Speaker, “Political Parties”
Patricio Navia, Master Teacher, General Studies Program and Adjunct Professor of Latin American Studies, New York University; Professor of Political Science, Universidad Diego Portales (Chile).
• Speaker, “Are There Two Lefts in Latin America?” (academic
session)
Paulo Paiva, former Minister of Labor, Brazil; former Vice President, Inter-American Developing Bank.
• Speaker, plenary session #2, “Are There Two (or More?) Lefts in
Latin America?”
Teodoro Petkoff, Venezuelan politician, former Minister of Economic Planning; editor, Tal Cual, formerly of the party Movimiento al Socialismo.
• Speaker, plenary session #2, “Are There Two (or More?) Lefts in
Latin America?”
• Respondent, “Are There Two (or More?) Lefts in Latin
America?” (academic session)
Sergio Ramírez, Nicaraguan politician and writer; former Vice President of Nicaragua.
• Respondent, “Are There Two (or More?) Lefts in Latin
America?” (academic session)
Francisco Rodríguez, Professor of Economics and Latin American Studies, Wesleyan University.
• Speaker, “Distributive Politics”
Sebastián Saiegh, Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of California, San Diego.
• Speaker, “Legislative Politics”
Susan Stokes, John S. Saden Professor of Political Science and Director of the Yale Program on Democracy, Yale University.
• Speaker, “Public Opinion”
About the Witherspoon Institute
The Witherspoon Institute is a 501(c)(3) research center that works to enhance public understanding of the political, moral, and philosophical principles of free and democratic societies. It also promotes the application of these principles to contemporary problems.
The Institute is named for John Witherspoon, a leading member of the Continental Congress, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, the sixth President of Princeton University and a mentor to James Madison. However important these credentials and his other notable accomplishments are, it is foremost Witherspoon’s commitment to liberal education and his recognition of the dignity of human freedom—whether it be personal, political, or religious—which inspire this Institute’s name.
In furtherance of its educational mission, the Witherspoon Institute supports a variety of scholarly activities. It sponsors research and teaching by means of a fellowship program. It organizes conferences, lectures, and colloquia. It encourages and assists scholarly relations and collaborations among individuals sharing the Institute’s interest in the foundations of a free society. The Witherspoon Institute also serves as a resource for the media and other organizations seeking speakers and public comment on matters of concern to the Institute and its associated scholars.
16 Stockton Street
Princeton, NJ 08540
tel: 609.688.8779 | fax: 609.688.1027
Updated November 29, 2007