Was Decentralization a Mistake in Latin America? Reflections After Thirty Years

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Speakers: Tulia Falleti, Class of 1965 Endowed Term Professor of Political Science, Director of the Latin American and Latinx Studies Program, and Senior Fellow of the Leonard Davis Institute for Health Economics, University of Pennsylvania; Kent Eaton, Professor of Politics, University of California Santa Cruz; Paula Munoz, Associate Professor of Social and Political Sciences, Universidad del Pacífico
Moderated by: Steve Levitsky, Professor of Government, Harvard University; Director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies

Tulia Falleti (PhD Political Science, Northwestern University, 2003; BA Sociology, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1994) is the Class of 1965 Endowed Term Professor of Political Science, Director of the Latin American and Latinx Studies Program, and Senior Fellow of the Leonard Davis Institute for Health Economics at the University of Pennsylvania. Falleti is the author of Decentralization and Subnational Politics in Latin America (Cambridge University Press, 2010), which earned the Donna Lee Van Cott Award to the best book on political institutions by the Latin American Studies Association; and, with Santiago Cunial, of Participation in Social Policy (Elements in the Politics of Development, Cambridge University Press, 2018). She is co-editor, with Orfeo Fioretos and Adam Sheingate, of The Oxford Handbook of Historical Institutionalism (Oxford University Press, 2016), and with Emilio Parrado of Latin America Since the Left Turn (University of Pennsylvania, 2018), among other co-edited volumes. Her articles on decentralization, federalism, authoritarianism, participation, and qualitative methods have appeared in edited volumes and journals such as the American Political Science Review, Comparative Political Studies, Publius, Qualitative Sociology, Studies in Comparative International Development, and World Politics among others. As Principal Investigator of an interdisciplinary team, Falleti has been awarded a Just Futures $5 million grant from The Mellon Foundation. Collaborating with partners throughout the Americas, the Penn team is researching “Dispossessions in the Americas: The Extraction of Bodies, Land, and Cultural Heritage from La Conquista to the Present.” Among other objectives, Falleti is researching the articulation of indigenous peoples’ demands regarding territorial claims, rights to prior consultation, living well, and plurinationality; and collaborating with two non-governmental health organizations to assess the effectiveness of mobile health care for indigenous women and children in remote rural areas. As of May 2022, Falleti is serving as Tri-Chair of the Penn Faculty Senate.

Kent Eaton is a Professor of Politics at the University of California Santa Cruz. His research examines the interplay between politics and territory, focusing on the territorial (re)organization of states in the world today. His work explores how territorial interests and identities impact political outcomes -- including democracy, development and security -- and how political conflict in turn shapes the logic of territorial institutions. Specializing in comparative politics, Prof. Eaton's current projects include the design and performance of federal institutions, the causes and consequences of decentralization, and the formation and evolution of movements for territorial autonomy. Beginning in 1990 he has conducted field research in a number of Latin American countries, including Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Uruguay. His honors, award and grants include the Daniel Elazar Distinguished Scholar Award from the American Political Science Association (2021); Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars Fellowship (2015); UCSC Division of Social Sciences Distinguished Teaching Award (2008).

Paula Munoz is an Associate Professor of the Department of Social and Political Sciences of Universidad del Pacífico and Researcher at CIUP. She is a PhD and MA in Political Science (Government) from the University of Texas in Austin (United States), and a Bachelor of Social Sciences with a major in Sociology from Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. She is the author of the book Buying Audiences. Clientelism and Electoral Campaigns When Parties are Weak (Cambridge University Press, 2019). She has various publications in magazines such as Comparative Politics, Revista de Ciencia Política, Journal of Democracy, Journal of Politics in Latin America. Between January and March 2019, she was a Member of the Consultative Commission called "High Level Commission for Political Reform", oriented to propose the norms oriented for the implementation of the political reform in Peru. She is a member of Grupo Sofía, Network of women researchers in the social sciences in Peru, and of the Network of Political Scientists #NoSinMujeres.

Steven Levitsky is the Director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University. As the David Rockefeller Professor of Latin American Studies and Professor of Government, his research focuses on democratization, authoritarianism, political parties, and weak and informal institutions. He is author (with Daniel Ziblatt) of How Democracies Die (Crown, 2018), a New York Times Best-Seller that has been published in 25 languages, Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes after the Cold War (with Lucan Way) (Cambridge, 2010), and Transforming Labor-Based Parties in Latin America: Argentine Peronism in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge, 2003), and co -editor of Informal Institutions and Democracy in Latin America (with Gretchen Helmke) and The Resurgence of the Latin American Left (with Kenneth Roberts). He has written frequently for the New York Times, Foreign Affairs, Vox, The New Republic, The Monkey Cage, La República (Peru) and Folha de São Paulo (Brazil). He is currently writing a book (with Lucan Way) on the durability of revolutionary regimes. Levitsky received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley.

Presented in collaboration with Weatherhead Center for International Affairs