This book opens the institutional Pandora's box of conflict management, focusing on two central questions: To what degree do Latin American political contexts create spaces for institutional designs that deal with conflicts in a feasible and legitimate way? How can institutional architects exploit such spaces to manage conflict innovatively? The authors' point of departure is that institutions are primarily conflict-solving entities guiding individual and social behaviour, and that they set out to be much more than rules of the game: institutions do (and should) evolve and are eventually redesigned to meet human necessities. In light of the pending socioeconomic challenges in most of Latin America, institutional designers are confronted with the fact that nothing inherent within the institutions guarantees that conflict is processed in ways that tackle distributive and ethnic inequalities.
Jorge P Gordin is Associate Professor of Political Science at Universidad Diego Portales and Executive Editor of the Journal of Politics in Latin America. Previously, he was Senior Research Fellow at the German Institute of Global and Area Studies, Hamburg and held visiting positions at Universität Hamburg, Leuphana Universität Lüneburg, and the Fundação Getulio Vargas, Sao Paulo. He has published numerous peer-reviewed articles in the fields of comparative political economy, institutional design and federalism and he is the Principal Investigator of the research project, The Architecture of Diversity: Institutional Design and Conflict Management in the Americas, funded by the International Development Research Centre, Canada. Gordin is also leading a research project on the fiscal effects of legislative malapportionment in Argentina, Brazil and Mexico funded by the Chilean National Fund for Scientific and Technological Research, FONDECYT.
Lucio R Renno is Associate Professor in the Political Science Institute of the University of Brasília. He is also a CNPq 1D Researcher. Currently, he is the President of the Planning Company of the Federal District (Codeplan), a public firm that conducts household surveys, data analysis, and public policy evaluation. His publications have appeared in Presidential Studies Quarterly, Comparative Political Studies, American Journal of Political Science, Legislative Studies Quarterly, Latin American Politics and Society, Journal of Politics, Journal of Latin American Studies, Journal of Legislative Studies, and Electoral Studies, among others. He is co-editor of Reforma Politica: Lições da História Recente, Reforma Política em Questão, and Legislativo Brasileiro em Perspectiva Comparada, Editora da UFMG, Belo Horizonte, 2009. Renno is Senior Associated Researcher of the research project, The Architecture of Diversity: Institutional Design and Conflict Management in the Americas, funded by the International Development Research Centre, Canada.
Juan Carlos Arellano is Associate Professor of the Department of Sociology and Political at the Universidad Católica de Temuco. He researches institutional change and political processes in Latin America. Juan has been a researcher for the Fondecyt Regulares projects and an evaluator for national and international scientific journals. He is a member of the Chilean Association of Political Science and was an advisor to its board between 2015 and 2016.
Allyson L Bentonis a Reader in the Department of Government at the University of Essex. A native of Southern California, she received a BA in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley and a PhD in Political Science from the University of California, Los Angeles. Before joining the University of Essex, Allyson was a member of the Department of International Politics at City, University of London, as well as the Department of Political Studies at the Center for Research and Teaching in Economics (CIDE) in Mexico City. She has also been a visiting professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of São Paulo, Brazil and a visiting scholar in the Institute of Latin American Studies at the German Institute of Global and Area Studies in Hamburg, Germany.
Allyson‘s academic research covers topics in both international and comparative political economy. Both lines of research have been enriched by her time working as a Latin American political risk analyst and researching, living, and working in the region.
Frederico Bertholini is a Professor at the Institute of Political Science at the University of Brasília, as well as a LAPCIPP researcher. He has studied the effect of political institutions on public policy outcomes; executive-legislative relations; coalition management; citizenship and participation. Frederico's research also includes the application of quantitative and qualitative methods on political and policy analysis.
Daniel Chasquetti obtained his PhD in Political Science from the Universidad de la República. His research interests include the relationship between the Executive Branch and the Legislative Branch, political parties and electoral systems. He has written three books as well as numerous book chapters and articles in scientific journals including Legislative Studies Quarterly, The Journal of Legislative Studies, and Journal of Politics in Latin America.
Carlos Gervasoni is Associate Professor of Political Science and International Studies at the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, Buenos Aires, Argentina. His articles have appeared in journals such as Comparative Political Studies, Democratization, Party Politics, Política y Gobierno, and World Politics.
Lucas González holds a PhD in political science at the University of Notre Dame. His current research interests are federalism, redistribution, and the political economy of redistributive transfers. He also holds an MA in Political Science (University of Notre Dame), an MSc in Latin American Studies (University of Oxford), and an MA in Public Policy (Georgetown University-UNSAM).
German Lodola has a PhD in political science from the University of Pittsburgh, and is a research fellow at CONICET and a professor in the Department of Political Science and International Studies at the University Torcuato Di Tella. He has published several articles on subnational politics and political behaviour in Latin America.
Olivia Montecino Zúñiga is a Political Scientist advisor at the Center for Strategic and Public Security Studies, Carabineros de Chile.
Patricio Navia is a Professor of Liberal Studies and Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at New York University. Navia is also a Professor of Political Science at Universidad Diego Portales in Chile. Ph.D. in Politics from New York University, an M.A. in Political Science from the University of Chicago and a B.A. in Political Sciences and Sociology from the University of Illinois at Chicago. He has been a visiting professor at Princeton University, New School University, Universidad de Salamanca, Universidad de Chile and NYU Buenos Aires, and a visiting fellow at the University of Miami. He has published scholarly articles and book chapters on democratization, electoral rules and democratic institutions in Latin America.
Carlos Pereira is a Professor of Public Policy and Political Institutions at the Getúlio Vargas Foundation – FGV, Rio de Janeiro. He previously held Visiting Research Fellowship positions at Brookings Institution and University of Oxford and was Assistant Professor of Political Science at Michigan State University. His work has appeared in journals such as Journal of Politics, Journal of Democracy, Comparative Political Studies, Governance, Legislative Studies Quarterly, Political Research Quarterly, Electoral Studies, and Journal of Legislative Studies, among others.
Jaqueline Porto Zulini is a professor of political science at Fundação Getúlio Vargas. With a PhD in political science from the University of São Paulo (USP), she completed a post-doctorate at the Center for Public Sector Politics and Economics at Fundação Getúlio Vargas (CEPESP / FGV). She has worked as a researcher at the Brazilian Center for Analysis and Planning (CEBRAP) and at the Center for Comparative and International Studies at the University of São Paulo (Neci-USP). She specialises in the study of Brazilian political institutions with an emphasis on elections, parliamentary behaviour and Executive-Legislative relations.
Andrea Pozas-Loyo is a professor at the IIJ-UNAM (Institute of Legal Research). She is a visiting researcher at the Center for Latin-American Studies in Georgetown University, Distinguished Research Fellow in Constitutional Studies at UT Texas Law, and co-chair of the Mexican Chapter of ICON-s. She holds a Ph.D. and a M.A. in Politics by New York University, a MA in Philosophy by the New School of Social Research and made a postdoctoral residence at the Juan March Foundation in Madrid. She was Visiting Scholar at Stanford University’s CASBS, coordinated the Seminar of Empirical Legal Studies at the IIJ-UNAM (2018-2022) and led the IIJ-UNAM J.D. program from 2018 to 2020.
Her research areas are constitutional and political theory and the empirical study of legal phenomena. Her research topics are constitutional change and efficacy, the relation between law, social norms and organizational practices, and the judiciary in Mexico. She has published in leading international journals and editorials on these topics.
Matthew Rhodes-Purdy is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Clemson University. His research combines democratic theory with political behavior to study challenges to contemporary democracies, especially populism and extremism. He focuses on the role strong citizen voice can play in enhancing legitimacy and minimising anti-democratic, authoritarian, and extremist politics. His most recent book is Age of Discontent: Populism, Extremism, and Conspiracy Theories in Contemporary Democracies (with Rachel Navarre and Steven Utych). This book shows how economic and cultural grievances interact to produce the wave of democratic discontent seen since the 2008 financial crisis in Europe and the Americas. His work has appeared in The Journal of Politics, Perspectives on Politics, Political Research Quarterly, Comparative Politics, Political Studies, Democratization, Latin American Research Review, and The Journal of Experimental Political Science.
Paolo Ricci is a professor of Political Science at the University of São Paulo, Brazil. He received his BA from Bologna University (1997) and his MA (2001) and PhD (2006) from the University of São Paulo. His emphasis is on comparative political science, working mainly on the following themes: legislative process, electoral systems, political parties and history of political institutions. He has published numerous peer-reviewed articles in international journals like Journal of Latin American Studies, Dados, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, as well as book chapters. Among other things, he has worked on two major research projects. The first, concerning the role of elections before democracy focusing on electoral fraud, political behavior and political competition in Brazil First Republic (1889-1930). This research involves aspects of different areas like political science, history and law. The second project was an investigation of executive-legislative relations at sub-national level in Brazil after 1988.
Julio Ríos-Figueroa is Associate Professor at the Department of Law at ITAM in Mexico City. Before joining ITAM, he was Professor of Political Science at CIDE. Julio received his Ph.D. in Politics from New York University (NYU). His research focuses on comparative judicial politics, the rule of law, and empirical legal studies with an empirical focus on the Latin American region.
Julio is the author of Constitutional Courts as Mediators. Armed Conflict, Civil-Military Relations, and the Rule of Law in Latin America as well as co-editor with Gretchen Helmke of the volume Courts in Latin America both published by Cambridge University Press.
Sergio Toro-Maureira is an Full Professor at the Universidad Mayor, Chile. His research topics are the logic of representation in Latin American political systems and the science of information for public policies. In both subjects, he was responsible for internationals (UNDP, IDB) and, nationals (FONDECYT, FONDEF, etc.) projects. His works have been published in the Journal of Legislative Studies, Electoral Studies, European Journal of Political Economy, Latin American Research Bulletin, World Political Science Review, Journal of Political Science, among others. He was elected president of the Chilean Association of Political Science (2014-2016).
