15Dec 2016
RC 34 Perfomed a Seminar in Chile: “Quality of Democracy: NEW RESEARCH AGENDA”
08:13 - By Jose Verissimo - Events
Seminar “Quality of Democracy: NEW RESEARCH AGENDA”
Santiago de Chile, September 14th and 15th, 2016
The development of democratic quality in Latin America displays a mixed record. Latin Americans today live in freer and more democratic countries than ever before, nearly all Latin American countries have resumed a growth path and most governments are governing more effective than their predecessors did. At the same time, scholars state a persistently low quality of democracy across a large number of countries.
Organizers with Chilean President, Ms Michelle Bachelet
The Workshop “Quality of democracy in Latin America” brought together scholars in order to discuss theoretical as well as empirical challenges in the study of Latin American democratic quality. This Workshop was a cooperation of several entities like the Research Committee 34 “Quality of Democracy”, the Asociación Latinoamericana de Ciencia Política (ALACIP), the Asociación Mexicana de Ciencia Política (AMECIP), the Network of Quality of Democracy in Latin America and the Fundación Chile 21. The latter also was the local organizer together with Flacso Chile.
The main topics discussed were: Which ‘arenas’ or ‘dimensions’ of the quality of democracy in Latin America are especially vulnerable to stagnation or loss of democratic quality?, How can the heterogeneity of levels of democratic quality be explained?, Are there external factors like regional organization that influence the quality of democratic in the one or the other way?, Which relevance do new developments on the continent like the ‘left turn’ or the neo-constitutionalism have?
More than 20 papers were presented in three areas: democratic theory, methodology about quality of democracy, and empirical research of democracies. Several panels presented national and international specialists on the topic. Leonardo Morlino, Marianne Kneuer, David Altman discussed about “The democratic paradigm is crisis?” Another panel focused on the state of the Chilean democracy discussing Manuel Antonio Garretón (Universidad de Chile), Laurence Whitehead (Oxford University) and Carlos Huneeus (Universidad de Chile).
Finally, there was a protocolled meeting between the organizers of this seminar with Michelle Bachelet, President of Chile in the last day.