LASA 2010 LAPIS panels

We set up a discussion forum for potential LAPIS panels for the next LASA congress (in Toronto, October 2010). Please check it out at our Ning site, if you're interested in helping us shape our panels for the upcoming LASA congress.

New LAPIS social network site

As blog/web coordinator for LAPIS, I've recently set up a Ning community for LAPIS. If you would like to join, please email me at mcentellas@gmail.com and I'll add you as soon as I can (I'll be traveling over the summer).

So far, we (Anibal Perez-Liñan and I) are just starting to set up the Ning site. For those of you unfamiliar with Ning, it is a social network site that can be tailored to specific groups and/or organizations. If you're familiar with Facebook, it's like that. Except that it is limited in membership to only those people who are invited by administrators (so far that is Anibal and myself, though we can expand that to the rest of the LAPIS executive community and a few others later). So this is meant to be a "professional" social network.

My idea for it is to stand as a place where those of us who study Latin American politics (and particularly political institutions) can keep in contact ("network"), share ideas (any member can start a discussion forum), post links to important resources and/or news relevant to our scholarly community (e.g. new data sources, calls for papers, interesting conferences, etc.). Hopefully, it will be updated more frequently than the LAPIS blog (my apologies for having dropped the ball on that this past semester), but not so frequently that it becomes a burden. More than anything else, it should be an interactive forum for LAPIS news (like a section newsletter).

To take a look at the site as it currently stands, here is the link:

http://latinamericanpolitics.ning.com

Please let me know what you think. I'll be traveling this summer (doing research in Bolivia), but will try to keep up with my email as best I can.

Election Data Request (from CLEA)

David Backer (William & Mary College) is looking for district-level election data for Latin America. I'm going to provide him with data for Bolivia (1985-2005), but he is looking for data from other countries. This is part of a larger project he is working on with Ken Kollman and Allen Hicken (University of Michigan) and Daniele Caramani (University of St. Gallen). The data will be made publicly available as part of the Constituency-Level Election Archive (CLEA) online at: http://www.electiondataarchive.org.

The specific countries/years they are looking for are:

Argentina: pre-1983
Bolivia: pre-2005
Belize: pre-1979
Brazil: pre-1945 and 1966-1978
Chile: pre-1941
Colombia: 1931-1998
Costa Rica: pre-1953
Ecuador: pre-2002 except for 1979, 1984 and 1988
El Salvador: pre-2000
Guatemala: pre-2003
Guyana: pre-1997
Honduras: pre-1980 + 1989
Mexico: pre-1998
Nicaragua: pre-2001
Panama: pre-1999
Paraguay: pre-2003
Peru: pre-2001 except for 1995
Venezuela: pre-1998 except for 1968-1983

Additionally, they are also looking for data from the following Caribbean countries:

Anguilla: pre-2000
Antigua & Barbuda: pre-1971
Aruba: all but 1994-1997
Bahamas: pre-2002
Barbados: pre-1966
Bermuda: pre-1989
British Virgin Islands: pre-2003
Cayman Islands: pre-1984
Domincan Republic: pre-1962
Dominica: pre-1995
French Polynesia: all
Grenada: pre-1976
Guadeloupe: all
Haiti: pre-2000
Martinique: all
Mayotte: all
Montserrat: all
Netherlands Antilles: all
New Caledonia: all
St. Barthelemy: all
St. Helena: all
St. Kitts & Nevis: pre-1995
St. Lucia: 1987 (x 2)
St. Martin: all
St. Pierre & Miquelon: all
St. Vincent & Grenadine: pre-2001 except for 1957
Trinidad and Tobago: pre-1995

If you are insterested, you may contact David Backer directly at: daback@wm.edu

LAPIS Travel Grants

Two grants of $1000 each will be offered to members of the Section to present their research at the Rio Congress. Priority will be given to graduate students and colleagues residing in Latin America. All applicants must be listed on the program as presenters and must be members of LAPIS at the time of the application. The selection committee will be formed by Todd Eisenstadt (Chair, American University), Flavia Freidenberg (Universidad de Salamanca), and Gabriel Negretto (CIDE).

To apply for the travel grant, please request an application form from: eisensta@american.edu, flavia@usal.es, gabriel.negretto@cide.edu

The deadline for grant applications is May 11, 2009. Decisions will be announced on May 29.

LAPIS Best Paper Award

An award of $300 will be offered to the best paper on political institutions presented at the Montreal conference. The award committee will be formed by Cynthia McClintock (Chair, George Washington University), Ryan Carlin (Georgia State University), and Patricio Navia (Universidad Diego Portales).Please e-mail the proposed paper, together with a short note of nomination, to: mcclin@gwu.edu, polrec@langate.gsu.edu, patricio.navia@udp.clThe deadline to nominate papers is May 11, 2009. The selection will be announced on June 5.

Paper on Mexico's PRD by LAPIS member in LAPS

Tina Hilgers (2008), "Causes and Consequences of Political Clientelism: Mexico's PRD in Comparative Perspective", Latin American Politics and Society 50 (4): 123-153.

Abstract:
PRD politicians and officials widely use clientelism to structure their relationships with citizens. This is due not only to the entrenchment of clientelism in Mexican politics or to high rates of poverty and inequality, but also to the limited institutionalization of democratic rules inside the party. The last stems largely from the party's electoral strategy in its formative years, and has resulted in uncontrolled factional battles that play out through clientelism. The Brazilian PT faced external and internal conditions quite similar to those of the PRD, but its early focus on organization building and policy change allowed it to avoid clientelism to a greater degree. This analysis problematizes the trend of using minimalist definitions that assume clientelism to be nondemocratic because these approaches result in conceptual stretching and decreased explanatory power.

Information on the Peruvian Congress

César Delgado, who is a professor at the Catholic University in Lima and also an official in Congress, has posted his materials on the Peruvian Congress:

"In the papers, books and presentations you may find not only analysis on the current performance of the Peruvian parliamentary institutions, but you will also obtain some historical and cultural explanations to the development of parliamentary behaviour, which I think could be properly considered sources for further academic enquiries."

In case you are interested you may check

http://arrugasparlamentarias.blogspot.com

http://arrugasparlamentarias.blogspot.com

Posdoctoral Opportunity at Bentley

The Jeanne and Dan Valente Center for the Arts and Sciences at Bentley College, a four-year private university in greater Boston is pleased toannounce that it is accepting applications for its 2009-2010postdoctoral fellowship. The Center seeks postdoctoral students fromany discipline in the arts and sciences who are working within the broadtheme identified below. The 2009-10 theme, "Behaving Ourselves:Motivation and Agency Across the Disciplines," is described at theValente Center's website,http://www.bentley.edu/arts-sciences-center/index.cfm, as is theapplication process. The Valente Center encourages interdisciplinaryprojects and work that connects the arts and sciences to businessdisciplines. Candidates must have PhD in hand by June 30, 2009, maynot have received their doctoral degree earlier than September 2006, andmust be in residence at Bentley College during the fellowship period.The postdoctoral fellow will receive a total stipend of $40,000 for thenine-month residency as well as office space and borrowing privileges atBentley and research libraries in the Boston area, as needed. A c.v.,project title and one-page abstract, 10-page project description,article-length writing sample, brief description of teaching interests,and two letters of recommendation should be submitted no later than December 1st, 2008.

MPSA: Panel on Campaigns

Joy Langston and I (Allyson Benton) would like to put a panel together forthe Midwest on political campaigns in Latin America. We currently have aproject on campaign visit strategies in Mexico and would love papers onMexico or other nations. Papers could be on campaign visits, spending,spots, etc…. at any level of government. Is there anyone working on thistopic that might be interested in participating? If you are, please emailAllyson Benton (allyson.benton@cide.edu). Thanks,Allyson Benton Dra. Allyson Lucinda BentonProfesor-InvestigadorDivisión de Estudios PolíticosCentro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas, A.C.Carretera México-Toluca 3655Colonia Lomas de Santa FéMéxico, D.F. C.P. 01210Tel.: (52) 55-5727-9800, ext. 2408Fax.: (52) 55-5727-9871E-Mail: allyson.benton@cide.edu

Call for Papers on Executive-Legislative Relations

Colombia International, a refereed journal published by Political Science Department of the University of the Andes in Bogotá, is inviting interested parties to submit articles for a special edition on the relationship between the executive and legislative branches of government, more specifically related to the allocation of public investment. This edition will be published in December, 2008. We are seeking original articles that explore and broaden current debates pertaining to the following themes:

- Decentralization and fiscal policy
- Political process and public investment
- Electoral influences and public investments
- Pork barrel allocations
- Budgeting and the political cycle
- Political economy of clientelism
- Political economy of populism

Articles should not exceed 9,000 words (Times New Roman, 12) including graphs, tables, footnotes and bibliography. The bibliography must be placed at the end of the text. Book references must include: author's first and second names, title, place of publication, publisher, year of last edition, and pages cited; references must include: author's first and second names, title in quotation marks, name of journal, magazine or newspaper, volume, year of publication (if it is a daily newspaper, include full dates and cite specific pages).

Occasionally, documents in English and Portuguese will be considered for the publication. Articles, including an abstract, should be sent electronically (in Word or rtf) by August 1, 2008 to the following recipient:

Luis Bernardo Mejía
Assistant Professor
Political Science Department
Universidad de los Andes
Bogotá, Colombia
e-mail: luimejia@uniandes.edu.co

Salamanca - Convocatoria de Cátedras de profesores invitados 2008-2009

El Instituto Interuniversitario de Iberoamérica de la Universidad de Salamanca ha acordado lanzar una nueva convocatoria del programa de cooperación científica con América Latina en elmarco de su Posgrado Oficial en Estudios Latinoamericanos. El objetivo es reforzar los lazos académicos que ya viene manteniendo con la comunidad latinoamericana. Por ello, en el curso académico 2007-2008, el Instituto creó tres cátedras en los campos de Literatura, Ciencia Política y Economía, a partir de los cuales, docentes e investigadores especialistas en el área latinoamericana formarán parte del programa docente del Master Oficial en Estudios Latinoamericanos. Las Cátedras son las siguientes:

Cátedra de Ciencia Política Federico Gil
Cátedra de Economía Tomás de Mercado
Cátedra de Literatura Latinoamericana Miguel de Unamuno

Las propuestas para el curso universitario 2008-2009 pueden enviarse por correo electrónico
o por correo postal, deben llegar antes del 30 de mayo de 2008 y deben dirigirse a:

Cátedras de Profesores Invitados
Instituto Interuniversitario de Iberoamérica
Universidad de Salamanca
C/ Fonseca, 2
37002 Salamanca
España

o al correo electrónico: mel@usal.es

Para solicitar cualquier información complementaria, pueden dirigirse a:

Flavia Freidenberg
Coordinadora Académica del Máster en Estudios Latinoamericanos
flavia@usal.es

La Comisión Académica del Posgrado realizará la selección de las candidaturas y comunicará
su decisión antes del 1 de julio de 2008 a través de la página web del Instituto y en carta
personalizada a los beneficiarios seleccionados

New book on courts & policy in Brazil

Judging Policy: Courts and Policy Reform in Democratic Brazil (Stanford University Press, 2008), by Matthew M. Taylor, University of São Paulo.

Drawing on the experience of the Brazilian federal courts since the transition to democracy, Judging Policy examines the judiciary's role in debating and formulating public policy in Latin America’s largest democracy. During a period of energetic policy reform, the high salience of many policies and a judicial structure conducive to policy contestation ensured that Brazilian courts would become an important institution at the heart of the policy process. Through a study of the full federal court system, this book develops a framework with cross-national implications for understanding how courts influence policy actors' political strategies and the distribution of power in new democracies.