Center for Inter-American Policy and Research (CIPR) - Tulane University

03/03/2026

Join the Center for Inter-American Policy and Research on Monday, March 9, for the 3rd event in CIPR’s spring speaker series: Contemporary Challenges to Latin American Democracies.

The speaker, Jackie Smith (University of Pittsburgh), will give a talk entitled "Reinventing Democracy in the 21st Century: Global-Local Strategies of Human Rights Cities."

📆 Monday, March 9, 2026
🕚 12:30 p.m.
📍 100A Greenleaf Conference Room

✨ The Spring 2026 CIPR Speaker Series examines four critical dimensions of democratic governance in contemporary Latin America, bringing together leading scholars whose research illuminates how structural inequalities, violence, economic constraints, and environmental pressures shape political representation and citizen-state relations across the region. Together, these sessions offer a comprehensive analysis of the interconnected challenges facing Latin American democracies, bridging insights from comparative politics, political economy, sociology, and development studies to understand contemporary challenges to Latin American Democracies.

---

Upcoming guests:
April 6: Andres Mejia (University of Notre Dame)
April 13: Eduardo Moncada (Barnard College)

01/27/2026

Felicidades to our former post-doctoral fellow Rachel Schwartz!

YA EN SOPHOS
“Socavar el Estado desde adentro: Los legados institucionales de la guerra civil en Centroamérica”
De Rachel A. Schwartz

🏆 Ganador de dos premios internacionales en ciencia política
📚 La obra definitiva sobre legados institucionales de guerra en Centroamérica
🇬🇹 Esencial para entender Guatemala contemporánea

Ya disponible en SOPHOS.

No se pierdan la presentación con la autora este viernes 30 de enero a las 19:00, con Edgar Gutiérrez Aiza.

Los esperamos.

11/26/2025

Join us next Monday, December 1st, at 12:30pm in the Greenleaf Conference Room (100A Jones Hall).

Benjamin Garcia-Holgado (University of Delaware) will give a talk entitled: "Democratic Erosion as a Sequence of Regime Events: A Micro-Level Conceptualization."

This is the 3rd speaker in CIPR’s fall series: Democratic Backsliding in Latin America.

05/28/2025

Please join us on Friday, May 30th for the seminar: Towards New Logics of Representation in Latin America 9:30am – 12:30pm on Zoom

02/12/2025

Mark your calendars for "Narrative, Listening, and the Democratization of Justice in Mexico" with Adriana Alfaro Altamirano from Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México.

📅 Wednesday, February 19 at 12:00 p.m.
📍 CIPR Conference Room, 7025 Freret Street

02/11/2025

Please mark your calendars for our Spring 2025 miniseries: Democracy and Authoritarianism in Latin America
The first of the three talks will take place on February 17th at 1:00 p.m. in the Greenleaf Conference Room.

Christopher L. Carter (University of Virginia) will give a talk entitled: The Long Shadow Of Extraction: The Origins of Indigenous Autonomy Demands

01/31/2025

As part of CIPR’s Spring 2025 Series: Public Opinion and Political Behavior in Latin America, Mollie Cohen (Purdue University) will give a talk entitled "How Partisan Poll Watchers Affect Citizen Confidence in Elections." This talk will take place Monday, February 3 at noon in the Greenleaf Conference Room.

Around the world, partisan poll watchers observe as elections are conducted and votes tallied. Poll watchers are meant to safeguard elections by ensuring fair vote counting and addressing irregularities in real time. Ideally, partisan poll watchers could boost citizen confidence in elections. However, their involvement in malfeasance may instead raise suspicion and decrease voter trust. This talk examines how partisan poll watchers affect voter confidence using data from a survey experiment and exit poll in Peru. Results show that partisans tend to trust elections more when partisan poll watchers are present, while voters with negative affiliations toward the represented party express less trust. These findings have significant implications for perceptions of electoral fairness and the long-term legitimacy and stability of democracy.

11/07/2024

Please mark your calendars for the second speaker in CIPR’s 2024 Fall Series: Political Violence and Democratic Representation in Latin America.

Isabel Laterzo-Tingley (UT Austin) will join us on Monday, November 11, at noon in the Greenleaf Conference Room (100A Jones Hall). She will give a talk entitled "Political Positions on Public Security," in which she’ll discuss why the common perception of public security policy measures as either tough-on-crime strategies or socially oriented, preventative solutions is an oversimplification, using Brazil as a case study.

10/23/2024

CIPR Post-Doctoral Fellow Gonzalo Contreras has published a new article titled "Masking turnout inequality. Invalid voting and class bias when compulsory voting is reinstated" in the journal Electoral Studies.

In this article, Contreras and Morales examine the recent Chilean constitutional process to address the question: "Does compulsory voting reduce class bias in the composition of voters, or does it rather mask the bias by increasing invalid votes among low-income electorates?"

Read the full article here:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261379424001367?dgcid=author

10/02/2024

CREDITSROGER THAYER STONE CENTER FOR LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES presents The LAST 100 - In ProfileEXECUTIVE PRODUCERSThomas F. ReeseAna M. LópezValerie McGinleyP...

09/12/2024

Constantino Urcuyo, PhD, Academic Director, Centro de Investigación y Adiestramiento Político Administrativo (CIAPA), Costa Rica, Affiliate Center for Inter-...