Panel: Far Right in Power

Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser is Professor of Political Science at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, and Director of the Laboratory for the Study of the Far Right (Ultra-Lab). He holds a PhD in Political Science from Humboldt University of Berlin and has held research and visiting positions at Oxford University, WZB Berlin, the University of Sussex, Sciences Po, and other European universities. His research focuses on comparative politics, populism, and democracy. He recently edited The Far Right in Latin America, published by Cambridge University Press.

Gabriel Vommaro is Professor of Political Sociology at the National University of San Martín (UNSAM) and a Researcher at Argentina’s National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET). He received his PhD from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS). His research focuses on political activism and political parties, particularly right-wing parties, as well as political clientelism, the state, and political communication.

His recent books include The Recasting of the Latin American Right (Cambridge University Press, 2024, edited with A. Borges & R. Lloyd), La era del hartazgo. Líderes disruptivos, polarización y antipolítica en América Latina (Siglo XXI, 2025, edited with G. Kessler), Conservatives against the Tide (Cambridge University Press, 2023), Diminished Parties. Democratic Representation in Contemporary Latin America (Cambridge University Press, 2021; edited with JP Luna, R. Piñeiro & F. Rosenblatt); La larga marcha de Cambiemos (Siglo XXI, 2017), and Sociologie du clientélisme (La découverte, 2015; with H. Combes).

Jenny Pribble is a professor of political science at the University of Richmond and a Research Associate of the University of Oxford’s Latin America Centre. Her research focuses on issues of Latin American political economy, democracy, and social policy. Jenny’s current research focuses on the rise of new right parties in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Spain.

Manuel Meléndez-Sánchez is Postdoctoral Visiting Fellow at the University of Notre Dame’s Kellogg Institute for International Studies. His research examines the roots of democratic resilience, backsliding, and breakdown, with a focus on Central America and Mexico. His research has been published in the Journal of Democracy and the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. Born and raised in El Salvador, he holds a PhD in Political Science from Harvard University.

Steven Levitsky is David Rockefeller Professor of Latin American Studies and Professor of Government and Director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard.  He is Senior Fellow at the Kettering Foundation and a Senior Democracy Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. His research focuses on democratization and authoritarianism, political parties, and weak and informal institutions, with a focus on Latin America.   He is co-author (with Daniel Ziblatt) of How Democracies Die, which was a New York Times Best-Seller and was published in 30 languages, and Tyranny of the Minority: Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point.    He has written or edited 11 other books, including Transforming Labor-Based Parties in Latin America: Argentine Peronism in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge University Press 2003), Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes after the Cold War (with Lucan Way) (Cambridge University Press, 2010), and Revolution and Dictatorship: The Violent Origins of Durable Authoritarianism (with Lucan Way) (Princeton University Press, 2022).   He and Lucan Way are currently working on a book on democratic resilience across the world. 

Professor Levitsky has written for New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, and The New Republic, and he has been a columnist for La Republica (Peru) and Folha de São Paulo (Brazil).