Peru’s Deepening Political Crisis: Is There a Way Out? / La profundización de la crisis política en Perú: ¿hay una salida?

For a recording of this event, click here.

Speakers: Rodrigo Barrenechea, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Universidad Católica del Uruguay and Santo Domingo Visiting Scholar at Harvard University; Madai Urteaga, Graduate Student Comparative Politics, School of Government at Harvard University; Eduardo Dargent, Professor Principal at the Pontifical Catholic University of Perú (PUCP); Omar Coronel, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Pontifical Catholic University of Perú (PUCP)
Moderated by: Steven Levitsky, Professor of Government and Director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University

The purpose of this panel is to reflect on what factors led to Pedro Castillo’s failed coup attempt and potential solutions the Peruvian government can implement to resolve the coup’s resulting crisis.

Rodrigo Barrenechea, is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Universidad Católica del Uruguay. He hold a PhD in Political Science from Northwestern University and a BA in Sociology from the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. In the 2019-2020 academic year, he was a PostDoctoral Fellow in the Weatherhead Center Research Cluster on Challenges to Democracy, at Harvard University. His research focuses on populism, political parties, and political representation in Latin America.

Madai Urteaga is a 4th year PhD Candidate at the Government Department from Perú. She studies comparative politics and her dissertation focuses on the political economy of development strategies in 20th century Latin America. This year Urteaga is away from campus carrying out field word in Colombia and Chile. Before coming to Harvard, Urteaga studied political science at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (PUCP).

Eduardo Dargent is a professor of political science at Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (PUCP). His main teaching and research interests are comparative public policy, political economy of Latin America, and the state in the developing world. He has published articles in Comparative Politics, the Journal of Latin American Studies, and the Journal of Politics in Latin America, among others. In 2009 he published Demócratas Precarios (Lima IEP), in 2016 Technocracy and Democracy: The Experts Running Government (Nueva York: CUP) and in 2021 El Páramo Reformista (Lima: PUCP).

Omar Coronel is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (PUCP). He holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Notre Dame and a BA in Sociology from the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. He is the co-coordinator of the Interdisciplinary Research Group on Conflicts and Social Inequalities (GICO-PUCP). His research focuses on social protests, state management of protests, and civil society.

Steven Levitsky is David Rockefeller Professor of Latin American Studies and Professor of Government at Harvard University. He is also Director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard. His research focuses on democratization and authoritarianism, political parties, and weak and informal institutions, with a focus on in Latin America. He is co-author (with Daniel Ziblatt) of How Democracies Die (Crown, 2018), which was a New York Times Best-Seller and was published in 25 languages. 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 Daniel Ziblatt are currently working on a book on the rise of (and reaction against) multiracial democracy in the United States.

Presented in collaboration with Harvard University Association of Peruvian Students (HAPS) and Peruvian Caucus a Student Organization at HKS