Santiago Anria
Panelist
Associate Professor, Global Labor & Work at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Cornell University
Politics of Discontent
Date and Time
March 31, 2026
12:00PM - 01:30PM EDT
Location
CGIS South, Room S216
No registration required to attend in person.
In the last decade, public discontent has surged across Latin America, fueling protests, reshaping party systems, and challenging traditional political orders. Drawing on their own research, panelists will unpack the deepening divides between citizens and institutions, the roots of political frustration, and the implications for democracy in the region. This panel will illuminate why dissatisfaction has become such a powerful force in Latin American politics and what it means for political stability, governance, and democratic resilience.
This event is presented in collaboration with the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.
Gabriel Kessler
Panelist
Professor, Phd in Sociology, National University of La Plata and the National University of San Martín
Maria Victoria Murillo
Panelist
Professor of Political Science and International and Public Affairs, Director of ILAS, Columbia University
Kenneth M. Roberts
Panelist
Richard J. Schwartz Professor of Government, Cornell University
Steven Levitsky
Moderator
Director, David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies; David Rockefeller Professor of Latin American Studies; Professor of Government, Harvard
Alisha C. Holland
Moderator
Professor of Government, Department of Government
Bios
Santiago Anria is an Associate Professor in the Department of Global Labor and Work at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations. He is the author of When Movements Become Parties: The Bolivian MAS in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2018) and coauthor, with Kenneth M. Roberts, of Polarization and Democracy in Latin America: Legacies of the Left Turn (University of Chicago Press, 2026).
Gabriel Kessler is a Senior Researcher at Argentina’s National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET) and a Professor at the National University of La Plata and the National University of San Martín. His research focuses on social structure, violence, and political polarization in Latin America.
María Victoria Murillo is Professor of Political Science and International Affairs and former Director of the Institute of Latin American Studies at Columbia University. She received her BA at the Universidad de Buenos Aires and her MA and PhD at Harvard University. She has published widely in the US and Latin America. Her most recent books include Non-Policy Politics: Richer Voter, Poorer Voter and the Diversification of Parties Electoral Strategieswith Ernesto Calvo (Cambridge University Press, 2019) and Understanding Institutional Weakness: Power and Design in Latin American Institutions with Daniel Brinks and Steven Levitsky (Cambridge University Press 2019). She has two forthcoming books with Cambridge University Press, The Social Underpinning of Political Discontent in Latin America (co-edited with Gabriel Kessler) and Shocks, Democracy and Rural Unrest (Element co-authored with Jorge Mangonnet).
Kenneth M. Roberts is the Richard J. Schwartz Professor of Government at Cornell University. His research examines the intersection of political parties, populism, and social movements to better understand contemporary crises of representation and challenges to democracy in Latin America and beyond. His most recent book, coauthored with Santiago Anria, is Polarization and Democracy in Latin America: Legacies of the Left Turn (University of Chicago Press, 2026). His other publications include Changing Course: Party Systems in Latin America’s Neoliberal Era (Cambridge University Press).
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).
Alisha C. Holland studies the comparative political economy of development with a focus on Latin America. Her first book, Forbearance as Redistribution: The Politics of Informal Welfare in Latin America (Cambridge University Press, 2017), examines the politics of law enforcement against the poor. She is working on a new book on the institutional determinants and challenges of infrastructure investment in Latin America. Prior to joining the faculty, she was an assistant professor in the Politics Department at Princeton University and a junior fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows.