Nicole Jenne
Speaker
Associate professor at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Institute of Political Science
Territorial conflict, state capacity and war in South America
Date and Time
March 24, 2026
12:00PM - 01:30PM EDT
Location
CGIS South, Room S216
No registration required to attend in person.
While territorial disputes are historically the primary catalyst for interstate conflict, South American states have defied global trends by consistently managing grievances short of large-scale war. In this talk, Nicole Jenne interrogates the domestic foundations of this regional "long peace." She argues that the avoidance of war is less a result of external diplomacy and more a reflection of state capacity. By examining how internal institutional constraints and domestic priorities shape foreign policy, Jenne explores why South American states opt for management over mobilization—offering a new lens on the relationship between state development and regional security.
This event is presented in collaboration with the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.
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
Nicole Jenne is associate professor at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Institute of Political Science. She holds a PhD in International Relations from the European University Institute, Florence. Nicole’s research is on different aspects of international security in South America and the Asia Pacific. She has published widely on security cooperation, peacekeeping and the changing use of state militaries, among other topics. While at DRCLAS, she will work on a book project that examines the impact of state capacity on peripheral states’ handling of territorial disputes. Nicole serves as co-editor of the journal Contemporary Security Policy.
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.