TUESDAY SEMINAR SERIES: Can Venezuela Still Democratize?

Arturo Ernesto Peraza Celis, S.J. is a Venezuelan Jesuit priest, lawyer, political scientist, and university administrator. He has served as rector of the Universidad Católica Andrés Bello (UCAB) since 2023, for the 2023–2027 term. Fundación Centro Gumilla

He earned a law degree with honors from UCAB and a doctorate in political science from the Universidad Central de Venezuela. He also studied philosophy and theology, and was provincial superior of the Jesuits in Venezuela from 2009 to 2016. Before becoming rector, he served as vice rector of UCAB Guayana from 2017 to 2023. eldiario.com

Peraza has taught at the undergraduate and graduate levels and written on Venezuelan politics, democracy, constitutional reform, human rights, and national reconciliation. He is also associated with the Jesuit social-research organization Fundación Centro Gumilla.

David Smilde is the Charles A. and Leo M. Favrot Professor of Human Relations and Chair of the Sociology Department at Tulane University. At Tulane’s Center for Inter-American Policy and Research he leads the Venezuelan Conflict and Peacebuilding Research Group. He was Program Chair of the Latin American Studies Association’s 2023 Congress and served as Chair of the Venezuelan Studies Section of the Latin American Studies Association from 2010-12. He has researched Venezuela for over thirty years, living there for sixteen. His research focuses on culture, violence, political conflict, peacemaking, and human rights. He is an author or editor of six books, and author of thirty peer reviewed articles or chapters. He was editor of the journal Qualitative Sociology for eight years. In addition to his academic career he has done policy-work with the Washington Office on Latin America, the Atlantic Council, the Wilson Center for Scholars, the Open Society Foundations, the Ford Foundation and Luminate. He has published opinion articles in the New York Times, Washington Post, Foreign Policy and El Pais, and is a frequent media commentator on the crisis in Venezuela

Jose Morales-Arilla is currently a Research Professor at Tecnológico de Monterrey’s Graduate School of Government and Public Transformation and a Fellow at the BBVA-TEC Center for Trade Policy and Global Value Chains in North America. His research focuses on political economy and development economics, using advanced quantitative methods to study issues such as inequality, violence, trade, migration, and economic growth. He holds a PhD in Public Policy, with a focus on Economics, from Harvard University and has conducted postdoctoral research at Princeton University and Harvard’s Growth Lab. Previously, he was an Assistant Professor at Texas A&M University’s Bush School of Government and Public Service.

Margarita López Maya, historian and PhD in Social Sciences from the Central University of Venezuela (UCV). She is a retired tenured professor at the Center for Development Studies (CENDES) at the same university. She was the director of the Journal of Economics and Social Sciences of the Faculty of Economic and Social Sciences (FACES, UCV), a member of the Steering Committee of the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO), president of the Venezuelan Studies Section of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA), and president-elect of LASA (2022-2023). She has been a visiting professor at prestigious universities such as ILAS at Columbia University, PLAS at Princeton University, the Kellogg Institute at the University of Notre Dame, CIPR at Tulane University, and is an emeritus professor at the University of Florida. She has also taught at the Woodrow Wilson International School in Washington, D.C., the University of Rosario in Bogotá, Colombia, and the University of Salamanca in Spain. Author of numerous academic articles, her books include the trilogy: From Black Friday to the recall referendum (Caracas, Alfadil, 2005), The decline of Chavismo. Venezuela 2005-2015 (Caracas, Grupo Alfa, 2016) and Democracy for Venezuela: representative, participatory or populist? (Caracas, Editorial Alfa, 2024).

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).