Two years of Javier Milei

Chainsaw and Deregulation: Two years of Javier Milei’s Presidency.

Speaker

Federico Sturzenegger , Minister of Deregulation and State Reform, Argentina; Full Professor, Universidad de San Andrés; Adjunct Professor, Harvard Kennedy School (on leave).

Moderated by Steven Levitsky, Professor of Government, Harvard University; Director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies. Alisha Holland,  Gates Professor of Developing Societies, Government Department, Harvard University. Frances Hagopian, Jorge Paulo Lemann Senior Lecturer on Government, Harvard University.

About the Speaker

Federico Sturzenegger is an economics graduate from the Universidad Nacional de La Plata (1987) and holds a PhD in Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) (1991). He currently serves as Argentina's Minister of Deregulation and State Reform. He is also Full Professor at the Universidad de San Andrés (UdeSA) and Adjunct Professor at Harvard University's School of Government (both currently on leave). He was a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and at the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella (UTDT). Previously, he was Chief Economist of YPF (1995-1998), Secretary of Economic Policy (2001), held the presidency of Banco Ciudad (2008- 2013), was a member of Chamber of Representatives (2013-2015) and chaired the Central Bank of Argentina (BCRA) between 2015 and 2018. He is the author of several books and articles on economics. For his 54 papers in refereed journals, he holds the 2 nd highest academic impact according to the REPEC among economists residing in Argentina. The Konex Foundation has recognized him for his contributions to economic theory and the World Economic Forum (WEF) named him Young Global Leader.

About the Moderator

Steven Levitsky is David Rockefeller Professor of Latin American Studies and Professor of Government, Director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard. He is also a Senior Democracy Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a Senior Fellow at the Kettering Foundation. His research focuses on democracy and authoritarianism, political parties, weak and informal institutions, and most recently, the crisis of democracy in the United States. He and Daniel Ziblatt are authors 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. Levitsky 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 writing a book on the sources of global democratic resilience in the 21st Century.

Alisha Holland is the Gates Professor of Developing Societies in the Department of Government at Harvard University. Her research examines the comparative political economy of development, with a focus on urban politics, social policy, and Latin America. She is the author of Forbearance as Redistribution: The Politics of Informal Welfare in Latin America (Cambridge University Press), which explores state enforcement practices around property law violations such as squatting, street vending, and electricity theft. Her current book project studies the politics of large infrastructure projects in Latin America. Holland’s broader interests include law, migration, crime control, subnational governance, and corruption. Before joining the Harvard faculty, she was an Assistant Professor at Princeton University and a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows. She holds an A.B. from Princeton University and a Ph.D. in Government from Harvard University.

Frances Hagopian is Jorge Paulo Lemann Senior Lecturer on Government at Harvard University. She specializes in the comparative politics of Latin America, with emphasis on democratization, political representation, political economy, and religion and politics. She is the author of Reorganizing Representation in Latin America (Cambridge University Press, 2014) and Traditional Politics and Regime Change in Brazil (Cambridge University Press, 1996), and editor or co-editor of several volumes, including Religious Pluralism, Democracy, and the Catholic Church in Latin America (University of Notre Dame Press, 2009) and The Third Wave of Democratization in Latin America: Advances and Setbacks (Cambridge University Press, 2005, with Scott Mainwaring). Her current research focuses on the development of social welfare regimes in Brazil and the political economy of inequality in Latin America. Hagopian has previously taught at the University of Notre Dame, Tufts University, and Harvard, and has held visiting positions at the London School of Economics, MIT, and Nuffield College, Oxford.

This event is presented in collaboration with the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.