Professor Steven Levitsky named Director of DRCLAS

Steven Levitsky, the best-selling author of How Democracies Die (with Daniel Ziblatt) has been named faculty director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard (DRCLAS). The center brings together in a multidisciplinary fashion all the work that is being done at Harvard from the Law School to the Medical School to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. It also has offices in Santiago de Chile, Brazil and Mexico to further the bridges of understanding among the Americas.

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 University. His research focuses on democratization and authoritarianism, political parties, and weak and informal institutions. He has written or edited several other books, including Transforming Labor-Based Parties in Latin America: Argentine Peronism in Comparative Perspective, Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes after the Cold War (with Lucan Way), Informal Institutions and Democracy: Lessons from Latin America (with Gretchen Helmke) and The Resurgence of the Latin American Left (with Kenneth Roberts).

He is currently writing a book (with Lucan Way) on the durability of revolutionary regimes.

Since his doctoral studies at the University of California Berkeley, Levitsky has traveled to and written about Latin America and often for Latin American audiences, publishing regular columns in La República (Peru) and Folha de São Paulo (Brazil).

He has discussed Latin America and beyond in the pages of the New York Times, Foreign Affairs, Vox, The New Republic, and The Monkey Cage.

His courses, including Comparative Politics in Latin America, are among the most popular at Harvard, often introducing students to Latin America for the first time. He serves as faculty advisor to HACIA Democracy, the Harvard Association for Cultivating Inter-American Democracy.

Levitsky, who became director on September 1, is the fourth faculty director of DRCLAS. He was preceded by John H. Coatsworth, Merilee Grindle and Brian D. Farrell.