Jason Ross Arnold
University of Minnesota
Jason Ross Arnold is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at the University of Minnesota. His research focuses on how public ignorance subverts democratic processes and outcomes.

Maxwell Cameron
University of British Columbia
Maxwell A. Cameron is a professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of British Columbia who specializes in comparative Latin American politics and international political economy. He is the author of Democracy and Authoritarianism in Peru (1994), and co-author of The Making of NAFTA: How the Deal Was Done (2000). He has edited a special issue of the Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies on the topic of threats to democracy in Latin America and a special issue of Canadian Foreign Policy on the Inter-American Democratic Charter. He is currently conducting research supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council for a book on democracy without the separation of powers. Later in 2008, Cameron will be coordinating a project through the Centre for the Study of Democracy at UBC that will build a research network to monitor and report on the state of democracy in the Andean region.

Ruth Berins Collier
University of California, Berkeley
Ruth Berins Collier is a professor in the Political Science Department of the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of Regimes in Tropical Africa, Shaping the Political Arena, The Contradictory Alliance, and Paths Toward Democracy, and is co-editor and co-author of the forthcoming book, Political Participation and Interest Regimes in Latin America: From Union-Party Hub to Associational Networks.

Catherine Conaghan
Queen's University
Catherine Conaghan is professor of political studies at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario. Her latest book is Fujimori's Peru: Deception in the Public Sphere (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005). She was a visiting researcher at FLACSO-Quito in 2006-2007.

Sebastián Etchemendy
Universidad Torcuato Di Tella
Sebastián Etchemendy received his Ph.D from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2004. He is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science and International Studies at Torcuato Di Tella University in Argentina. Between January and June 2007 he served as Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Stanford University. He works on comparative political economy and has published articles in the journals Comparative Politics, Comparative Political Studies, Politics and Society, and Latin American Politics and Society.

Manuel Antonio Garretón
Universidad de Chile
Manuel Antonio Garretón is a professor of Sociology at the University of Chile and is former Dean and Director of Centro de Estudios de la Realidad Nacional and Revista Cuadernos de la Realidad Nacional, Universidad Católica de Chile. The focus of his research and teaching is on democratizations and transitions, State and Society, human rights, authoritarianism and democracy, political parties, university and society, gender, culture and education, social movements and actors, social sciences development, public opinion and social demands, Latin American sociological theory, modernity and modernization. Has published more than 250 articles and more than 40 books as author, co-author or editor. Most recent publications include: The Incomplete Democracy: Studies on politics and Society in Latin America and Chile (2003), Encuentros con la memoria (co-editor, 2004), Del post pinochetismo a la sociedad democrática. Política y globalización en el bicentenario (2007).

Benjamin Goldfrank
University of New Mexico
Benjamin Goldfrank is an assistant professor at the John C. Whitehead School of Diplomacy and International Relations at Seton Hall University. He received is Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley. Goldfrank is the co-editor of The Left in the City: Participatory Local Governments in Latin America (2004), which has been translated into Spanish and Italian. He is the author of several book chapters and of articles in journals such as Politics & Society, Comparative Politics, Latin American Politics and Society, and Revista de Ciencia Política (Chile). He is currently completing a book manuscript entitled Participation, Decentralization, and Political Parties: Deepening Local Democracy in Latin America.

Samuel Handlin
Samuel Handlin is a PhD candidate in political science at the University of California, Berkeley.  His dissertation, "Reinventing Class Mobilization: Social Cleavages and the Left in South America, 1990-2008" attempts to explain differences in the class composition of the electoral coalitions of major left parties and movements in Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Bolivia, and Venezuela.  He is co-editor and co-author of the forthcoming book, Political Participation and Interest Regimes in Latin America: From Union-Party Hub to Associational Networks. 

Evelyne Huber
University of North Carolina
Evelyne Huber is Morehead Alumni Distinguished Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is coauthor of Capitalist Development and Democracy (1992) and Development and Crisis of the Welfare State (2001) and editor of Models of Capitalism: Lessons for Latin America (2002). She is currently investigating the impact of democracy, political power distributions, and transitions to open economies on systems of social protection and investment in human capital in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Wendy Hunter
University of Texas-Austin
Wendy Hunter is an associate professor of Government at the University of Texas at Austin. Her early work focused on Latin American militaries during the transition from authoritarianism. More recently, she published several articles on social policy decision¬making and human capital formation in Latin America. Currently, Professor Hunter is writing a book on the growth and transformation of the Workers' Party in Brazil from 1989 until the present. She is the author of Eroding Military Influence in Brazil (1997) and articles in journals including: Comparative Politics, Comparative Political Studies, Political Science Quarterly, International Studies Quarterly, The American Political Science Review, Journal of Democracy, American Journal of Political Science and World Politics. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley (1992).

Jorge Lanzaro
Universidad de la Republica, Uruguay
Jorge Lanzaro is a professor of Political Science at the Universidad de la República in Uruguay and a specialist on political parties and governmental institutions in Latin America. His work focuses on the rise of the political and partisan left in Latin America. Recent articles include: “Uruguayan Parties: Transition within Transition”, in Kay Lawson & Peter Merkl (eds), When Political Parties Prosper (2007); “Pro-Market Reform in Uruguay: Gradual Reform and Political Pluralism”, in José María Fanelli (ed), Understanding Market Reforms in Latin America (2007) and “Gobiernos social democráticos en América Latina: un estreno histórico”, in Janus (2007). He received his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Paris.

Steven Levitsky
Harvard University
Steven Levitsky is a professor of Government at Harvard University. His research interests include political parties, weak and informal institutions, and political regimes and regime change, with a focus on Latin America. He is author of Transforming Labor-Based Parties in Latin America: Argentine Peronism in Comparative Perspective (2003) and co-editor of Argentine Democracy: The Politics of Institutional Weakness (2005) and Informal Institutions and Democracy: Lessons from Latin (2006). He is currently co-writing a book (with Lucan A. Way) on competitive authoritarian regimes in the post-Cold War era.

Raul Madrid
University of Texas-Austin
Raúl L. Madrid is an associate professor in the Department of Government at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of Retiring the State: The Politics of Pension Privatization in Latin America and Beyond (2003). His articles on indigenous politics, labor movements, and social security reform in Latin America have appeared in Comparative Politics, Electoral Studies, Journal of Latin American Studies, Latin American Politics and Society, and Latin American Research Review. He is currently writing a book on the emergence of political parties based in the indigenous population in Latin America.

Margarita Lopez Maya
Universidad Central, Venezuela
Margarita López Maya is Professor of History and Social Sciences at the Central University of Venezuela. She has been visiting professor at Columbia University, University of Notre Dame, and St. Antony’s College at Oxford University. Her recent research focuses on popular protest and new social and political movements in Latin America, as well as the phenomenon of Chavismo in Venezuela.

Maria Victoria Murillo
Columbia University
Maria Victoria Murillo (PhD Harvard 1997) is the author of Labor Unions, Partisan Coalitions, and Market Reforms in Latin America (Cambridge University Press 2001) and co-editor of Argentine Democracy: The Politics of Institutional Weakness (Pennsylvania State University Press 2005). She has published articles on labor politics, public policy, public utility reform, and patronage in World Politics, American Journal of Political Science, Comparative Politics, Comparative Political Studies, World Development and other journals. She has recently finished a manuscript titled Voice and Light: Political Competition, Partisanship, and Policymaking in the Reform of Latin American Public Utilities. She is currently working on a project on patronage as a tool for partisan redistribution in Argentina and Chile.

Jennifer Pribble
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Jennifer Pribble is a doctoral candidate in Political Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a specialization in Latin American political economy. She is currently writing her dissertation, which analyzes the emergence and reform of anti-poverty policies in Latin America. The research is funded by the Ford Foundation, the Organization of American States, and the University of North Carolina’s graduate school. Jennifer recently published the article, “Women and Welfare: the Politics of Coping with New Social Risks in Chile and Uruguay,” in the Latin American Research Review, and is a co-author of “Political Determinants of Inequality in Latin America and the Caribbean,” which appeared in the American Sociological Review.

Ken Roberts
Cornell University
Kenneth M. Roberts teaches comparative and Latin America politics, with an emphasis on the political economy of development, party systems, and political representation. He obtained his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1992, then taught at the University of New Mexico before joining the faculty at Cornell. He is the author of Deepening Democracy? The Modern Left and Social Movements in Chile and Peru (1998), along with a forthcoming manuscript from Cambridge University Press on the transformation of party systems in Latin America's neoliberal era. His research on Latin American populism, electoral volatility, party system change, and the social bases of political representation has been published in a number of scholarly journals, including American Political Science Review, World Politics, Comparative Political Studies, Comparative Politics, Studies in Comparative International Development, Politics and Society, and Latin American Politics and Society. He has conducted research in Chile, Peru, Venezuela, and Argentina, with funding support from Fulbright, MacArther, Mellon, and National Science Foundation grants

David Samuels
University of Minnesota
David J. Samuels is a professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota. His main areas on research are: Brazilian politics, Latin American politics, legislatures, Political parties and elections, immigration, NAFTA, drug policy, and US-Latin American Relations. He is author of Ambition, Federalism, and Legislative Politics in Brazil (2003) and has published articles in the British Journal of Political Science, The Journal of Politics, and Comparative Political Studies.

John Stephens
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
John D. Stephens is the Gerhard E. Lenski, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Director of the Center for European Studies at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. His main interests are comparative social policy and political economy, with area foci on Europe, the Antidopes, Latin America, and the Caribbean. He is the author or co-author of four books including Capitalist Development and Democracy (with Evelyne Huber and Dietrich Rueschemeyer, 1992) and Development and Crisis of the Welfare State (with Evelyne Huber, 2001) and numerous journal articles.

Kurt Weyland
University of Texas-Austin
Kurt Weyland is the Lozano Long Professor of Latin American Politics at the University of Texas at Austin. He has published Democracy without Equity: Failures of Reform in Brazil (1996); The Politics of Market Reform in Fragile Democracies (2002); Bounded Rationality and Policy Diffusion: Social Sector Reform in Latin America (2007); and articles on democratization, neoliberalism, populism, and social policy in Latin America. His new project analyzes the wave-like diffusion of political regime changes across countries, starting with the explosive spread of the 1848 revolution in Europe and Latin America.

Deborah Yashar
Princeton University
Deborah J. Yashar is Professor of Politics and International Affairs and Director of Princeton’s Program in Latin American Studies (PLAS). Her research focuses on the intersection of democracy and citizenship – with publications on the origins and endurance of political regimes; the relationship between citizenship regimes, local autonomy, and ethnic politics; collective action and contentious politics; interest representation and party systems; and globalization. She is the author of two books: Demanding Democracy: Reform and Reaction in Costa Rica and Guatemala (Stanford University Press, 1997) and Contesting Citizenship in Latin America: The Rise of Indigenous Movements and the Postliberal Challenge (Cambridge University Press, 2005) – which received the 2006 Best Book Prize, awarded by the New England Council on Latin American Studies (NECLAS) and the 2006 Mattei Dogan Honorable Mention, awarded by the Society for Comparative Research. She has also written several articles published in leading journals and edited volumes.