2003 Events

Election Analysis: What's Next for Argentina?

• Elections without Parties: Speculations on Argentina's Democratic Future
  Hector Schamis, Fellow, Woodrow Wilson International Center
• Victoria Murillo
  Columbia University
• Roberto Leo Butinof
  Universidad de Buenos Aires

Moderator:

Margaret Crahan
Hunter College & The Graduate Center

Hector Schamis has taught political science at Brown and Cornell Universities. He has authored several articles on Latin American political economy issues, authoritarianism, and democratization, and a book entitled "Re-Forming the State: The Politics of Privatization in Latin America and Europe." He is currently a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington DC.

Elections without Parties: Speculations on Argentina's Democratic Future
Argentina faces a presidential election in a context of advanced
fragmentation of its party system. According to analysts and practitioners alike, in its current form, the party system cannot last any longer, it confronts a "change or perish" challenge. If this is so, the key question becomes whether the reformulation of the party system will be done preserving the democratic system, as, for example, ltaly did in the mid-1990s, or the virtual collapse of the main parties will pull the
democratic system behind them, as in, for example, Venezuela since the early 1990s.

Maria Victoria Murillo (PhD Harvard 1997) is Associate Professor of Political Science and International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. Previously she was an Associate Professor at Yale University, a Peggy Rockefeller Fellow at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies and a postdoctoral fellow in the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies, both at Harvard University. She is the author of Labor Unions, Partisan Coalitions, and Market Reforms in Latin America (Cambridge University Press 2001) and various articles on labor politics and privatization politics in Latin America. She is currently working on the politics of policymaking in Latin America with a particular focus on the privatization and regulation of public utilities, labor regulations, and education policies.

Roberto Butinof was first trained as a medical doctor in Argentina. He later worked in psychiatry, in Europe, and specialized in family and adolescent psychotherapy. For several years his focus has been on institutional analysis and strategic studies. He created and directed, in Geneva, the Institute for the Strategic Study of Peace, Knowledge and Human Relations (SerMaCaValTa). Roberto Butinof is currently a professor of International Relations at the University of Buenos Aires Law School and School of Defense. He is also working as a consultant for several international organizations and political groups in Argentina and abroad.

When: Friday, April 4 at 4:30 P.M.
Where: Room 9206
The Graduate Center, City University of New York
365 Fifth Avenue
(Between 34th and 35th St.)

To reserve please send e-mail to bildner@gc.cuny.edu or leave message at (212) 817-2096.