THE GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENT  invites you to a public lecture on

“Democracy, Development, and the Puzzling Success of Brazil”

 Peter Kingstone

Department of Political Science, University of Connecticut

Monday, February 20, 2012
4:15 p.m.    PAC 002 

 Brazil’s rising prominence is manifested not only in its dynamic export economy and in its resiliency in the face of the 2008 financial crisis; but also in its innovative social programs (which have contributed over the past fifteen years to a sharp decline of income poverty, income inequality, and infant mortality); in its election of a female president, Dilma Rousseff, in 2010; and in the selection of Rio de Janeiro to host the 2016 Olympics. It was not always so: as late as the 1990s Brazil was dismissed as “feckless,” “ungovernable,” and “paralyzed.” Professor Kingstone will address the causes and dimensions of Brazil’s transformation from laggard to leader among middle-income countries, and will outline some implications of this phenomenon for our understanding of democracy, development, and political and economic institutions.

 Peter Kingstone (B.A., Swarthmore; Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley) is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Connecticut. He is author of Crafting Coalitions for Reform: Business Preferences, Political Institutions and Neoliberal Reform in Brazil (Penn State, 1999) and of The Political Economy of Latin America: Reflections on Neoliberalism and Development (Routledge, 2010). He is co-editor (with Tim Power) of Democratic Brazil: Actors, Institutions and Processes (Pittsburgh, 2000) and of Democratic Brazil Revisited (Pittsburgh 2008), as well as co-editor (with Deborah Yashar) of the Handbook of Latin American Politics (Routledge, forthcoming).