Georgetown Americas Institute

Schedule

2:00 p.m. – 2:15 p.m. | Introduction

Alejandro Werner, Georgetown Americas Institute

2:15 p.m. – 2:40 p.m. |  Democracy in the United States and the Implications for the Americas

Lara Brown, Author

2:40 p.m. – 3:20 p.m. | The State of Global Democracy

President Juan Manuel Santos, Former President of Colombia

Julio Borges, Venezuelan politician, writer, and lawyer

3:20 p.m. – 3:45 p.m. | Coffee Break

3:45 p.m. – 5:00 p.m. | Democratic Backsliding in Latin America

Javier Corrales, Amherst College

Paola Bautista, Primero Justicia

Juan Miguel Matheus, National Assembly of Venezuela

Daniel Kerner, Eurasia Group

5:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m. | The Future of Democratic Governance in Latin America: the Cases of Mexico and Colombia 

Jose Antonio Aguilar Rivera, CIDE Mexico

Laura Gamboa, Notre Dame

Daniel Kerner, Eurasia Group

Luis Carlos Ugalde, Integralia Consultores

6:00 – 7:00 p.m. | Reception

Featuring

José Antonio Aguilar Rivera is a professor of political science at the División de Estudios Políticos, CIDE (Mexico City). He has been a visiting fellow at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies, University of Notre Dame, the Institute for Advanced Studies, and Warwick University, as well as a visiting scholar at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris. He is the author of, among other books: El sonido y la furia. La persuasión multicultural en México y Estados Unidos (2004); En pos de la quimera: reflexiones sobre el experimento constitucional atlántico (2000); La geometría y el mito. Un ensayo sobre la libertad y el liberalismo en México, 1821-1970 (2010); and Ausentes del Universo. Reflexiones sobre el pensamiento político hispanoamericano en la era de la construcción nacional, 1821- 1850  (2012). 

Paola Bautista de Alemán is a Venezuelan politician and academic currently serving as the national vice president of political education and programs at Primero Justicia. She is also president of the Institute of Political Studies FORMA. She is the author of several publications, including A callar que llegó la revolución (2014), El fin de las democracias pactadas (2021), and La Patria que viene (2022). Bautista de Alemán is editor of the magazine Democratización and collaborates with Diálogo Político and La Gran Aldea. She holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Rostock, Germany.

Julio Borges is a Venezuelan politician, writer, and lawyer who served as president of the National Assembly between 2017 and 2019. In 1992, he founded the Primero Justicia political party. He was elected into the assembly in 2000, 2010, and 2015. He is a leader of the Venezuelan opposition and now serves as vice president of communication, strategy, and communications of Primero Justicia. He holds a law degree from the Universidad Católica Andrés Bello, a master’s degree in philosophy from Boston College, a master’s degree in public policy and Latin American studies from the University of Oxford, and a doctor of philosophy degree from the Universidad Santo Tomás de Aquino. In 2018, the government of President Nicolas Maduro issued three arrest warrants against Borges that forced him to flee Venezuela. 

Lara M. Brown is a political scientist and author of Amateur Hour: Presidential Character and the Question of Leadership (2020) and Jockeying for the American Presidency: The Political Opportunism of Aspirants (2010). She also serves as a senior policy advisor to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute's Center on Civility and Democracy. A distinguished writer, she has co-edited and contributed to two other recent books, The Presidential Leadership Dilemma: Between the Constitution and a Political Party (2013) and Campaigning for President 2016: Strategy and Tactics, 3rd edition (2017), and authored several book chapters in scholarly volumes, such as The Presidency and the Political System (2020) and Hatred of American Presidents: Personal Attacks on the White House from Washington to Trump (2018). 

Javier Corrales is the Dwight W. Morrow 1895 Professor of Political Science at Amherst College. He obtained his Ph.D. in government from Harvard University in 1996. His latest book, Autocracy Rising: Venezuela’s Transition to Authoritarianism, was published in 2023. His previous book, Fixing Democracy (2018), focuses on constituent assemblies and presidential powers in Latin America. He is also the co-author with Michael Penfold of Dragon in the Tropics: Venezuela and the Legacy of Hugo Chávez, second edition (2015). He serves on the editorial board of Latin American Politics and Society, Political Science Quarterly, European Review of Latin America and the Caribbean, Americas Quarterly, and Global Americans.  

Laura Gamboa is an assistant professor of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame. Her research focuses on institutions, regime and regime change in Latin America. Previously, she was an assistant professor at the University of Utah. She has a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Notre Dame and a master’s degree in Latin American studies from the University of Texas at Austin. Her research agenda is centered on questions related to the survival and quality of democratic systems. Her book Resisting Backsliding: Opposition Strategies against the Erosion of Democracy (2022) uses the case of Alvaro Uribe in Colombia and Hugo Chávez in Venezuela to analyze how opposition strategic choices and goals can decisively affect the ability of potential autocrats to erode democracy. Her current research focuses on the drivers behind these tactical choices. Her work has been published in Comparative Politics, Political Research Quarterly, Electoral Studies, and Latin American Research Review, among other journals.

Daniel Kerner is head of Eurasia Group's Latin America practice, helping clients make sense of the region's turbulent politics. He leads the firm's coverage of Argentina and Mexico, identifies region-wide trends, and analyzes how a changing global political environment will affect the region. Kerner has published articles on political reform and economic history in major academic journals. He is the author of Tiempo perdido (2022), a book describing Argentina's recent economic crisis. He also wrote Del Modelo al Relato (2017), a book about the Argentinian governments of Nestor Kirchner and Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, and Aplauso Perdido (2014), a book about the successes and failures of former Mexican president Enrique Pena Nieto. Kerner holds a B.A. and M.A. in political science from the University of Buenos Aires, as well as a master’s degree in economics and Latin American history from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Juan Miguel Matheus is a congressman of the National Assembly of Venezuela. He is professor of constitutional law at Monteavila University (Caracas, Venezuela). His research is focused on the constitutional law of democratization and the legal framework of political changes. Matheus earned his J.D. from Monteavila University and his Ph.D. in constitutional law from the University of Navarre (Spain). He is the author of many books and articles in the fields of constitutional law and parliamentary law.

Juan Manuel Santos was the president of Colombia from 2010 to 2018. During his time in office, the historic Colombian Peace Agreement was signed on November 24, 2016. Santos was the sole recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2016 for ending the longest armed conflict with the oldest guerrilla force in the Western Hemisphere. Before serving as president, Santos served as minister of foreign trade and was elected to the Colombian Congress as the presidential designate (similar to the role of vice president in the United States). He also served as minister of finance and minister of defense. Prior to serving in government roles, Santos was a deputy publisher and journalist with the Colombian publication El Tiempo. He won the King of Spain Prize for journalism for a series of articles looking at corruption within the Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua. Santos is a graduate of the Naval Academy in Cartagena. He holds a degree in business and economics from the University of Kansas.

Luis Carlos Ugalde is the general director of Integralia Consultores. He is a Reagan-Fascell fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington, D.C. He was president of Mexico's Federal Electoral Commission (IFE) from 2003–2007, presiding over the country’s bitterly contested 2006 presidential election. Dr. Ugalde has taught at various universities across Mexico and the United States, among them the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM), the Center for Economic Research and Teaching (CIDE) in Mexico City, Georgetown University (2002), and American University (2000). In 2008, he was the Robert F. Kennedy Visiting Professor of Latin American Studies at Harvard University, where he had also been a fellow at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies in 2001. In addition to his role at IFE, Dr. Ugalde has held various positions within the Mexican government, including chief of staff to the Secretary of Energy (1997) and chief of staff at the Embassy of Mexico to the United States (1997-2000). He has authored numerous publications, including As I Lived It: A Testimony of the Most Competitive Election in the Modern History of Mexico (2008, in Spanish). He received a Ph.D. in Political Science (1999) and a master’s degree in public administration (1992), both from Columbia University in New York. He holds a B.A. in Economics from ITAM (1990). 

Alejandro Werner is the founding director of the Georgetown Americas Institute and a non-resident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute. He recently completed almost nine years as director of the Western Hemisphere Department at the International Monetary Fund. Prior to that appointment, he was undersecretary of finance and public credit in Mexico’s Finance Ministry and held several positions in that ministry and the Central Bank. He also taught at leading universities in Mexico, Spain, and the United States. He holds a Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a B.A. in economics from ITAM.