Kenneth M. Roberts

Professor, Department of Government, Cornell University

Roberts teaches comparative and Latin American politics at Cornell University, with an emphasis on party systems, labor and social movements, and the political economy of development. Roberts’ current research explores the impact of free market or “neoliberal” reform on party systems and political representation in Latin America. Prior to joining the faculty at Cornell in 2005, he taught at the University of New Mexico for 13 years.

He is the author of Deepening Democracy? The Modern Left and Social Movements in Chile and Peru (Stanford, 1998), along with a forthcoming manuscript entitled Political Parties in Latin America’s Neoliberal Era (Cambridge). 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.

Roberts was a 1991 visiting fellow at the Kellogg Institute and has been a research fellow at FLACSO-Chile. He currently serves on the editorial boards of the Latin American Research Review and Latin American Politics and Society. He has served on the Board of Directors of Witness for Peace, and he was president of the Board of Directors for Re-Visioning New Mexico. He has been active in several capacities in the American Political Science Association and the Latin American Studies Association.

He earned his PhD from Stanford University in 1992.