Informal Institutions and Politics in Latin America

Clientelistic networks. Entrenched patterns of corruption. Elite power-sharing arrangements.

April 24 - 25, 2003

Conference program

There are powerful unwritten norms that govern much political activity in Latin America: informal institutions.

Formal institutions - such as the presidency and political parties - garner extensive scholarly interest and an impressive range of theories about how formal rules affect the quality and stability of democracy in Latin America. Yet this work paints only a partial picture of what motivates and constrains political actors.

Focusing on the need to analyze informal institutions, former KI Fellow Gretchen Helmke (Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Rochester/Academy Scholar, Harvard University) and former KI Visiting Fellow Steven Levitsky (Assistant Professor of Government and Social Studies, Harvard University) are organizing a conference to provide a forum for discussion about how these routinized patterns of interaction affect political behavior and the functioning of formal institutions.

The two-day April conference will include five panels, with papers addressing conceptual, theoretical, and methodological issues. In terms of methodology, the project seeks to bridge two approaches that are often viewed as competing: rational choice institutionalism and historical institutionalism. This conference will advance the discussion of “what’s really going on” with political activity in Latin America that takes place at the margins of formal rules and procedures. These well-established but unwritten norms govern the functioning of bureaucracies, legislatures and judiciaries, and in some cases, undermine formal institutions.

Questions

How does one go about identifying and measuring an informal institution?
How do informal institutions emerge, how are they sustained and under what conditions are they likely to change?
Must all informal institutions be unwritten?
To what extent should informal institutions be understood as aspects of political culture?

Look for

A paper from APSA, “Informal Institutions in Comparative Politics,” by Gretchen Helmke and Steven Levitsky, available in a revised version at the conference. All of the conference papers will be posted on the Conference Program page.

Organizers

Gretchen Helmke (Political Science, University of Rochester and Harvard University), Steven Levitsky (Government, Harvard University) and Frances Hagopian (Kellogg Institute and Political Science , University of Notre Dame)

Invited Presenters

Daniel Brinks (University of Notre Dame)

Joy Langston (CIDE, Mexico)

Todd Eisenstadt (University of New Hampshire)

Michelle Taylor-Robinson (Texas A&M University)

Donna Lee Van Cott (University of Tennessee, Knoxville)

Andres Mejía-Acosta (University of Notre Dame)

David Samuels (University of Minnesota)

Scott Desposato (University of Arizona)

Susan Stokes (University of Chicago)

Luis Fernando Medina (University of Chicago)

Rebecca Bill Chavez (United States Naval Academy)

Steven Levitsky (Harvard University)

John Carey (Washington University at St. Louis)

Invited Discussants

Kurt Weyland (University of Texas, Austin)

Jack Knight (Washington University, St. Louis)

Michael Coppedge (University of Notre Dame)

Scott Mainwaring (University of Notre Dame)

Practitioners

Ignacio Walker (Universidad Nacional Andrés Bello, Santiago, Chile)

Jorge Buendía (Instituto Technológico Autónomo de México, Mexico)

Martín Bohmer (Universidad de Palermo, Argentina)

Miriam Kornblith (Central University of Venezuela, Venezuela)

Chairs

Kathleen Collins (University of Notre Dame)

Frances Hagopian (University of Notre Dame)

Getchen Helmke (University of Rochester and Harvard University)

Steven Levitsky (Government, Harvard University)

Cosponsor

The Coca-Cola Company