Are Latin American Bureaucrats Democrats? Politics, Technocratic Orientation, and Democracy

Scott Morgenstern
Professor of Political Science
University of Pittsburgh

Given their role in implementing policy and executive orders, bureaucrats are uniquely positioned to respond to executive overreach.  Their attitudes toward democracy, however, have avoided significant scrutiny.  This talk thus explores their commitment to democracy using an original survey of nearly 12,000 Latin American bureaucrats.  To explain the likelihood of their commitment to democracy, the focus is on technocratic orientation, their alignment with the president, and the level of and change in the country’s democratic context. 

Scott Morgenstern is professor of political science at the University of Pittsburgh, where he served as the director of the Center for Latin American Studies from 2014 to 2018. His research focuses on political parties, electoral systems, and legislatures, with a regional specialization in Latin America. Among his numerous publications he has authored two books: Are Politics Local? The Two Dimensions of Party Nationalization around the World (Cambridge University Press, 2017) and Patterns of Legislative Politics: Roll Call Voting in the United States and Latin America’s Southern Cone (Cambridge University Press, 2004).