Breakdowns and (de)democratization in South America and beyond

Convener: Stefano Palestini

2023 is a meaningful year for the history of democracy in South America. It is the 50 anniversary of the coup d’état against president Salvador Allende in Chile. It is also the 40 anniversary of the election of president Raúl Alfonsín and the restauration of democracy in Argentina. Both events - we could also add the 50 anniversary of the coup d’état in Uruguay – represent milestones of a period of democratic breakdown, authoritarian rule, and democratization that found in South America its main stage. This period not only left profound scares in the concerned societies, but it also shaped social and political sciences quite beyond the Latin American boundaries. Comparative and international studies on authoritarianism and democratization were deeply influenced by the historical experience of South America during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. ‘Bureaucratic authoritarianism’, ‘democratic breakdown’, ‘transitions’, and even “waves of democratization” were all concepts that to different extents were abstracted from the concrete historical experience of golpes, juntas, and transiciones in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Peru, and Uruguay. This international conference aims at remembering, reconstructing, and reassessing the significance of the South American experience for the study of democracy and authoritarianism globally. More specifically, the conference aims at addressing the following questions: what did social and political sciences learn from the breakdown and restoration of  liberal democracy in South America? To what extent the South American trajectory of democracy inspired the scholarly debates about democracy and authoritarianism and shaped the career of researchers in comparative and international studies? How much of this legacy is still relevant for the study of current processes of autocratization and the erosion of liberal democracy and liberal constitutionalism worldwide?

10.45 Welcome 

Giuseppe Sciortino. Head of the Sociology and Social Research Department
Stefano Schiavo. Director of the School of International Studies

11.00 -12.30 Panel 1: Revisiting the breakdowns and transitions in South America
Chair: Stefano Palestini

Laurence Whitehead. Revisiting democratic breakdowns and de-democratizations. Some recent lessons from South America
Yanina Welp. Transitions as constellations of (rare) favorable events
Andrés Malamud. Varieties of democratizations in South America

12.45-14.00 Lunch break

14.15- 15.45 Panel 2: Problems of and problems for democracy in contemporary South America
Chair and Discussant: Katia Pilati

Leonardo Morlino. Transitions to democracy: methodological and theoretical issues
Mariana Llanos. 40 years of democracy in Argentina
Stefano Palestini. The ‘neoliberal citizen’. Making sense of the failed constitutional process in Chile

16.00 – 17.30 Panel 3: Old wine, new bottles? Contemporary processes of democratization and autocratization beyond South America
Chair and Discussant: Daniela Sicurelli

Simona Piattoni. Democratic Backsliding in Europe
Pejman Abdolmohammadi. Democratic backsliding in the Middle East
Alessandra Russo. The International Dimension of De-democratization in the Post-Soviet Space

17.30-17.45 Closing remarks

Participants:

Pejman Abdolmohammadi. Università degli Studi di Trento
Mariana Llanos. GIGA Institut, Hamburg
Andrés Malamud. Universidade de Lisboa
Leonardo Morlino. Libera Università Internazionale degli Studi Sociali (LUISS)
Stefano Palestini. Università degli Studi di Trento
Simona Piattoni. Università degli Studi di Trento
Katia Pilati. Università degli Studi di Trento
Alessandra Russo. Università degli Studi di Trento
Stefano Schiavo. Università degli Studi di Trento
Giuseppe Sciortino. Università degli Studi di Trento
Daniela Sicurelli. Università degli Studi di Trento
Yanina Welp. Graduate Institute Genève
Laurence Whitehead. University of Oxford