Podcasts · IIEA Talks

Stuck: The Price of Latin America's Democratic Plateau

30 Sep 2026 · 52 min

For much of the past two decades, discussions of Latin American democracy have centred on decline — elected autocrats, weakened institutions, and a slide toward competitive authoritarianism. Building on joint work with Scott Mainwaring, Dr Bizzarro contends that the more common, and in some ways more troubling, pattern is not democratic collapse but stagnation. He argues that most of the region's democracies are neither dying nor deepening: they are stuck — hobbled by entrenched elites who block reform, governments that fail to deliver, and weak states that neither fully protect rights nor fully provide security. Dr Bizzarro examines what this stagnation costs: economically, in slower growth; politically, in eroding support for democratic institutions and the rise of anti-system outsiders; and internationally, in a region less able to anchor democratic norms abroad. This event examines why Latin American democracy's central problem may not be a single dramatic crisis, but a long, quiet plateau whose consequences deserve closer attention.

Dr Bizzarro is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Boston College, and for the 2026-2027 academic year, a Visiting Professor at Yale University. A comparativist working on Latin America, his research explores the nature, causes, and consequences of democracy and political parties across the region. He completed his Ph.D. in Harvard University's Department of Government in 2023 and was previously a Postdoctoral Associate at Yale's Jackson School of International Affairs. His work has appeared in the Journal of Democracy, World Politics, and Electoral Studies, and he is co-authoring a book with Scott Mainwaring on democratic deepening in Latin America.

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