Seminar in Comparative Politics: The Political Economy of Latin America

This course is designed to survey and discuss research on the political and economic development of Latin America. The first half of the course focuses on understanding the region's political systems as well as the main theories describing the incentives faced by politicians when distributing public resources. The second section covers the main problems that challenge Latin America's young democracies today - including weak state capacity, corruption, and violence. Methodologically, the course pays special attention to understanding the ways in which data can be leveraged to provide evidence to evaluate social science arguments.