Gabriela Ippolito-O’Donnell, “Civil Society, Public Policy, and the Quality of Democracy in Latin America”
Tuesday, March 10, 2015, 7pm
Room 1600 Canfor Policy Room
Simon Fraser University, Harbour Centre
515 West Hastings Street, Vancouver BC V6B 5K3
Does the expansion of civil society promote democracy? Many academics, leaders, and public officials around the world assume it does. Since the transition to democracy in the 1980s, there has been a significant growth and diversification of civil society organizations (and movements) in most countries of Latin America. However, at the same time, democratic political institutions are fragile, economic development uneven, and the reduction of social inequality still in the making. In short, citizenship remains “low intensity.”
Drawing on the experiences of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, and Peru, the talk will map common trends in the current dynamics of civil society in the region and tentatively propose a public policy reform agenda by addressing two questions: Do civil society organizations have indeed an effective positive role in the process of democratization? And if so, what factors favor or hinder their effectiveness?
Gabriela Ippolito-O’Donnell (PhD, University of Cambridge) is professor of politics at Argentina’s Universidad Nacional de San Martín, where she previously directed the Center for the Study of Civil Society and Public Life (CESC). She is the author of The Right to the City: Popular Contention in Contemporary Buenos Aires (University of Notre Dame Press, 2012).