Laurence
Whitehead: Annual Report 2005/06

Laurence Whitehead (Official Fellow in
Politics) served as Acting Warden for the year, and therefore devoted a
considerable portion of his time to questions of college and university
administration.  However, he also
continued with a series of writing and research commitments, notably on E-U
Latin American relations, and on Comparative Democratization, as well as
continuing his longstanding work on the politics of Latin America (notably
Bolivia, and Mexico, both of which he visited during the year).

On
EU-Latin American relations he was the UK co-ordinator helping with the Third
Annual Conference of the Red Eurolatinoamericano de Gobernabilidad para el
Desarrollo, held in Hamburg in December 2006. (He also took on the lead role in
organising the Fourth Conference, to be held in Nuffield in December
2007).  In February 2007 he was
invited to represent the Vice Chancellor at the conference of the Rectors of
European and Latin American Universities, held in Leiden,
and he played an active part in the drafting of the Leiden Declaration which
was submitted to the Heads of State Summit in Vienna.
In April he chaired the European-Latin American section of the Latin
American Studies Association conference in San Juan,
Puerto Rico.  He also delivered a keynote speech at a
Eurolatinamerican forum in Lisbon.

On
Comparative Democratization he collaborated with Desmond
King to finalise the manuscript of their forthcoming edited
volume on the Democratization of the USA.  Also, in his capacity as Chair of
Research Committee 13 of the International Political Science Association, he
organised four panels on “Neglected issues in Comparative
Democratization” for the 20th Congress in Fukuoka, Japan
in July 2006.  In association with
that trip he gave the opening keynote address at an International Conference on
Legislatures and Parliaments in the 21st century, in Soochow University, organised by the Taiwan
Foundation for Democracy.

He
took part in two UNDP sponsored visits to Bolivia
(November 2005 and August 2006), and organised a two-day conference in Nuffield College
concerning Bolivia’s
new political direction (February 2006).
The results of this work are taking shape as edited volume under his
co-direction.

The
most important activity of the Centre for Mexican Studies, which he directs,
was as international seminar on “Close Fought Elections”, held in
conjuction with the Instituto Federal Electoral and the Tribunal Electoral, in Mexico City in March
2006.   The comparative academic work generated
by this event is appearing in English as a special issue of the Taiwan Journal of Democracy which he
edited. The full proceedings have also been issued in Spanish by the IFE.  The Centre also co-sponsored a research
project on horizontal inequalities between Mexican Municipalities, for the
Ministry of Social Development, and this was awarded the premio nacional of the Colegio Nacional de Economistas.

In
April 2006 he delivered a keynote address to the 19th Conference of
Latin American Finance Ministers and Central Bankers in Washington DC,
dealing with the political economy of the exceptionally crowded electoral
calendar of 2006.  He also gave the
opening address at a University
of Toronto conference on
“learning to Lose” in the course of the same visit.

This
was an unusually productive year in terms of academic publications, mainly
because a series of long running prior activities came to fruition just when he
was diverted into College administration.
But a number of other projects are currently developing and he has
plenty of research to turn back to now that the Acting Wardenship has reached
its termination.

Publications

Laurence Whitehead, Latin America: A New Interpretation, Palgrave, New York,
2006) pp.300.

Laurence Whitehead, (Guest editor) ‘Closely
Fought Elections and the Institutionalization of Democracy’, a special
issue of the Taiwan Journal of Democracy,
Vol. 2, Number 1, July 2006 pp. 1-12.

Laurence Whitehead, Patricia Justino, and
Julie Litchfield, ‘Inequality in Latin American: Dimensions and
processes’, pp.15-48  in
Ricardo Gottschalk and Patricia Justino, (eds.) Overcoming Inequality in Latin America:
issues and challenges for the twenty-first century (Routledge, 2006).

Lourdes Sola and Laurence Whitehead (editors) Statecrafting Monetary Authority: Democracy and Financial Order in Brazil,
(Centre for Brazilian Studies, University of Oxford, 2006). (Joint introduction pp.1-12
chapter one pp. 13 – 36 postscript, pp.359-67).

Laurence Whitehead, “The Shifting
Foundations of Economic Liberalism in Latin American Public Policy”
pp.245-264 in Valpy Fitzgerald and Rosemary Thorp (eds.) Economic Doctrines in Latin America: Origins Embedding and Evolution,
(Palgrave, New York, 2005).

Laurence Whitehead “Democratization
and Human Rights in the Americas:
Should the Jury Still be Out?”, pp.161-184 in Louise Fawcett and Monica
Serrano, Regionalism and Governance in
the Americas, (Palgrave,
New York, 2005).

Laurence Whitehead, “Some states of
Asia compared from afar” pp.162-181 in Richard Boyd and Tak-Wing Ngo, State Making in Asia, (Routledge, 2006).

Laurence Whitehead, Manuel Guedán,
Joaquín Villalobos, and Miguel Cruz, Perfil de Gobernabilidad de El
Salvador, (CICODE, Universidad de
Alcalá, 2005).

Rafael
Fernandez de Castro, Laurence Whitehead, Natalia Saltalamacchia (eds.),
¿Somos Especiales? Las Relaciones de Mexico y Gran Bretaña con
Estados Unidos: Una Vision Comparada, (Porrúa, Mexico City, 2006).