Laurence Whitehead (Official Fellow in Politics) resumed his normal activities at the
beginning of the year, following his interlude as Acting Warden.  In the area of Latin American politics,
he hosted Bert Hoffmann’s
visiting fellowship and together they launched an edited volume on Cuban
Exceptionalism.  The launch included
two panels at the Society for Latin American Studies Conference in Newcastle, a
presentation at the Free University of Berlin, and joint participation in a
one-day seminar on Cuba at the Foreign Office.  He also undertook a research visit to
Bolivia under the auspices of the Carter Center and completed a collective
manuscript on the Evo Morales experiment which will be published in La Paz (in
Spanish) in October 2007, with a subsequent edition in English in the
pipeline.  He also made
presentations in Ecuador on area studies in the Americas; and in both the US
and Canada, on the state of international relations in the western hemisphere;
and in Argentina, on trends in democratization in South America.  In August 2007 he will be speaking at a
conference organised by the Federal Electoral Institute in Mexico City on strengthening electoral
institutions.

Together with Ana Dimitrijevics he
organised and hosted the Fourth Annual Conference of the Red
Eurolatinoamericano de Gobernabilidad para el Desarrollo, in St Ann’s
College, in December 2006.  He also
went to Salamanca to help prepare the Fifth Conference (to be held at Sciences
Po in Paris in December 2007). Finally, he presented the paper on British
relations with Latin America at a conference in Berlin on EU-Latin American
relations.

Another thread in his research concerns
the comparative analysis of “the state” in various Asian
settings.  As a continuation of that
line of work he presented a keynote address to a conference at the City
University of Hong Kong, on China’s
State.  In August 2007 he will
present another paper on international dimension of democratization focussing
on the case of Taiwan at an
international conference in Taipei.

As concerns his broader and more
comparative/theoretical work on democratization, one highlight was his
presentation (rather alarmingly in French, and publicly broadcast) to a College
de France symposium on democratic universalism.  He will be undertaking further work in
this broad area in the coming year, (notably in collaboration with Guillermo
O’Donnell, the forthcoming Winant Visiting Professor). His collaboration
with Desmond King and others on the
democratization of the USA
is now in its final stages.

Apart from these research activities, the
year also involved a resumption of his normal teaching supervising and
examination activities (including examining a doctorate at Leiden University, a
very different experience from the British norm).  There was less college or university
administration than for some time past.
But he was elected to the Audit and Scrutiny Committee of the Council,
and he also took part in the university’s deliberations over its
governance system.

Publications

“The Challenge of Closely Fought Elections”, Journal of Democracy, April 2007 (Vol. 18, No. 2)
pp.14/28.

Bert Hoffmann, and Laurence Whitehead (eds.) Debating Cuban Exceptionalism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007)

“Conclusion: When Was Latin America Modern?” in Nicola
Miller and Stephen Hart (eds.) When Was Latin America Modern? (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007)
pp.191/2006.

“Gobernabilidad y Reforma Politica
en Europa y America Latina: Algunas Lecciones” in Klaus Bodemer and
Fernando Carrillo (eds.) Gobernabilidad y
Reforma Politica en America Latina y Europa (GIGA, BID, RedGOb, Plural,
2007).  Pp. 347/351.

Rodolfo Mariano, “Sobre la
volatalidad y la Variabilidad de los derechos” en  TO FOLLOW

Whitehead, Laurence (2007)
"Variabilidad en la Aplicación de Derechos: una perspectiva comparada"
en PNUD  "Contribuciones al
Debate II: Estado, Democracia y Ciudadanía en América
Latina". Myrza Ed. Lima Perú.   (in print)