Annual Report 2007-2008

Laurence Whitehead (Official Fellow) continued to work mainly on the comparative politics of democratization, focussing in particular on the country specific issues of most relevance to Bolivia, Mexico, Poland and Taiwan. (He gave conference papers in the last three of these.) A related interest concerns the “democracy promotion” policies of the UK, the US, Canada and the EU and he extended his collaboration with colleagues in all those locations, and his professional involvements with the International Political Science Association, the Latin American Studies Association, and the European-Latin American Network on Governability for Development. Thus, he organised a panel of IPSA Research Committee 13 (Comparative Democratization) at the Sciences Po centre in Poitiers in December 2007, which also hosted the annual conference of that Network. He also participated in the IPSA’s mid-term research planning convention in Montreal in April 2008, and he chaired the LASA Nominations Committee, as well as its section on EU-Latin American relations. This year was also a period of redoubled activity on behalf of the University, namely on the Audit and Scrutiny Committee (which extended its remit to tackle the HEFCE Governance enquiry) and the Nominating Committee for Council. In College he helped organise the seminar on ‘Turkish Politics Since 2002’, a democracy audit of Costa Rica, and a variety of Mexico-focussed activities. In particular he presented an analysis of executive-legislative relations to the Mexican Senate, and delivered a “conferencia magistral” to the Rectorate of the Autonomous University of the State of Mexico. In the Department of Politics he contributed to the launch of the new Centre on Inequality and Democracy, he continued his involvement with the Centre for the Study of Political Ideologies, and he also supported a one-day conference on Portuguese Politics, and several activities at the Centre for European Studies and the Rothermere American Institute. His teaching was mainly doctoral supervision, together with two graduate courses. In the background he is also making progress on a longer term book project concerning the foundations of political life. One notable development is that in June 2008 he was elected the first president of the Conseil Scientifique of France’s new Institut des Amériques.

Publications

‘Taiwan’s Democratization: A Critical Test for the International Dimensions Perspective’, Taiwan Journal of Democracy, 3, 11-32, 2007.

‘Reflections on the Enlarging EU (from a Longue Durée Perspective)’, The Polish Quarterly of International Affairs, 17, 142-51, 2008. (Also as ‘Refleksje na temat rozszerzania Unii Europejskiej’, Sprawy Miedzynarodowe, 41, 139-48, 2008.

‘Elecciones Reñidas’, in A. Knight, A. Schedler, L. Whitehead and E. Rabasa Gamboa (eds), La Conflictiva y Nunca Acabada Construcción de la Democracia Deseada: Mexico en Perspectiva Histórica y Comparada. Mexico City: Editorial Porrúa, 2008, pp 65-89.

‘The Fading Regional Consensus on Democratic Convergence’ in J.I. Domínguez and M. Shifter (eds) Constructing Democratic Governance in Latin America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008, pp 13-38.

‘The International Politics of Democratization from Portugal (1974) to Iraq (2003)’, in N.S. Teixeira (ed) The International Politics of Democratization: Comparative Perspectives. Abingdon: Routledge, 2008, pp. 8-25.

‘Regionalismo, Derechos Humanos y Democratización en América: la Importancia del Contexto’, Araucaria: Revista Iberoamericana de Filosofía, Política y Humanidades, 20, 104-36, 2008.

‘Conclusion: Bolivia’s Latest “Refoundation”’, in J. Crabtree and L. Whitehead (eds) Unresolved Tensions: Bolivia Past and Present. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2008, pp. 255-69.