Author Archives: tsl2m5

I recently returned from the Latin American Studies Association conference. It was a landmark event for LASA — the 50th anniversary of the organization’s founding, the largest and most international conference ever, and a return to New York after decades away. One of the benefits of LASA, particularly now that I am living in the UK, is the opportunity to catch up with many of my past professors and mentors.

One of them, Louis Goodman, former dean of the School of International Service, gave me a copy of a book, Kalman Silvert: Engaging Latin America, Building Democracy, shortly before the conference (published by Lynne Rienner). The volume, to which Goodman contributed, was compiled and edited by Abraham Lowenthal and Martin Weinstein. Before getting the book, I knew Silvert’s name in large part because LASA’s highest prize is named after him. I would have been hard pressed to tell you too much more. As the book itself notes, Silvert’s contributions have somewhat faded from view. His writings are not widely cited. He is well remembered by a senior generation, but largely unknown to my own generation.

Silvert was a founder and the first president of LASA. He was a professor at Tulane, University of Buenos Aires, Dartmouth, and NYU. He also was a senior advisor for the Ford Foundation’s programs in the social science, with a focus on Latin America during a crucial time. He worked to support social scientists living and working in repressive regimes in the 1960s until his death in 1976. Support from Ford helped numerous institutions in Latin America provide a venue for independent social science under trying circumstances. Through his scholarship, teaching, and development of professional networks, Silvert pressed for individual rights, education, democracy, and better relations between the United States and Latin America. He was deeply involved in the creation of many institutions that for my generation have always formed the professional landscape of Latin American studies.

The book offers an excellent introduction to Silvert’s life and work. Chapters offer an overview of his major works, contributions on mentoring, through philanthropic organizations, as a public intellectual, and engagement with U.S. policy–particularly through the Commission on United States – Latin American Relations, often known as “the Linowitz Commission,” which had a major influence on the Carter Administration’s approaches to Latin America.

The book is also a wonderful reminder that so much of what we do goes beyond our writings. Most of the chapters are contributed by Silvert’s former students or by scholars he worked with closely across Latin America, though especially in Argentina and Chile. The chapters weave together many interlocking aspect’s of Silvert’s life and work, and they also serve as a wonderful reminder that the social sciences are social in more ways than one. These personal relationships are, of course, important to how we build knowledge, but they are usually invisible in our published work. This is an excellent corrective.

A group of more than twenty scholars, many with policy experience, have put together a document offering consensus policy recommendations for the next U.S. president: Recommendations for U.S.-Latin America/Caribbean Policy, 2016 Elections:
Conclusions of Global Americans Working Group.

The effort, ably led by Chris Sabatini, editor of the web magazine Latin America Goes Global, provides an analysis of the current situation in U.S.-Latin American relations. It also offers ideas for how to move forward on security, trade, diplomacy, human rights, the OAS, etc. I am glad to have been involved in this consensus effort, which I think moves the discussion in a positive direction. So far, unfortunately, the campaign’s discussion and portrayal of Latin America and its people has been overwhelmingly negative.

Now is a time for building bridges, not walls, between the United States and its partners and friends in Latin America and the Caribbean. Check out the report here.

The first review of my book (I think) is online at Post-Western World. Oliver Stuenkel pulls out some lessons from the book for Brazil and other countries hoping to influence Washington.

He writes, “Successfully engaging and influencing the United States will be crucial for Latin America in the coming years — be it vis-à-vis designing policies to combat drug trafficking and organized crime, fighting corruption, or articulating a regional response to deal with China’s growing influence. Latin America Confronts the United States offers a very interesting look back about how Latin America has been able to influence its dominant neighbor in the North.” Check out the review.

I’m glad to say that I have a new article accepted for publication at the journal International Politics, which is edited by Michael Cox at the London School of Economics. IP is a great, lively journal that publishes relatively short, engaging (and often argumentative) pieces. It is (I think) gaining prominence in the UK and elsewhere. They recently had a great special issue on responses to regional powers that is very relevant to anyone interested in regionalism or the role of Brazil in South America. My CIDE colleague Mark Aspinwall also published a great, counter-intuitive article about Mexican influence on U.S. drug policy in the journal a few weeks ago.

My own article certainly seeks to fit the journal’s argumentative mode. It is titled “It’s Not the Size, It’s the Relationship: From ‘Small States’ to Asymmetry.” The basic thrust of the argument is as follows: decades of debate over how we should define the term “small state” has not produced much consensus (everyone agrees on this). Furthermore, the debate has had some negative consequences, like limiting theory-building, comparison, and two-way conversation with IR theory. Instead, I argue that we should more fully embrace a relational approach that places small states within the context of asymmetrical relationships instead of treating them as a coherent category.

I don’t have a publication date or link yet, but I will update when I do.

*Intentionally sophomoric title. But it actually makes sense!

Good news! I have a forthcoming article in Foro Internacional, published by the Colegio de México, in early 2017. It is titled, “Coloso fragmentado: The ‘intermestic’ agenda and Latin American foreign policy.” The review process was quite positive, with good suggestions from the anonymous reviewers. It will be out in Foro Internacional 227 (vol. LVII-1, enero marzo de 2017). There is a bit of delay because I wrote the piece in English, and Foro is graciously handling the translation for me. So, if you have something you would like to publish to engage with a Spanish-language audience, I would recommend it, even if you don’t want to (or can’t) write it in Spanish. Here is an abstract:

Abstract: “Intermestic” issues, including trade, migration, and drug-trafficking, dominate contemporary U.S.-Latin American relations and matter deeply to Latin American and Caribbean states. Despite their importance to Latin American leaders and publics, Latin American diplomats have had less success influencing U.S. policy than in other spheres. These failures owe, at least in part, to the dynamics that intermestic issues create in the U.S. foreign policy process. While those dynamics have been broadly explored, there has been less attention to the ways in which these dynamics affect Latin American and Caribbean foreign policy towards the United States. Building on work by Putnam, Milner, Tsebelis, and others, this article argues that intermestic issues have more veto players and narrower win-sets than traditional foreign policy issues, which complicates attempts at influencing U.S. policies. The argument is examined against the case of the U.S.-Mexico cross-border trucking dispute, where the Mexican government struggled with U.S. officials and interest groups for two decades to gain U.S. compliance with NAFTA. After briefly exploring other relevant issues, the article suggests that for Latin American policymakers, intermestic issues demand different diplomatic strategies.

I have the very happy news that I have been appointed profesor afiliado  with the Division of International Studies at the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas in Mexico City. I can’t speak highly enough of the team there, and my year at CIDE was highly productive. The DEI is full of incredible scholars who are also wonderful people. This is a great way to maintain my ties with wonderful colleagues, facilitate research projects, and to have an institutional home in Mexico. I am honored to continue being a part of the CIDE family, even from a bit farther away (though honestly, a pesero from Condesa to Santa Fe sometimes felt like a trans-Atlantic flight). Thanks to the DEI and CIDE for the vote of confidence.