Javier Corrales

The Dwight W. Morrow 1895 Professor of Political Science at Amherst College, Javier Corrales’ research focuses on democratization, presidential powers, ruling parties, democratic backsliding, populism, political economy of development, oil and energy, the incumbent’s advantage, foreign policies, and sexuality. He has published extensively on Latin America and the Caribbean, and his latest book — Autocracy Rising: How Venezuela Transitioned to Authoritarianism — argues that deep democratic backsliding is determined by party system features, variations in autocratic legalism, institutional capture, and innovations in the use of coercion. It is this scholarship that will frame his presentation for the Chautauqua Lecture Series in a week focused on “The Global Rise of Authoritarianism.”

Corrales’ other books include Fixing Democracy: Why Constitutional Change Often Fails to Enhance Democracy in Latin America — which develops the concept of power asymmetry between government and opposition forces to explain whether new constitutions will expand presidential powers, and in the process, hurt democracy — and The Politics of LGBTQ Rights Expansion in Latin America and Caribbean.

Corrales has taught at the Center for Latin American Research at the University of Amsterdam and at the Center for Latin American Studies at Georgetown University, and has offered short courses at the Institute of Higher Studies in Administration in Caracas, the School of Government at the University of the Andes in Bogotá, and at the Universidad de Salamanca.

In 2000, he became one of the youngest scholars ever to be selected as a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. Twice a Fulbright scholar, in 2005 in Caracas and 2016 in Bogotá, Corrales obtained his Ph.D. in political science from Harvard University.