October 6, 2004
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417

AMHERST, Mass.-Javier Corrales, associate professor of political science at Amherst College, has been awarded a Fulbright Scholar grant to travel and conduct research in Venezuela. Corrales will study why so many ex-presidents and complete newcomers are running for office in Latin America and winning. Corrales suspects that this choice of candidates is both symptomatic and a cause of some of the region's democratic malfunction. While in Caracas, Corrales will also lecture at the Institute for Higher Studies in Administration.

Corrales considered the office of the president in his most recent book, Presidents Without Parties: The Politics of Economic Reform in Argentina and Venezuela in the 1990s (2002). He argued that the crisis of political parties in Latin America often affects not just the ways citizens are represented, but also the way states govern the economy.

Corrales, who has taught at Amherst since 1996, has been a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and worked at the World Bank in Washington, D.C. He has taught in Argentina, Paraguay and Venezuela, and earned a B.S. in foreign service from Georgetown University, and a Ph.D. in political science from Harvard University.

Corrales is one of approximately 800 U.S. faculty and professionals who will travel abroad to some 140 countries in the 2004-05 academic year as Fulbright Scholars. Established in 1946 by the late Senator William J. Fulbright of Arkansas, the Fulbright Scholar Program seeks to build mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the world.

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