Bios

My full C.V.

My Short bio:

Javier Corrales is Dwight W. Morrow 1895 professor of Political Science at Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts.  He obtained his Ph.D. in political science from Harvard University in 1996.

Corrales's 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.

His latest book, Autocracy Rising (Brookings Institution Press, fall 2022), discusses the transition to authoritarianism in Venezuela since the 2010s, with comparisons to Colombia, Ecuador, and Nicaragua. It argues that deep democratic backsliding is determined by party system features, variations in autocratic legalism, institutional capture, and innovations in the use of coercion.

His 2018 book, Fixing Democracy (Oxford University Press) 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.  

In 2022 he published, The Politics of LGBTQ Rights Expansion in Latin America and Caribbean (Cambridge Elements, Cambridge University Press).  He also co-authored with Jack Kiryk the article, "Homophobic Populism" (Oxford Research Encyclopedia), discussing the political marriage between populism and conservative religion.

His book Dragon in the Tropics: Venezuela and the Legacy of Hugo Chávez, co-authored with Michael Penfold, is now in its second edition (Brookings Institution Press, 2015). It was chosen in 2019 by both The Financial Times and The Guardian as essential titles to understand the crisis in Venezuela.

He is also the co-author with Daniel Altschuler of The Promise of Participation: Experiments in Participatory Governance in Honduras and Guatemala (Palgrave/Macmillan 2013), and with Carlos A. Romero of U.S.-Venezuela Relations since the 1990s (Routledge 2013).  He is the co-editor with Mario Pecheny of The Politics of Sexuality in Latin America:  A Reader on GLBT Rights (University of Pittsburgh Press 2010), and author of Presidents Without Parties: the Politics of Economic Reform in Argentina and Venezuela in the 1990s (Penn State University Press 2002). 

His research has been published in academic journals such as Comparative Politics, World Development, Political Science Quarterly, International Studies Quarterly, World Policy Journal, Latin American Politics and Society, Comparative Political Studies, Journal of Democracy, Latin American Research Review, Studies in Comparative International Studies, Journal of Energy Policy, European Review of Latin America and the Caribbean Studies, Religion and Politics, Current History, and Foreign Policy. 

Corrales is a regular contributor to The New York Times and has also written for The Washington Post, NPR, and Foreign Policy.  He is often cited by journalists and is a frequent guest at various radio shows.

Javier Corrales serves on the editorial board of Latin American Politics and Society, Political Science Quarterly, the European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Americas Quarterly, and GlobalAmericans.

In 2010 he was appointed by Governor Deval Patrick to serve on the executive board of Mass Humanities, a grant-making organization affiliated with the National Endowment for the Humanities. 

He 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.  He has also offered short courses at the Institute of Higher Studies in Administration (IESA) 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. He has also been a consultant for the World Bank, the United Nations, the Center for Global Development, Freedom House, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

He has been a Fulbright scholar twice, in 2005 in Caracas and 2016 in Bogotá.

Currently, Corrales is also working on two other projects:  1) Populism and Polarization: Incumbents, Expresidents, and Newcomers; and 2) Democratic Backsliding and Political Parties.

Updated: September 2022.