Murphy Seminar in Political Science: Steven Levitsky (Harvard)

The Murphy Institute Seminar Series in Political Science

Each semester, The Murphy Institute proudly sponsors a dynamic series of seminars and workshops organized across key Tulane academic departments: Economics, Political Science, Sociology, Philosophy, and Law. These seminar series serve as a vital platform for faculty, visiting scholars, and researchers to present cutting-edge work on contemporary issues in political economy, public policy, ethics, and social values. The Murphy Seminar in Political Science, held in partnership with the Department of Political Science, covers all aspects of contemporary political science, including comparative politics, public policy, international relations, American politics, and normative theory. Papers are distributed beforehand to the participants who read the paper and prepare discussion questions for the presenter. 

Steven Levitsky is David Rockefeller Professor of Latin American Studies and Professor of Government and Director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard. He is Senior Fellow at the Kettering Foundation and a Senior Democracy Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. His research focuses on democratization and authoritarianism, political parties, and weak and informal institutions, with a focus on Latin America. He is co-author (with Daniel Ziblatt) of How Democracies Die, which was a New York Times Best-Seller and was published in 30 languages, and Tyranny of the Minority: Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point. He has written or edited 11 other books, including Transforming Labor-Based Parties in Latin America: Argentine Peronism in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge University Press 2003), Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes after the Cold War (with Lucan Way) (Cambridge University Press, 2010), and Revolution and Dictatorship: The Violent Origins of Durable Authoritarianism (with Lucan Way) (Princeton University Press, 2022). He and Lucan Way are currently working on a book on democratic resilience across the world.

Professor Levitsky has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, and The New Republic, and he has been a columnist for La Republica (Peru) and Folha de São Paulo (Brazil).