Daniel
Kammen
“Green
Growth?”
The
next U.S. president will be confronted with the need to
right the listing economy while combating global climate
change. Dan Kammen discusses the opportunities available
to the next president, both at home and internationally,
as well as the constraints he will face, identifying key
areas for policy change.
Daniel
Kammen is a professor in the Energy and Resources Group,
the Goldman School of Public Policy and the Department
of Nuclear Engineering at UC Berkeley. He is also the director
of the university’s Renewable
and Appropriate Energy Laboratory.
Tuesday,
September 9, 12:00 – 1:15
pm
554
Barrows Hall
Jonathan
Fox
“Mexico's Right-to-Know Reforms: Testing the Transition”
Mexico’s
laws and official political discourse now emphasize transparency.
Citizens’ “right to know” is assumed
to encourage more accountable governance. In practice,
however, what difference have these reforms made so far,
and how do we know? This presentation will include a conceptual
discussion of the relationship between transparency and
accountability, a national overview of the reform process,
and a field report on a grassroots civil society campaign
to exercise information rights in the state of Guerrero.
Jonathan
Fox is professor of Latin American and Latino Studies at
the University of California, Santa Cruz. His most recent
books include Accountability Politics: Power and Voice
in Rural Mexico (Oxford University Press, 2007) and,
as co-editor, Mexico's Right-to-Know Reforms: Civil
Society Perspectives (Fundar & Woodrow Wilson
Center, 2007). The latter book is fully online in English
and Spanish at www.fundar.org.mx.
Monday,
September 22, 12:00 – 1:15 pm
554 Barrows Hall
Jean-Paul
Faguet
“Decentralization and Access to Social Services in Colombia”
Jean-Paul
Faguet will explore the empirical effects of decentralization
on access to public services in Colombia. In general,
decentralization has led to a shift in investment from
infrastructure to primary social services, leading to improvements
in enrollment rates at public schools and in poor people’s
access to public health services. Notably, it was the behavior
of smaller, poorer, more rural municipalities that drove
these changes. This contradicts common claims that local
government is more corrupt, institutionally weak and prone
to interest-group capture than central government.
Jean-Paul
Faguet is a visiting scholar at the Center for Latin American
Studies and an associate professor of Political Economy
of Development at the London School of Economics, where
he is also program director for Development Management.
Monday,
September 29, 12:00 – 1:15 pm
554 Barrows Hall
Barry
Carr
“Pink, Red or Tutti Frutti? Where Is Latin America Heading Politically?”
Is
Latin America turning to the left? In this talk, Barry
Carr looks at recent developments (in Venezuela, Bolivia,
Ecuador, Bolivia, Chile, Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil and
Paraguay) and assesses the significance of the so-called
Pink Tide, the emergence of new international actors in
Latin America and the challenge these developments pose
for the United States in what has traditionally been a
predictable political setting.
Barry
Carr taught at La Trobe University until early 2008 and
served as the director of that university’s Institute
of Latin American Studies. He is currently a visiting scholar
at CLAS and is co-editing a book that looks at recent developments
in Latin America.
Monday,
October 13, 4:00 pm
554 Barrows Hall
Beatriz
Manz
“Anthropologist as Witness: Spain’s Guatemala Genocide Case”
In
the early 1980s, Guatemala’s human rights abuses
reached genocidal proportions. As an anthropologist who
studies Guatemalan society, Prof. Manz has taken the position,
controversial within the profession, that public exposure
of what took place is the necessary and ethical path. She
has provided expert testimony before Congressional committees
and asylum judges, written opinion pieces for such papers
as The New York Times and The International Herald Tribune
and, more recently, provided expert testimony before the
National Court in Madrid, Spain, which is considering genocide
charges against several Guatemalan military officers.
Beatriz
Manz is a professor of geography and ethnic studies at
UC Berkeley and has done extensive anthropological fieldwork
in Guatemala. Her book, Paradise in Ashes, chronicles
the devastation in the war-torn rainforest region of northern
Guatemala.
Monday,
October 20, 12:00 – 1:15 pm
554 Barrows Hall
