About

Steven Levitsky’s most recent book, Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes After the Cold War, published in 2010, explores the emergence and evolution of competitive authoritarian regimes in Africa, Asia, Latin America and post-Soviet countries. In competitive authoritarian regimes, autocrats allow multiparty elections and create the appearance of formal democratic institutions; however, abuses are so widespread that the regime fails to meet conventional minimum standards for democracy. Under such systems, political leaders use state apparati to control and limit opposition through intimidation, media control, or by tampering with election results.

Competitive authoritarian regimes increased in numbers after the Cold War. In his book, Levitsky studies 35 cases of authoritarian regimes and analyzes their outcomes between 1990 and 2008. He concludes that in the cases of authoritarian regimes with strong economic, social, and technocratic ties to the West, the external cost of democratic abuse resulted in politicians ceding power instead of engaging in repressive rule, leading to a higher level of democratization. In cases where authoritarian regimes had limited ties to the West, external pressure to democratize was weaker and those countries continued to engage in democratic abuse.

Levitsky is also author of Transforming Labor-Based Parties in Latin America: Argentine Peronism in Comparative Perspective. Through an analysis of Argentine Peronism, he draws theoretical insights that can be generalized and applied to political parties in Latin America and the rest of the world. He offers explanations for the success of certain Latin American labor parties in adapting to the challenges of neoliberalism, and explores why others have faced more obstacles. Levitsky argues that loosely structured political parties have the tendency to be more flexible than more bureaucratic labor parties. He shows that the Argentine Peronist party, also known as the Partido Justicialista, had a fluid internal structure which allowed it to adapt and transform itself from a union-dominated populist party into one with the ability to carry out necessary market-oriented economic reforms.

Levitsky is co-editor of Argentine Democracy: The Politics of Institutional Weakness, published in 2005, and Informal Institutions and Democracy: Lessons from Latin America, published in 2006. His articles have appeared in numerous academic journals, including Comparative Politics, Comparative Political Studies, Journal of Democracy, Journal of Latin American Studies, Party Politics, Perspectives on Politics, World Politics, and Studies in Comparative International Development. Levitsky serves as an adviser for two Harvard student organizations, the Harvard Organization for Latin America and the Harvard College Project for Sustainable Development.