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Contributors
Enrique Desmond Arias is an assistant professor of government at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY, and a fellow at the Bildner Center for Western Hemisphere Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center. His current research concerns the roles of criminal gangs, human rights, and local-level governance in Rio de Janeiro.
José E. Molina V. is a professor at the Instituto de Estudios Políticos y Derecho Público, Universidad del Zulia, Venezuela. From 2000 through 2003 he was a visiting professor at the University of Michigan. Electoral systems and electoral behavior in Venezuela and Latin America are the focus of his research. Some recent publications include “The Rise and Decline of COPEI in Venezuela” (with Brian Crisp and Daniel Levine), in Christian Democracy in Latin America: Electoral Competition and Regime Conflict, ed. Scott Mainwaring and Timothy Scully (2003); and “The Electoral Effect of Underdevelopment: Government Turnover and Its Causes in Latin American, Caribbean, and Industrialized Countries,” Electoral Studies 20 (2001).
Carmen Pérez-Baralt is a professor at the Instituto de Estudios Políticos y Derecho Público, Universidad del Zulia. Her research specializes in electoral behavior in Venezuela. She has collaborated with José Molina on the recent articles “Los procesos electorales de 1999 en Venezuela: la nueva institucionalidad política,” Ciencias de Gobierno (2000), and “Participación política y derechos humanos,” Revista IIDH (2002).
David Smilde is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Georgia. His research focuses on culture, religion, and social movements in Latin America, especially Venezuela. Recent publications include “Skirting the Instrumental Paradox: Intentional Belief Through Narrative in Latin American Pentecostalism,” Qualitative Sociology 26, 3 (2003); “Evangelicalism and Politics in Latin America: Moving Beyond Monolithic Portraits,” History of Religions 42, 3 (2003); and Protesta y cultura en Venezuela: los marcos de Acción Colectiva en 1999 (with Margarita López-Maya and Keta Stephany, 2002).
Judith Teichman is a professor of political science at the University of Toronto. She is the author of Policymaking in Mexico: From Boom to Crisis (1988), Privatization and Political Change in Mexico (1995), and [End Page iii] The Politics of Freeing Markets in Latin America: Chile, Argentina, and Mexico (2001), along with numerous articles on the politics of economic policymaking in Latin America. She is currently researching the politics of poverty alleviation programs in Mexico and Chile.
Kurt Weyland is an associate professor of government at the University of Texas, Austin. He has written Democracy Without Equity: Failures of Reform in Brazil (1996); The Politics of Market Reform in Fragile Democracies: Argentina, Brazil, Peru, and Venezuela (2002); and numerous journal articles on democratization, market reform, social policy, and populist politics in Latin America. An edited volume, Learning from Foreign Models in Latin American Policy Reform, is forthcoming in spring 2004. Dr. Weyland is a member of the LAPS Editorial Board and an associate editor of the Latin American Research Review.
