Religious Pluralism, Democracy, and the Catholic Church in Latin America

About the Contributors

467 About the Contributors Roberto J. Blancarte is professor and director of the Center of Sociological Studies at El Colegio de México in Mexico City. He was the founder of the Interdisciplinary Program for the Study of Religions at El Colegio Mexi­ quense in Toluca; associate researcher with the Groupe des Sociologies des Religions et Laïcités in France; and member of the National Committee of Bioethics and the National Commission to Prevent Discrimination in Mexico. He has been an adviser at the Mexican Embassy to the Holy See; chief of staff in the Vice-Ministry of Religious Affairs; and visiting professor at Dartmouth College and the École Pratique des Hautes Études. His­ research deals with the sociology of religion, particularly church-state relations , secularization, “laicity,” and, most recently, the connection between the secular state and sexual and reproductive rights. He is the author and editor of several books, including Historia de la Iglesia católica en México (El Colegio Mexiquense-Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1992), Religión, Iglesias y democracia (La Jornada-UNAM, 1995), and Afganistán, la revoluci ón islámica frente al mundo occidental (El Colegio de México, 2001), as well as numerous journal articles. He writes a weekly column on politics and religion for a national newspaper and participates actively in local politics on behalf of civil freedoms. Frances Hagopian is associate professor of political science and a faculty fellow and former director of the Kellogg Institute for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame. She studies the comparative politics of 468 | About the Contributors Latin America, with emphasis on democratization, political representation, and the political economy of economic reform in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and Mexico, as well as religion and politics in Latin America. She is the author of Reorganizing Political Representation in Latin America (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming), Traditional Politics and Regime Change in Brazil (Cambridge University Press, 1996), coeditor (with Scott Mainwaring ) of The Third Wave of Democratization in Latin America (Cambridge University Press, 2005), and author of numerous articles and book chapters . In 2007–2008 she was a visiting fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Mala Htun is associate professor of political science at the New School for Social Research. She is the author of Sex and the State: Abortion, Divorce, and the Family under Latin American Dictatorships and Democracies (Cambridge University Press, 2003) and articles that have appeared in Perspectives on Politics, Latin American Research Review, and Politics and Gender, among other journals and edited volumes. She is currently writing a book on the politics of representing women and ethnic and racial minorities in Latin America and worldwide. Her article “Is Gender Like Ethnicity? The Political Representation of Identity Groups” won the Heinz Eulau Award from the American Political Science Association in 2005, and she has been supported by grants and fellowships from the National Science Foundation , Social Science Research Council, and National Security Education Program. A former fellow of the Kellogg Institute for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame and the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard, in 2006–2007 she was a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow in Japan and a visiting fellow at the Institute of Social Science at the University of Tokyo. Ronald Inglehart is a professor of political science and program director at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan. He helped found the Euro-Barometer surveys and directs the World Values Survey. His research deals with changing belief systems and their impact on social and political change. His most recent books are (with Pippa Norris) Rising Tide: Gender Equality in Global Perspective (Cambridge University Press, About the Contributors | 469 2003), (with Pippa Norris) Sacred and Secular: The Secularization Thesis Revisited (Cambridge University Press, 2004), and (with Christian Welzel) Modernization, Cultural Change and Democracy: The Human Development Sequence (Cambridge University Press, 2005). He also edited Mass Values and Social Change: Findings from the Values Surveys (Leiden: Brill Pub­ lishers, 2003) and Human Beliefs and Values: A Cross-Cultural Sourcebook Based on the 1999–2001 Values Surveys (Mexico City: Siglo XXI, 2004). Author of more than 225 publications, he has been a visiting professor or visiting scholar in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Brazil, and Nigeria and has served as a consultant to the U.S. State Department and the European Union. Daniel H. Levine is James...