Notes on the Contributors
Jóhanna Kristín Birnir is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Buffalo–SUNY. Her work centers on voters and party system developments in new democracies in Eastern Europe and Latin America. Birnir is the author of Ethnicity and Electoral Politics (Cambridge University Press—in press) and her papers have appeared in Comparative Political Studies, Studies in Comparative International Development, and other professional journals.
Silvia Borzutzky is Director of the Political Science program and Associate Teaching Professor of Political Science and International Relations at Carnegie Mellon University. She is the author of Vital Connections: Politics, Social Security and Inequality in Chile (Notre Dame University Press, 2002) and coeditor of After Pinochet: The Chilean Road to Capitalism and Democracy (University Press of Florida, 2006). She is also the author of more than thirty articles dealing with Chilean politics and society, as well as Latin American politics and international relations.
David S. Brown is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science and a Research Associate at the Institute of Behavioral Science at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Dr. Brown's research focuses on democracy and globalization's impact on economic development and government spending on education, health, and social security. He is currently working on a project that examines Walmart's impact on social capital and civil society.
J. Christopher Brown is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography and the Environmental Studies Program at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. His research focuses on the human and ecological dynamics of development in Latin America, especially the Brazilian Amazon. Dr. Brown's other current research involves studying the expansion of mechanized soybean agriculture in Amazonia.
Dennis Conway is Professor of Geography and Latin American and Caribbean Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington. He has written more than 100 articles and book chapters on Caribbean urbanization, internal and transnational migration, economic development, tourism, and the geographical and environmental consequences of these societal processes. His recent books include The Experience of Return Migration: Caribbean Perspectives (2005), The Contemporary Caribbean (2004), and Globalization's Contradictions: Geographies of Discipline, Destruction and Transformation (2006). He is currently conducting research on transnational migration in the contemporary Caribbean, specifically focusing on young returning professionals' migrant experiences in Trinidad and Tobago and Grenada. [End Page 255]
Robert J. Cottrol is the Harold Paul Green Research Professor of Law and a Professor of History and Sociology at the George Washington University. He is a specialist on the legal and social history of race relations and is researching the role of law in constructing systems of racial hierarchy in the Americas. He is coauthor of Brown v. Board of Education: Caste, Culture and the Constitution (University Press of Kansas, 2003).
Rafael de la Dehesa is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the College of Staten Island, City University of New York. He recently completed his Ph.D. in Government at Harvard University. His current work focuses on the relationship between LGBT activists and political parties in Brazil and Mexico.
Scott W. Desposato is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego. His general research interests include democratic institutions, campaigning, mass behavior, and political methodology. Specific projects have examined redistricting in the United States, electoral rules and federalism in Brazil, party-switching by politicians, and statistical methods for studying legislatures. His latest project, for which he has received a National Science Foundation award, examines the determinants and impacts of negative campaigning across different institutional settings.
Michelle Dion is Assistant Professor of International Affairs at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Her research examines the political economy of welfare policy in Latin America. She is finishing a book manuscript on the political development of welfare in Mexico since the Mexican Revolution.
Todd A. Eisenstadt is Assistant Professor of Government at American University. He wrote the article that appears in this journal while he was on leave during the 2005–06 academic year as a visiting researcher at the University...
