Join the Center for Inter-American Policy and Research and the Stone Center for Latin American Studies in welcoming Dr. Jessica Rich as part of the fall speaker series Critical Issues in Democratic Governance, on Friday, February 8, in 110A Jones Hall. Dr. Rich will give a talk titled State-Sponsored Activism: Bureaucrats and Social Movements in Democratic Brazil. AIDS policy in Brazil provides a lens to better understand state-society relations in democratic and post-neoliberal Latin America. Rich finds a new model of interest politics, driven by previously marginalized state and societal actors. Through a rich examination of the highly influential Brazilian AIDS movement, she traces the construction of a powerful new advocacy coalition composed of activist bureaucrats and bureaucratized activists. This research shows that active government involvement in civic mobilization has persisted in contemporary Latin America, with important implications for representation and policymaking.

The event is free and open to the public. Please RSVP to cipr@tulane.edu.

Dr. Rich is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science and Co-Director of the Marquette Democracy Project at Marquette University. Her research and teaching specializations include Latin American politics, social movements and NGOs, state-building and state capacity, and social policy. She earned her Ph.D. and M.A. degrees from the University of California, Berkeley and was a postdoctoral fellow at Tulane University in the Center for Inter-American Policy and Research. In Spring 2018, Jessica was a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics in the Department of International Development.

Jessica's publications include articles on social movements, participatory governance, state-society relations, and federalism. Her forthcoming book, State-Sponsored Activism: Bureaucrats and Social Movements in Democratic Brazil (Cambridge University Press), analyzes a new form of political mobilization in Latin America in which social movements make aggressive policy demands on the state, even while relying on state actors for financial support.