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Citizen Security
Crime, violence, and citizen insecurity challenge, if not threaten, democracies throughout the Western hemisphere. Organized crime has penetrated and corrupted public institutions in many countries, and citizens throughout the region cite crime, along with unemployment, as their principal concern. At the same time, Latin American countries have accumulated significant experience in reforming and modernizing police forces and implementing policies to combat crime and address its root causes. The Latin American Program sponsors comparative research on local, national, and international public policies to address citizen insecurity and related policies to strengthen institutions and the rule of law.
Comparative Peace Processes
Creating Community in the Americas
Beginning in the early 1990s, the hemispheric security project known as Creating Community in the Americas aimed to foment strategic debate over matters of human, national, regional, and hemispheric security, and to facilitate a coherent response to the opportunities and challenges posed by the Cold War, 9/11, and the accelerating advance of globalization.
Democratic Governance
The Program’s work on democratic governance focuses on questions of democratic quality. Current research seeks to explain the rise of leftist and populist governments in Latin America and to explore the impact of specific public policies to reduce poverty and inequality and enhance citizen participation and human rights. The project builds on three decades of prior work on democratic governance at the Wilson Center, including path-breaking studies of the breakdown of democratic regimes, transitions from authoritarianism, challenges to the consolidation of democratic rule, decentralization, citizenship, and the relationship between democratization and internal armed conflict.
Energy and the Environment
Foreign Policy and International Relations
Based in Washington and with its reputation for balanced, high-level exchange, the Wilson Center provides an ideal forum for discussion of U.S.-Latin American relations as well as the foreign policy priorities and initiatives of Latin American countries. Conferences and seminars explore U.S. bilateral relations with individual countries, including Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, and Mexico, as well as such topics as the emergence of regional and sub-regional leadership, the politics of energy, and the role of powers such as China and Iran in the region.
Beginning in the early 1990s, the hemispheric security project known as Creating Community in the Americas aimed to foment strategic debate over matters of human, national, regional, and hemispheric security, and to facilitate a coherent response to the opportunities and challenges posed by the Cold War, 9/11, and the accelerating advance of globalization.
Trade and Development
The Program’s trade initiative explores the political economy of free trade agreements in the United States as well as in Latin America. Trade issues have mobilized popular and civil society groups throughout the Americas and have caused disputes within governments and ruling coalitions. Because trade-related reforms take place in the context of economic dislocations throughout the region, they have generated unprecedented debate over winners and losers in the process of globalization. Through comparative research and public dialogue, the project seeks a deeper understanding of the distributional impacts of free trade and related public policies to enhance the positive impacts of trade liberalization.
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