Inaugural IPSA Guillermo O’Donnell Award for Latin American Scholars Lecture Highlights Democratic Resistance in Latin America
Publication date: Sun, 13 Jul 2025
Guillermo O’Donnell’s academic legacy was honored on the opening day of the 2025 IPSA World Congress. Carlos Pereira, the recipient of the inaugural IPSA Guillermo O’Donnell Award for Latin American Scholars, delivered an award lecture titled Between Threat and Breakdown: Understanding Democratic Resistance in Latin America. In his lecture, Prof. Pereira analyzed democratic backsliding in Latin America from 1978 to 2023, emphasizing the importance of distinguishing between autocratic rhetoric and actual democratic erosion.
Photo (left to right): Jesús Tovar (IPSA Executive Committee member), Gabriela Ippolito-O'Donnell (Universidad Nacional de San Martín, Argentina), and Carlos Pereira (Professor at the Getúlio Vargas Foundation).
The session also featured remarks by the award's founder, Prof. Gabriela Ippolito-O'Donnell, and Prof. Jesús Tovar, IPSA Executive Committee member, who reflected on O’Donnell’s contributions to political science and the lasting impact of his research.
About the Award
The IPSA Guillermo O’Donnell Award for Latin-American Scholars was launched at the 2023 IPSA World Congress in Buenos Aires to pay tribute to the remarkable legacy of Guillermo O’Donnell, IPSA’s Past President and one of Latin America’s most prominent political scientists. Thanks to the generous support of its founder, Prof. Gabriela Ippolito-O’Donnell, this commemorative award will be attributed biennially to a Latin American scholar residing in the region who has contributed innovative research to political science.
Carlos Pereira
Carlos Pereira is a Professor at the Getúlio Vargas Foundation (FGV EBAPE), Rio de Janeiro, a weekly op-ed columnist for the newspaper Estado de São Paulo (Estadão) and a Senior Fellow at the Brazilian Center for International Relations (CEBRI). He holds a PhD in political science from the New School / New York University and completed postdoctoral work at the University of Oxford.
