As part of LV "Development and Political Institutions in Latin America-with a Focus on South America", various distinguished scholars offered their time to discuss their respective research on Latin American political institutions. In total, there will be four “conversations” with Profs. Bert Hoffmann (FU), Pablo Policzer (University of Calgary), Laurence Whitehead (Nuffield College, University of Oxford), and Maxwell A. Cameron (UBC). The themes were methodology, normative implications (above all for democratic theory and comparative democratization), as well as empirical.

In this conversation, Pablo Policzer, associate professor from the University of Caglary, explores the role of politics in authoritarian regimes. He explains the argument put forward in his book, The Rise and Fall of Repression in Chile (Notre Dame University Press, 2009), that traces the institutionalization of the DINA and subsequently CNI, to attempts by the Pinochet regime to create a smokescreen of “plausible deniability” against accusations that it was disappearing people.

 

The link to the Video can be found here.