Laurence Whitehead (Official Fellow in Politics) resumed his normal activities at the beginning of the year, following his interlude a Acting Warden

Laurence Whitehead= (Official Fellow in Politics) resumed his normal activities a= t the beginning of the year, following his interlude as Acting Warden. In the area of Latin American poli= tics, he hosted Bert Hoffmann’s visiting fellowship and together they launched an edited volume on Cuban Exceptionalism. The launch in= cluded two panels at the Society for Latin American Studies Conference in Newcastl= e, a presentation at the Free University of Berlin, and joint participation in a one-day seminar on Cuba at the Foreign Office. He also undertook a research visit= to Bolivia under the auspices of the Carter Center and completed a collective manuscript on the Evo Morales experiment which will be published in La Paz = (in Spanish) in October 2007, with a subsequent edition in English in the pipeline. He also made presentations in Ecuador on area studies in the Americas; and in both the US and Canada, on the state of international relations in the western hemisphe= re; and in Argentina, on trends in democratization in South America. In August 2007 he will be speaking= at a conference organised by the Federal Electoral Institute in Mexico City on strengthening electoral institutions.

Together with Ana Dimitrijevics he organised and hosted the Fourth Annual Conference of the Red Eurolatinoamericano de Gobernabilidad para el Desarrollo, in St Ann’s College, in December 2006. He= also went to Salamanca to help prepare the Fifth Conference (to be held at Scien= ces Po in Paris in December 2007). Finally, he presented the paper on British relations with Latin America at a conference in Berlin on EU-Latin American relations.

Another thread in his research conce= rns the comparative analysis of “the state” in various Asian settings. As a continuation o= f that line of work he presented a keynote address to a conference at the City University of Hong Kong, on China’s State. In August 2007 he will present another paper on international dimension of democratization focussi= ng on the case of Taiwan = at an international conference in Ta= ipei.

As concerns his broader and more comparative/theoretical work on democratization, one highlight was his presentation (rather alarmingly in French, and publicly broadcast) to a Col= lege de France symposium on democratic universalism. He will be undertaking further wor= k in this broad area in the coming year, (notably in collaboration with Guillermo O’Donnell, the forthcoming Winant Visiting Professor). His collaborat= ion with Desmond King and others o= n the democratization of the USA is now in its final stages.

Apart from these research activities= , the year also involved a resumption of his normal teaching supervising and examination activities (including examining a doctorate at Leiden Universit= y, a very different experience from the British norm). There was less college or universi= ty administration than for some time past.&nb= sp; But he was elected to the Audit and Scrutiny Committee of the Counci= l, and he also took part in the university’s deliberations over its governance system.

Publications<= /o:p>

“The Challenge of Closely Fought Elections”, Journal of Democracy, April 2007 (Vol. 18, No. 2) pp.14/28.

Bert Hoffmann, and Laurence Whitehead (eds.) Debating Cuban Exceptionalism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007)=

“Conclusion: When Was Latin America Modern?” in Ni= cola Miller and Stephen Hart (eds.) When= Was Latin America Modern? (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007) pp.191/2006.

“Gobernabilidad y Reforma Po= litica en Europa y America Latina: Algunas Lecciones” in Klaus Bodemer and Fernando Carrillo (eds.) Gobernabil= idad y Reforma Politica en America Latina y Europa (GIGA, BID, RedGOb, Plural, 2007). Pp. 347/351.

Rodolfo Mariano, “Sobre la volatalidad y la Variabilidad de los derechos” en TO FOLLOW

Whitehead, Laurence (2007) "Variabilidad en la Aplicación de Derechos: una perspectiva com= parada" en PNUD "Contribuciones = al Debate II: Estado, Democracia y Ciudadanía en América Latina". Myrza Ed. Lima Perú. (in print)=