GIGA Scholar Wins Prize for Analysis of Populism

The analysis “Populism and the Erosion of Horizontal Accountability in Latin America,” written by GIGA research fellow Dr. Saskia Ruth-Lovell, appeared in the journal Political Studies in 2018. She has now been awarded the Political Studies Association’s 2018 Harrison Prize for this outstanding academic work and its relevant findings.

The article examines populist Latin American presidents’ opportunities and incentives for advancing institutional change. Dr. Ruth-Lovell identifies three decisive factors: the distribution of public support, the existence of a "power vacuum" in the political arena, and the absence of unified government.

Dr. Ruth-Lovell has been a research fellow at the GIGA since the end of 2017. Between October 2018 and March 2019 she held an interim professorship at Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main. She was recently elected as a convenor of the ECPR Standing Group on Latin American Politics.

The Political Studies Association awards annual prizes for exceptional academic achievements in various categories. In honour of the first publisher of the journal Political Studies, the Harrison Prize recognises the best publications of the year. The prize will be officially awarded at the Political Studies Association’s conference dinner on 16 April 2019 in Nottingham.