DRCLAS: Brazil Studies Program: "The Collapse of Governability: Three Theories on Brazilian Democracy that Failed"

Date: 

Thursday, February 18, 2016, 12:00pm to 2:00pm

Location: 

CGIS South S-050, 1730 Cambridge St.

Speaker: Andrei Roman, PhD Candidate in Government, Harvard University; John H. Coatsworth Fellow; Jorge Paulo Lemann Fellow

Andrei Roman is a PhD candidate in Government at Harvard University. His research interests are related to Latin American and European politics, in particular the study of political economy, party systems, electoral politics, and social policy. Andrei has conducted field research in Brazil, China, India, Peru, Poland, Romania, and Turkey. In Brazil, he performed a case study of the community driven development framework of the World Bank’s latest generation of rural poverty alleviation programs. He conducted research on development policy and financial inclusion at UNDP and the World Bank. His work experience also includes sovereign risk analysis for Goldman Sachs and management consulting with McKinsey & Co. In 2010 and 2014, he worked as a campaign strategist on Brazilian presidential campaigns. Andrei currently divides his time between Boston, Seattle, São Paulo, and Bucharest.

Andrei has actively applied his doctoral research to entrepreneurial projects and public sector work. He is currently focused on developing several online platforms through Nervera, a social media start-up co-founded with Thiago Costa. As part of Nervera, Andrei led the effort for creating Atlas Político (www.atlaspolitico.com) - the largest political transparency platform in Brazil. The Atlas reunites the profiles of more than 25,000 Brazilian politicians and provides crucial information on political trajectories, legislative projects, ideological placement, and campaign finance.

Andrei's dissertation compares mass protest patterns in Brazil and Turkey to develop a general theory of protest escalation. Placed at the intersection of the collective action and social psychology literatures, the dissertation explores the roles of partisan identities, political polarization, and influential minorities in setting off cycles of protest escalation.