Throughout the Americas, prominent politicians often find themselves before the courts over corruption charges. The prosecution of corruption is central to political accountability–voters can only hold politicians accountable if the process of judging politicians' past actions is fair and produces information that voters trust. Partisan capture of the judiciary results instead in corruption probes that are manipulated to serve electoral interests. This talk will describe the behavior of the politicians and judicial actors who intervene in these processes and how the politicization of the judiciary hinders the role of the courts in electoral accountability. ABOUT OUR GUEST SPEAKER: Guadalupe Tuñón is an Assistant Professor in Princeton's Department of Politics and School of Public and International Affairs. She studies comparative politics and political economy with a regional focus on Latin America. Her first book project investigates how religious ideas about inequality and redistribution shape the electoral and policy influence of religious actors. She received a Ph.D. in Political Science from University of California, Berkeley in 2019. Before coming to Princeton, she was an Academy Scholar at Harvard's Weatherhead Center for International Affairs as well as a predoctoral fellow at the Identity & Conflict Lab (University of Pennsylvania) and the Center for the Study of Religion and Society (University of Notre Dame). ABOUT OUR DISCUSSANT: Charles F. Walker is Professor of History and Director of the Hemispheric Institute on the Americas at the University of California, Davis. He is the author of several books, including the award-winning The Tupac Amaru Rebellion (2014). He is currently working on a book about the Shining Path insurgency. View/Download our E-flyer!
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