About

Professor Kathleen Bruhn is a faculty member in the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research interests include democratization, political parties, social mobilization, and Latin American Studies. She has authored a forthcoming book titled 'Politics and the Pink Tide,' which examines how economic policies and political party structures influenced protest and protest policing in five Latin American countries governed by the Left, including Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, and Venezuela. Professor Bruhn has also published extensively on Mexican elections, campaigns, the effects of party primaries, and the Mexican Left. Currently, she is working on projects related to the health of democratic institutions in Mexico and on populist governments in Latin America.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Sociology
• Computer Science
• Law
• Computer Security
• Political economy
• Public administration
• Positive economics
• Mathematics
• Economics
• Social psychology
• Business
• Geography
• World Wide Web
• Psychology
• Advertising
• Finance

Selected publications

• Politics and the Pink Tide

  2024 · 1 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Political Science
  • Geography
  PublisherDOI

• With Friends Like These: Protest Strategies and the Left in Brazil and Mexico

  Figshare · 2024-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract This paper looks at the impact of Left victory and Left party alliance on the protest behavior of popular movements, based on an original dataset of protest in Mexico City, Brasilia, and São Paulo. I ask, first, whether Left victories reduce levels of protest, and second, whether party alliances constrain protest. My findings suggest that neither hypothesis is systematically correct. Organizations do not protest significantly less against their allies. Nor do Left governments experience less protest in general. Indeed, in two of the three cities analyzed, Left governments experienced more protest than conservative governments, much of it directed by their own political allies. In all three cities, Left party allies protest significantly more regardless of who is in power. These results suggest, first, that the tactical repertoires of movements reflect fairly stable characteristics of movement type, resources, and/or culture, as some sociological work has argued. Indeed, these stable characteristics trump changes in local political opportunity structures as predictors of movement tactics. Second, political opportunity structures do matter, but in inconsistent ways across cases. Therefore, my findings also suggest the potential fruitfulness of further specifying the contextual conditions under which Left victories result in increased or decreased tendencies to protest. Resumen Este artículo observa el impacto de una victoria de la izquierda y una alianza de partidos de izquierda sobre la protesta de los movimientos populares, con base en datos originales acerca de la protesta en México, DF; Brasilia y São Paulo. Me pregunto, primero, si las victorias de la izquierda reducen los niveles de protesta y, en segundo lugar, si las alianzas partidarias restringen la protesta. Mis hallazgos sugieren que ninguna de estas hipótesis es sistemáticamente correcta. Las organizaciones no protestan sistemáticamente menos contra sus aliados. Tampoco los gobiernos de izquierda experimentan menos protestas en general. Por cierto, en dos de las tres ciudades analizadas los gobiernos de izquierda experimentaron más protestas que los gobiernos conservadores; buena parte de ellas, dirigidas por sus propios aliados políticos. En las tres ciudades, los aliados de los partidos de izquierda protestaron significativamente más independientemente de quién esté en el poder. Estos resultados sugieren, primero, que los repertorios tácticos de los movimientos reflejan características más bien estables del tipo de movimiento, loa recursos y/o la cultura, como sostienen algunos trabajos sociológicos. Ciertamente, estas características estables son mejores predictores de las tácticas de los movimientos que los cambios en las estructuras de oportunidad locales. Segundo, las estructuras de oportunidad política importan, pero por motivos distintos en cada caso. Por tanto, mis hallazgos también sugieren que especificar más precisamente las condiciones contextuales bajo las cuales las victorias de la izquierda resultan en tendencias a la protesta crecientes o decrecientes es potencialmente fructífero.

  DOI

• Democracy and Parties in Latin America

  Latin American Politics and Society · 2024-11-05

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  What is wrong with democracy in Latin America?After the wave of democratic transitions in the 1980s, initial concerns focused on the potential for the return of military regimes.This did not happen.However, satisfaction with and support for democracy has eroded, along with confidence and trust in political institutions in general and political parties in particular.How serious are these trends?What has gone wrong-and what might be done to reverse the damage?The authors of the books reviewed in this essay contribute in various ways to addressing these questions.While there is no magic bullet offered in a policy sense, each offers important insights into the relative role played by parties in these processes of decline and the structural underpinnings of party construction.The most general approach to these questions is laid out in Democracias en vilo: la incertidumbre poltica en Amrica Latina, edited by J. Carlos Domnguez Virgen and Alejandro Monsivis Carrillo.Two chapters in this impressive survey focus on the inability of a weak state to deliver on policy outcomes (see the chapter by Alberto Olvera and the chapter by Armando Roman Zozaya on Mexico).Another chapter highlights the particular dangers posed by investments in megaprojects, which create risks that voters will see democracy as "only serving to protect and favor the interests of a few powerful groups" (Domnguez, 122).

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Politics and the Pink Tide

  University of Notre Dame Press eBooks · 2024-04-15

  book1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Mexico: populism versus feminism

  Edward Elgar Publishing eBooks · 2023-05-12

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  This chapter examines the puzzle of Mexico’s leftist populist Lopez Obrador administration’s troubled relationship with feminist organizations and women's rights. I contrast the gains in women's representation at the level of the cabinet, governorships, and legislative representation with the negative reaction to women's movements and protests demanding attention to issues like femicides. I argue that the Manichean nature of the populist discourse makes it difficult for AMLO to concede legitimacy to movements and organizations that criticize his handling of women's rights, and extend this analysis to regime rejection of indigenous and labor movement challengers formerly supported by left populism in opposition.

  PublisherDOI

• When Opposites Attract

  Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos · 2021 · 2 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Sociology
  • Political Science

  Pre-electoral coalitions form across a variety of political contexts. Prevailing explanations suggest that ideological proximity between coalition partners and the size of the contribution that parties make explain the character of coalitions. These expectations hold only partially true in the case of Mexico. Rather, as this article suggests, parties also evaluate the degree to which they consider prospective coalition partners reliable and trustworthy. Some otherwise viable coalitions fail to form because of lack of trust or form despite ideological disparities, when a party’s contribution to defeating a common enemy is considered.

  PublisherDOI

• 2020 Fiscal Year Contributors

  Political Science Today · 2021

  • Computer Science
  • Computer Science
  • Advertising

  An abstract is not available for this content. As you have access to this content, full HTML content is provided on this page. A PDF of this content is also available in through the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

  DOI

• AMLO y su partido

  Politica Y Gobierno · 2021-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  En un corto periodo de tiempo, Morena se ha convertido en el partido dominante de Mexico. No obstante, enfrenta tres problemas que pueden limitar su capacidad para promover la Cuarta Transformacion mas alla del mandato de Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. Primero, no ha logrado institucionalizarse como un partido capaz de procesar conflictos internos. En segundo lugar, ha tenido dificultades para establecer conexiones solidas con grupos sociales afines ideologicamente. Y finalmente, no ha logrado contrapesar al presidente y asi crear una identidad independiente. Por lo tanto, depende del desempeno de AMLO en el cargo y es posible que no pueda mantener la lealtad de los votantes con un candidato presidencial diferente.

  Publisher

• Blanc, Jacob (2019) Before the Flood: The Itaipu Dam and the Visibility of Rural Brazil, Duke University Press (Durham, NC), xvi + 296 pp. $104.95 hbk, $27.95 pbk.

  Bulletin of Latin American Research · 2021-04-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Democracy from Above? The Unfulfilled Promise of Nationally Mandated Participatory Reforms

  Political Science Quarterly · 2020 · 53 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Political Science
  • Public administration

  Participatory policymaking has often been prescribed as a necessary corrective for developing democracies with weak institutional representation. Stephanie L. McNulty’s new book examines whether the prescription works. She tracks the implications of nationally mandated participatory reforms through a qualitative analysis of three primary case studies in Latin America (Guatemala, Bolivia, and Peru). Ultimately, the author finds that these reforms, while expanding participation, fail to improve inclusion of marginalized groups, reduce corruption, or (usually) enhance government effectiveness. To be sure, these findings are not entirely unexpected in light of previous research on participatory experiments (at the city level in Brazil, for example). What is more surprising is that they hold in cases in which reforms were implemented by center or center-right governments with, at best, mixed motives. These are not reforms adopted by leftist governments intent on democratic deepening. In a sense, these are the least likely cases for successful participatory reform, in contrast to the emphasis of most existing research. Yet participation increases, perhaps speaking to a hunger for participation even in unlikely contexts. This is the first major contribution of the book.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Daniel Lévy

  5 shared

• Philip McKenna

  Hill Engineering (United States)

  4 shared

• Wayne A. Cornelius

  University of California, San Diego

  4 shared

• Roderic Ai Camp

  4 shared

• Theodore Gildred

  University of California, Santa Barbara

  4 shared

• Kenneth F. Greene

  The University of Texas at Austin

  2 shared

• Amel Ahmed

  University of Massachusetts Amherst

  1 shared

• Ruth Echeverri-Gent

  Carnegie Corporation of New York

  1 shared

Education

• PhD, Political Science

  Stanford University