I am currently on the job market
Diana Davila Gordillo, Ph.D.
d.l.davila.gordillo@fsw.leidenuniv.nl
Lecturer
Leiden University
About Me:
I am a Lecturer in the Institute of Political Science at Leiden University. I received a PhD in Political Science from the same Institute on July 1, 2021. My research focuses on political parties’ survival, parties’ mobilization strategies, and the mechanisms that foster changes in ethnic identities. My dissertation, “Surviving against all odds: Pachakutik’s electoral support, mobilization strategies, and goal achievement between 1996 and 2019”, proposes a theory of party survival that focuses on parties with low levels of electoral support and scarce resources. To illustrate my argument, I use the case of Pachakutik, an indigenous party from Ecuador. I completed over 11 months of fieldwork in Ecuador, where I conducted elite interviews and archival work. My work is entirely bilingual: I research, write, and teach in English and Spanish. I specialize in teaching qualitative methods at the master level and small seminars on political parties and democracy with a regional focus in Latin America at the bachelor level.
Research Interests
Latin American And Caribbean Politics
Political Parties and Interest Groups
Race, Ethnicity and Politics
Ethnic Politics
Party-voter Linkages
Electoral Campaigns
Countries of Interest
Ecuador
Publications:
Journal Articles:
In Latin America, a general discontent with political parties persists, fueling challenges to the quality of democracy. Two prominent limitations of Latin American democracies stem from the weakly institutionalized and unrepresentative character of many parties and party systems in the region. A regional overview of party longevity shows that older parties are the minority, and with few exceptions (Uruguay and Colombia), they control neither the government nor the opposition. Yet while earlier studies of party institutionalization in Latin America tended to focus on longevity, subsequent studies have emphasized the multidimensionality of the concept. Party institutionalization connotes not only longevity but also routinization of formal and informal procedures, organizational complexity and cohesion, and societal roots. As evidenced by parties throughout the region, those multiple dimensions are nonmutual. Even in inchoate party systems many Latin American parties have survived and routinized (sometimes informal) decision making procedures, often in the absence of organizational cohesion and societal roots. Although strong party organizations are important for democratic governance, they may be inversely related to party leadership, with strong leaders hindering party institutionalization. Leaders can alternatively play an important role in mobilizing voters and structuring party organizations, their routinization, and the party brand. While the region has been a global leader in the adoption of gender quotas and parity regimes and in women’s parliamentary representation, as of 2012, its party leadership remained dominated by men—the regional average in parties’ representation of women on their National Executive Commissions was just 20%. Willing party leaders in institutionalized parties are critical actors in the recruitment and support of candidates and can thus marshal party resources to help diversify party ranks. The inclusion of diverse voices in party leadership is important for responsiveness, legitimacy, and the quality of democracy more broadly.
Book Chapters:
In this chapter, we show that the RAN is one of the core institutions producing a new European discourse on security, in which terrorism is to be governed “through society”. The chapter examines how i) the discourse of the RAN conceives of policy recommendations that put communities at the centre of counterradicalisation policies; ii) it conceptualises the development of ‘tailor-made’ strategies; and iii) it reformulates grievances as mere ‘perceptions’, avoiding engagement with factual data. Finally, the chapter shows how the RAN relies on the engagement of iv) key individuals and v) front-line practitioners tasked with propagating the state-sanctioned narrative about radicalisation, with the concomitant exclusion of alternative voices. We show how these recommendations promote a state that ‘rules at a distance’, through proxies but which nonetheless is more in control of the situation within the communities by having people on the ground.