Week 3's topic will not be on Colombia, like previously mentioned. We've instead switched Colombia with Ecuador.

See you guys tomorrow!

Weekly Topics

Week 1 (Feb. 23): Inter-American framework of the Andean crisis

a) U.S. policy for economic and political reform

1. Beyond the Washington Consensus

2. The Summit Process : Its limits as policy

b) The Current Situation

c) The missing linkage between technocratic and political instruments

Week 2 (March 2): Principal Issues: Theory and Practice of Democracy in the Andean Region, Drugs, Violence, and Ethnic Politics

a) Counterproductive effects of U.S. policy

b) The interdependence and complexity of the issues

c) Deficiencies in Democratic Institutions

d) Correlation between poverty, inequality and instability

e) Civil Military relations: Past and Present

f) From electoral to citizens democracies

g) Democratic Erosion, Drugs, Violence, and Ethnicity: Country-by-Country Approach

h) Is a regional (Andean-wide) strategy feasible to tackle the issues?

Week 3 (March 9): Colombia: The Core of the Andean Crisis

a) Political and Institutional framework

b) Political, economic and security aspects of drugs trafficking

c) Origins of Colombian violence

d) Variety of violence, 1999-2005

e) International consequences

f) The internal and international effects of Uribes future reelection

Week 4 (March 16): Venezuela: An alternative model?

a) The Chavez phenomenon

b) Participatory Democracy

c) Bolivarian foreign policy

d) U.S and Venezuela

e) Chavez and the South American Community of Nations

Week 5 (March 23): Bolivia: Democracy and Capitalism (from model to chaos)

a) Social conflict on hold

b) Growth of popular movements and dynamics of ethnicity

c) Dysfunctional democracy and market economics with zero growth

d) The demise of the political party system, is it final or cyclical?

Week 6 (April 6): Ecuador: Democracy without Institutions

a) Civil society and the military transition

b) Dollarization, Trade Policy, and Military Links with the U.S.

c) Decline of Presidential leadership and fragmentation of political parties

d) Role of the indigenous movement

e) Ethnicity, Ideology, and Party Function in Contemporary Ecuador

Week 7 (April 13): Peru: Democracy, Corruption, and Reconstruction

a) Shining Path, drugs and market policy under Fujimori

b) The 1992 self inflicted coup

c) The role of Montesinos and the implosion of the regime

d) The Toledo administration: A tentative balance

e) The 2006 election, a third democratic transition?

Week 8 (April 20): U.S. Response to the Andean Conflict

a) Plan Colombia now

b) Andes 2020 proposal

c) Democracy, drugs, violence, and ethnic politics in comparative perspective

d) The question of leadership and the changing nature of constituencies and citizens priorities

The group will explore the precarious state and the key issues of the democratic processes in the countries of the Andean region (Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Peru, and Venezuela) after fifteen years of political and economic change. Our focus will be on the frailty of democratic institutions, the persistence of narco-trafficking, the intensification of diverse types of violence, and the emergence of ethnic politics. We will attempt to understand how these factors have eroded democratic governance in this part of South America and appear to foster a greater security crisis. Prior to an examination of the central issues, we will consider the context of political and economic policies (and their intended and unintended effects) from the Clinton era through today. We will study the particular nature and relative weight of these problems in each of the five countries. The groups task is to evaluate the instability of governments in the Andean republics and its consequences on civil society in relation to the democratic and market models. Our aim is to explore the possibility of a workable regional strategy that can render U.S. - Andean relations effective, realistic, and enduring.

Who is Ambassador Ricardo Luna?

Ricardo Luna's diplomatic career began in 1964. As a career diplomat in the Peruvian Foreign Service for forty years, Luna has been Ambassador to the United Nations (1989-92) and, more recently, Ambassador to the United States (1992-99) and dean of the Latin American diplomatic corps in Washington for the latter part of that period.

Luna's multilateral professional experience began in the seventies in the areas of disarmament, trade and development and non-aligned issues while at the Geneva venue of the United Nations. Ambassador Luna has held numerous key positions both in the Ministry of Foreign Relations and abroad, serving in London, Tel Aviv, Geneva, Washington DC, New York, Paris and Quito. Subsequently, Luna has been Undersecretary for Multilateral Affairs, a delegate to more than fifteen sessions of the General Assembly, and Deputy Representative to the Security Council during a critical phase of the Cold War at a time when Javier Perez de Cuellar, a senior colleague and fellow Peruvian national, was the U.N. Secretary General.

Luna's various bilateral appointments and other multilateral assignments have allowed him to combine inputs and skills from each field in complex situations. Luna was directly involved in conflict solving processes in Central America, in the eighties, and in the Ecuador-Peru peace negotiations (1995-98). The multilateral and bilateral challenges of the earlier part of Luna's career proved especially useful in the decade that culminated in the climatic period that ended on September 11, 2001.

(Source: IOP website.)