Fernando Rosenblatt

I am a Senior Lecturer in Comparative Politics at the University of Manchester. Before coming to Manchester, I was an Associate Professor at the Universidad Diego Portales in Chile, where I served as Head of the Department of Political Science and I also chaired the department’s MA program. I have led a number of different research initiatives in Latin America

My research has focused on how organizational structures and rules affect political engagement and its reproduction. I have studied the evolution of mechanisms that account for the reproduction of intense engagement in political organizations and the challenges that these organizations must overcome. My first book, published by Oxford University Press in 2018, sheds new light on how party vibrancy is maintained and reproduced over time in three of the Latin America’s more stable countries—Chile, Costa Rica, and Uruguay. In collaboration with Verónica Pérez Bentancur and Rafael Piñeiro Rodríguez, I coauthored the book “How Party Activism Survives: Uruguay’s Frente Amplio,” which was published in 2020 by Cambridge University Press. This case study highlights the value of an organization-centered approach to understanding the role parties play in democracy. The book elucidates the evolution of intense engagement in political organizations and the challenge of sustaining it. It also addresses the significance of bottom-up participation. This book received the Leon Epstein Outstanding Book Award from the Political Organizations and Parties section of the American Political Science Association.

I have used mixed methods—natural, field, and survey experiment research designs as well as process tracing—to tackle different research questions. I have conducted fieldwork in Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, and Uruguay, including more than 400 in-depth interviews with political leaders and grassroots activists. In collaboration with various colleagues, I have also carried out several applied projects in Chile, Peru, and Uruguay. For example, in collaboration with Craig McIntosh, Rafael Piñeiro, Felipe Monestier and Guadalupe Tuñón, I evaluated the political impacts of Uruguay’s Compra de Vivienda Nueva housing program, which was implemented by the Uruguayan Housing, Urban Planning and Environment Ministry.

I am conducting research on the effects of inequality on political engagement. In collaboration with Verónica Pérez Bentancur and Rafael Piñeiro Rodríguez, I am studying the political incorporation of the popular sectors in Latin America. The goal of this research is to elucidate the factors that explain the different forms of political incorporation in Latin America and how these different forms affect stability and the capacity to build democratic political order.

Democratic representation

Latin American politics

Party Organization

Political engagement and activism

Qualitative and Mixed methods

Over the course of my career, I have taught at the undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral levels at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Universidad de Chile, and Universidad Diego Portales. I have taught courses on Qualitative and Mixed Methods, Latin American Politics, and Party Politics. In 2015, I received the “Excellence in Teaching Award,” from the School of Social Sciences and History, awarded by the Universidad Diego Portales.