Oligarchic Republics in Latin America
Vol. 56 / Issue 4 – October 2025
Editors: Max Cameron and Federico M. Rossi
Full access to LASA Forum special issue: https://forum.lasaweb.org/issues/vol56-issue4/
The republican tradition and its revolutionary implications is an underappreciated contribution of Latin America and the Caribbean to global transformations that have occurred over several centuries. These transformations, which continue to shape the contemporary world, entail what Guillermo O’Donnell called an “uneasy synthesis” of republican, liberal, and democratic thought and action. Although each taps into pre-modern undercurrents, springing from ancient Greek, republican Roman, and medieval sources, they nonetheless crystallized in the institutions and practices that emerged out of the Glorious Revolution, the American Revolution, the French Revolution, the Haitian Revolution, the insurrection of Tupac Amaru II, and Hispanic-American struggles for independence. It was in the Americas that the revolutionary and republican traditions assumed their specifically anti-colonial characteristics, generating an especially uneasy synthesis. We explore how the legacies of revolutionary, egalitarian, and democratic struggles—and their antitheses, counter-revolution, authoritarianism, oligarchy, and neocolonialism—continue to work themselves out.
Contributions by: Maxwell Cameron, Federico M. Rossi, Hilda Sabato, Leandro Losada, Alberto Vergara, Jan Boesten, Jonas Wolff, John Crabtree, Valeria Coronel, Camila Vergara, Humberto Campodónico, and Luciano Andrenacci.
My articles:
- Cameron, Max and Rossi, Federico M. (2025), “Revolution and Republic: Oligarchic Regimes and Struggles for Citizenship”, LASA Forum, 56 (4), https://forum.lasaweb.org/articles/56-4/revolution-and-republic-oligarchic-regimes-and-struggles-for-citizenship/
- Rossi, Federico M. (2025), “Movimientos populares frente a la oligarquización plutocrática”, LASA Forum, 56 (4), https://forum.lasaweb.org/articles/56-4/movimientos-populares-frente-a-la-oligarquizacion-plutocratica/
Trust in Social Movements
Vol. 65 / Issue 4 – August 2024
Editors: Irene Weipert-Fenner, Federico M. Rossi, Nadine Sika and Jonas Wolff
Full access to International Journal of Comparative Sociology special issue: https://journals.sagepub.com/toc/cosa/65/4
Social movement studies clearly suggest that trust matters for processes of social mobilization: When engaging in costly, and potentially risky, contentious collective action on a common goal, activists and groups rely on the expectation that fellow protestors and allies will not fail them. To date, however, we lack research that explains which types of trust shape the emergence and evolution of social movements. Trust, we argue, is not simply an independent variable influencing mobilization, but is itself shaped—built, stabilized, weakened, or even destroyed—over the course of collective contentious action. To set the stage for a corresponding research agenda, this special issue bridges the gap between research on trust and social movement studies and clarifies the complex conceptual relationship between various types of trust and the dynamics of social mobilization.
Contributions by: Irene Weipert-Fenner, Federico M. Rossi, Nadine Sika, Jonas Wolff, Laurence Piper, Fiona Anciano, Babongile Bidla, Nicole Doerr, Janus Porsild Hansen, Ming-sho Ho, Mario Diani, and Nadja Douglas.
My articles:
- Weipert-Fenner, Irene, Rossi, Federico M., Sika, Nadine, and Wolff, Jonas (2024), “Trust and Social Movements: A New Research Agenda“, International Journal of Comparative Sociology, 65 (4), pp. 409–22.
- Rossi, Federico M. (2024), “Democracy as a Trust-Building Learning Process: Organizational Dilemmas in Social Movements“, International Journal of Comparative Sociology, 65 (4), pp. 423–47.
Stencil in via degli Alfani, downtown Florence, February 2023.
Prof. Federico M. Rossi 