The Strange Silence of Latin American Political Theory1
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/14789299211023342 |
| Published date | 01 November 2022 |
| Date | 01 November 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/14789299211023342
Political Studies Review
2022, Vol. 20(4) 592 –607
© The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/14789299211023342
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The Strange Silence of Latin
American Political Theory1
Cristian Pérez-Muñoz
Abstract
Political theorists affiliated with Latin American and Caribbean academic institutions rarely publish
in flagship journals or other important outlets of the discipline. Similarly, they are not members
of the editorial boards of high-ranking, generalist or subfield journals, and their research is not
included in the political theory canon of what students from other regions study. The aim of this
article is not to explain the origins of this silence—though some possibilities are considered—but
to describe some of the ways in which it manifests and why it matters. I argue that the exclusion
or omission of Latin American and Caribbean voices is a negative outcome not only for Latin
American and Caribbean political theorist but for the political theory subfield at large. In response,
I defend a context-sensitive approach to political theory, which has the potential to provide
greater voice to Latin American and Caribbean scholars while improving theoretical analysis of
Latin America and Caribbean.
Keywords
Latin American political theory, silence, contextual political theory
Accepted: 20 May 2021
Introduction
Are political theorists affiliated with Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) academic
institutions participating in international debates? Based on their near-total absence from
the main outlets of the discipline, we might be tempted to conclude they are not. LAC
political theorists neither publish in the field’s flagship journals, nor do they sit on their
editorial boards. Similarly, virtually none of the leading political theory and political
philosophy handbooks includes contributions from LAC scholars. Given this, it is unsur-
prising that LAC political thinkers are rarely included in the political theory canon out-
side their region; however, LAC political theorists do exist. Like their colleagues from
other regions, they participate in conferences and write articles and books. In contrast to
LAC comparativists and international relations scholars, what LAC political theorists
produce rarely travels outside their region.
Department of Political Science, University of Florida, USA
Corresponding author:
Cristian Pérez-Muñoz, Department of Political Science, University of Florida, 234 Anderson Hall P.O. Box
117325 Gainesville, Fl 32611-7325, USA.
Email: cperezmunoz@ufl.edu
1023342PSW0010.1177/14789299211023342Political Studies ReviewPérez-Muñoz
research-article2021
Article
Pérez-Muñoz 593
The aim of this article is to document the extent of this situation and explain why it
should concern not only LAC theorists, but also the broader political theory subfield. As I
argue in the “The Need for Contextualization” section, political theories (both from outside
and inside the region) are not being appropriately contextualized to account for the specific
nature of LAC political phenomena. Consequently, LAC politics are undertheorized, and
most political theorists working in European or North American academic institutions are
thus unfamiliar with the nuances of LAC countries or the ways in which the principles,
values, and policies they seek to defend may fail to translate to this context.2
In response, I defend a context-sensitive approach (CSA) to political theory as a means
to overcome this problem. Adopting such an approach is useful, I argue, as a necessary step
toward improving theoretical analysis of LAC-specific political phenomena. In particular, a
CSA provides new ways of assessing existing mainstream theories and, where those theo-
ries are found lacking, can help us develop new and more relevant frameworks.
Likewise, a CSA may represent a potential strategy for providing greater voice to LAC
political theorists. In this case, more voice in the international debate could be understood
as an indirect benefit that related to the goal of better theorizing LAC politics. LAC theo-
rists mainly import theories and frameworks from Europe and the Anglophonic world
with limited possibility of exporting their own theories to other regions. The study of new
topics has the potential to produce interesting theoretical insights to be exported and used
in the political theory debate worldwide. This is, then, an article about how the method of
political theory adopted by LAC political theorists can affect not only their presence in
the international debate but also their substantive research agenda.
There are three important caveats to this discussion. First, in order to count a scholar as
an LAC scholar, I look only at institutional affiliations at the time of publishing their
research. Therefore, I am excluding political theorists who are originally from LAC coun-
tries but who do not work in an LAC-based institution. Likewise, I am including those
scholars from other regions who are affiliated with an LAC research institution. Second,
this article does not address the question of whether there is an authentic or distinctive Latin
American Political Theory.3 This is an important question, but one that cannot be answered
here. For this article, it suffices that there are in fact scholars in the region doing political
theory. Third, since my expertise is limited to LAC, my focus will be on this particular
region. Nonetheless, the same basic problems likely hold with respect to other regions of the
Global South such as Africa, Asia, and Oceania (with the exception of New Zealand and
Australia). Finally, my argument is exclusively concerned with the epistemological disad-
vantages of LAC silence; there are, however, other potential causes for concern. For
instance, instead of suggesting that the international debate would be enriched by the
increased participation of LAC political theorists, someone might argue that including LAC
voices is an imperative of justice or democratic representation whether any benefits follow.
While this argument is compelling, I will not pursue it here. Rather, my aim is simply to
reveal the extent of and the disadvantages that follow from LAC silence.
This article is organized into two parts. First, I describe the nature of the silence of
LAC political theorists in the international debate. Second, I explain why contextual
political theory may be a useful theoretical approach for better understanding problems
that are particularly salient to LAC.
The Silence
This section attempts to show that LAC political theorists do in fact play a limited role in
the international debate. The goal of this article is not to provide a full or comprehensive
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