Prof. Dr. Mariana Llanos

Reserach Area

Democratic Institutions in the Global South

Short Biography

Mariana Llanos holds the joint professorship for “Democratic Institutions in the Global South” between the University of Erfurt and the German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA). She is a Lead Research Fellow at the GIGA Institute of Latin American Studies and, between 2015 and 2022, the Head of GIGA’s Research Program 1 “Accountability and Participation.”

Mariana Llanos studied political science in Argentina, her country of origin, and obtained a D.Phil in Politics (1999) from the University of Oxford, St. Antony's College, in the United Kingdom with the thesis “Privatization and Democracy in Argentina” (Palgrave, 2002). Since her graduation, Mariana Llanos coedited some books, such as “El control parlamentario en Alemania, Argentina y Brasil” with Ana María Mustapic (Politeia, 2006) and “Presidential Breakdowns in Latin America” with Leiv Marsteintredet (Palgrave, 2010), and published extensively in English, Spanish, and Portuguese both in academic journals and books. Her work on Latin American comparative political institutions has appeared, for example, in the Journal of Democracy, Legislative Studies Quarterly, Latin American Politics and Society, and the Journal of Latin American Studies. Her article “The Institutional Presidency in Latin America. A Comparative Analysis”, co-authored with Magna Inacio, obtained the 2014 Founders Award honouring Bert Rockman, which is granted by the Presidents and Executive Politics Section of the American Political Science Association (APSA). The article was published in Presidential Studies Quarterly. A cross-regional comparison of six countries in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa on informal interferences with the judiciary appeared in Democratization in 2015. Her most recent research interests are concerned with the courts and the presidency.