Profile

Todd Eisenstadt

Professor
Department of Government

  • Professor Eisenstadt's research focuses on the intersection of formal institutions and laws with informal institutions and practices, mostly in democratizing countries. Co-editor of Latin America's Multicultural Movements and the Struggle Between Communitarianism, Autonomy, and Human Rights (Oxford University Press forthcoming in 2013), Eisenstadt has also authored Politics, Identity, and Mexico's Indigenous Rights Movements (Cambridge University Press, 2011), Courting Democracy in Mexico:  Party Strategies and Electoral Institutions (Cambridge University Press, 2004), and well over a dozen journal articles and book chapters.  A former director of multiple United States Agency for International Development (USAID) grants in Mexico, Eisenstadt has helped train hundreds of stakeholders in judicial reform implementation, electoral observation and other government processes there. He is a former print journalist and Capitol Hill staffer and consultant for USAID, the Organization of American States, and several development companies. From 2009-2012 Eisenstadt served as chair of the Government Department. He is affiliated also with the School of International Service (SIS) and the Latin American Faculty for Social Sciences (FLACSO) in Quito, Ecuador.

  • Degrees

    PhD University of California, San Diego
    MA The Johns Hopkins University
    BA Brown University

  • Favorite Spot on Campus:

    Anywhere there is good coffee
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  • OFFICE

  • SPA - Government
  • Ward - 244

  • CONTACT INFO

  • (202) 885-6493
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  • FOR THE MEDIA

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Partnerships & Affiliations

  • Other AU Affiliation

    Faculty Affiliate, SIS

Teaching

  • Spring 2013

    • HNRS-040 University Honors Study/Travel: Oaxaca, Mexico
    • Description
    • HNRS-302 Honors Collqm in Social Sc: Mexico 2013
    • Description

  • Fall 2013

    • GOVT-696 Selected Topics:Non-Recurring: Democracy in Developing World
    • Description

Scholarly, Creative & Professional Activities

Honors, Awards, and Fellowships

Recent Grants: Latin American Studies Association/Mellon Foundation, 2012 principal investigator (co-PI Carl LeVan of American University) for “From Parchment to Practice: Explaining When New Constitutions Fail to Improve Democracy."

USAID, Higher Education and Development TIES Program for “Uniting Law and Society in Oaxaca, Mexico: A Research and Teaching Program.”

Recent Awards: William M. LeoGrande Award for best book on Latin American or Latino Studies published during 2011-2012 by a member of the American University community for Politics, Identity, and Mexico’s Indigenous Rights Movements.

Van Cott Award from the Political Institutions Section of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA), 2012, for Politics, Identity, and Mexico’s Indigenous Rights Movements, which was named by a jury as best book on political institutions since the last LASA Congress in 2010.

Selected Publications

Recent Books

Latin America’s Multicultural Movements and the Struggle Between Communitarianism, Autonomy, and Human Rights. (with Mike Danielson, Jaime Bailon, and Carlos Sorroza, eds.) New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.

Politics, Identity, and Mexico's Indigenous Rights Movements. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Contentious Politics Series. Kindle version also published.

AU Expert

Area of Expertise: U.S.-Latin American relations, politics in Latin America, immigration, democratization, Mexico, ethnic identity, survey research, indigenous rights movement, ethnic politics

Additional Information: Todd Eisenstadt studies democratization, identity and social movements, public opinion, political parties, and election finance—mainly in Latin America. He is the principal researcher of the grant Uniting Law and Society in Oaxaca, Mexico: A Research and Teaching Program, a project of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Higher Education and Development Program. He is also the author of Courting Democracy in Mexico and has authored and edited four other books. He is completing the manuscript Surveying the Silence: Liberal and Communal Identities in Southern Mexico’s Indigenous Rights Movement. Between 2000 and 2005, Eisenstadt directed USAID’s Mexico Elections Project, including academic research and the training of hundreds of observers of local elections and other government processes in Mexico. He is a former print journalist and Capitol Hill staffer.
 

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