Patricio Navia is a political scientist who specializes on democratic consolidation, political parties, elections and public opinion in Latin America. He also studies the relationship between democracy and economic development in contemporary Latin America. Navia mixes quantitative methods and comparative analysis with case studies to evaluate the relevance of existing theories of democratization and economic development for the realities of contemporary Latin American political and social processes.
Patricio Navia is a Clinical (Full) Professor of Liberal Studies and Adjunct Professor in the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at New York University. He is also a (full) Professor of Political Science at Universidad Diego Portales in Chile. Ph.D. in Politics from New York University, an M.A. in Political Science from the University of Chicago and a B.A. in Political Sciences and Sociology from the University of Illinois at Chicago. He has been a visiting professor at Princeton University, New School University, Universidad de Salamanca, Universidad de Chile and NYU Buenos Aires, and a visiting fellow at the University of Miami. He has published scholarly articles and book chapters on democratization, electoral rules and democratic institutions in Latin America. As founding director of Observatorio Electoral at Universidad Diego Portales, he has co-edited Democracia Municipal (2012), El sismo electoral de 2009. Cambio y continuidad en las preferencias políticas de los chilenos (2010) and El genoma electoral chileno. Dibujando el mapa genético de las preferencias políticas en Chile (2009). His books Diccionario de la política chilena (with Alfredo Joignant and Francisco Javier Díaz), El díscolo. Conversaciones con Marco Enríquez-Ominami (2009), Que gane el más mejor: Mérito y Competencia en el Chile de hoy (with Eduardo Engel, 2006) and Las grandes alamedas: El Chile post Pinochet (2004) have been best sellers in Chile. He is a columnist in El Líbero in Chile and the Americas Quarterly in New York. He has previously penned columns for La Tercera, Capital and Poder magazines in Chile, Perfil and Buenos Aires Herald in Argentina and for Infolatam.com.