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Belén Villegas Plá

Title of Research:

Structural autonomy: understanding the state and inequality in Latin America

Brief overview of research topic:

My PhD explores the foundations of inequality in Latin America through an in-depth comparative analysis of the cases of Chile and Uruguay. I argue that in order to implement distributive processes, states require a certain level of state autonomy that allows them to act with some independence from the surrounding powers and actors. Without a minimum degree of autonomy, states are unlikely to implement processes that threaten the status quo on which they are based. Therefore, I analyze in particular how the relationship of the States with the power groups, on the one hand, and the position of the countries in the Global Financial Structure, on the other; constrains in a structural distributive processes in Latin America.

Belén Villegas Plá

Belén is supervised by Professor Louise Haagh and Dr Liam Clegg

Contact details

Ms Belén Villegas Plá