The University of Notre Dame’s Keough School of Global Affairs, Kellogg Institute for International Studies and Vanderbilt University's Center for Global Democracy, in partnership with Inter-American Dialogue, invite you to join policymakers, congressional staff, scholars, civil society leaders and democracy practitioners for The Pulse of Democracy in the Americas, a policy forum marking the release of the 2026 AmericasBarometer regional report.
Drawing on one of the world's most comprehensive cross-national public opinion studies, the forum will examine new evidence from the 2026 AmericasBarometer on democratic resilience, institutional trust, governance, migration, public security, and political change across the Americas and explore the implications of these findings for policymakers, practitioners and democratic institutions.
This year's report expands the AmericasBarometer in important ways, including Cuba in the dataset for the first time and extending its comparative framework to include the United States and Canada alongside Latin America and the Caribbean.
Program
Coffee and networking
Welcome and opening remarks
- Maura Policelli, executive director of the Keough School's office in Washington, D.C.
Overview of the 2026 AmericasBarometer
- Mariana Rodríguez Vargas, director of research and engagement, Center for Global Democracy and LAPOP Lab, Vanderbilt University
From Public Opinion to Policy: Understanding Democratic Change Across the Americas
- Mary Gallagher, Marilyn Keough Dean of the Keough School of Global Affairs (Moderator)
- Noam Lupu, director, Center for Global Democracy, Vanderbilt University
- Abby Cordova, associate professor of Global Affairs, Keough School of Global Affairs, University of Notre Dame
- Rebecca Bill Chavez, president and CEO, Inter-American Dialogue
- Oliver Stuenkel, senior fellow, Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
The Future of Democracy in the Americas: A Fireside Conversation
- Juan Cruz, Senior Advisor (Non-resident) of the Americas Program, Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)
Speakers
Mariana Rodríguez Vargas is director of research and engagement at Vanderbilt University’s Center for Global Democracy and LAPOP Lab and director of studies for the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES). She has more than 15 years of experience managing cross-national public opinion research, including the AmericasBarometer, a leading comparative survey of democracy and governance in the Americas. Her expertise includes survey methodology, research design, data analysis, and communicating research findings to policymakers, scholars, civil society, and other audiences.
Mary E. Gallagher is the Marilyn Keough Dean of the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame. She is also a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s John L. Thornton China Center and a lifetime member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Previously, she served as the Amy and Alan Lowenstein Chair in Democracy, Democratization and Human Rights and director of the International Institute at the University of Michigan. Gallagher’s expertise includes Chinese domestic politics, political economy, and industrial relations. She is the author or editor of five books and serves on the board of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations.
Noam Lupu is the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of Political Science and director of the Center for Global Democracy and LAPOP Lab at Vanderbilt University. His research focuses on political identity, democratic governance and representation, and political behavior, particularly in Latin America. He is the author or editor of several books, including Keeping Workers Off the Ballot, Party Brands in Crisis, and Unequal Democracies, and has published widely in English and Spanish. His research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the World Bank, USAID, and other organizations.
Abby Córdova is an associate professor of global affairs in the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame and a core-affiliated faculty member of the Kellogg Institute. Her research examines how inequality and marginalization affect democracy, with a focus on crime and violence, gender and economic inequality, and migration in Latin America and the Caribbean. An expert in survey research methodology, her work draws extensively on public opinion and elite survey data. Her research has been published in numerous peer-reviewed journals, and she has consulted for organizations including the World Bank and USAID.
Dr. Rebecca Bill Chavez is president and CEO of the Inter-American Dialogue. She has more than 30 years of experience in academia, policymaking, and government service, including serving as deputy assistant secretary of defense for Western Hemisphere Affairs from 2013 to 2016. Previously, she was a tenured professor of political science at the U.S. Naval Academy, where her research focused on democracy, the rule of law, and security. She is the author of The Rule of Law in Nascent Democracies and has published widely on Latin American politics and international affairs. Chavez holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in political science from Stanford University.
Oliver Della Costa Stuenkel is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a nonresident fellow at Harvard Kennedy School, and a professor of international relations at the Getulio Vargas Foundation in São Paulo. His research focuses on geopolitics and the global order, Brazilian foreign policy, Latin American politics, and emerging powers. He is the author of several books on geopolitics, including The BRICS and the Future of Global Order and Post-Western World: How Emerging Powers Are Remaking Global Order. He is also a columnist for Foreign Policy and Estadão and a television commentator for Globonews.
Juan Cruz is a senior advisor at Dinámica Américas and a nonresident senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), where he focuses on national security, transnational organized crime, democratic stability, and the influence of extra-hemispheric powers in the Americas. He previously served on the National Security Council as senior special assistant to the president for hemispheric affairs, helping shape U.S. policy toward Venezuela and Cuba and broader regional strategy. Cruz spent more than three decades in U.S. government service, including assignments at U.S. embassies across Latin America.