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Lourdes Sola
University of São Paulo
(2006–2009)

Lourdes Sola is a Brazilian political scientist and Professor of Political Science at the University of São Paulo (USP). She earned her PhD in Political Science from the University of Oxford in 1982 and established herself as a leading authority in comparative politics, the political economy of democratization, and economic transformations in emerging market democracies. Prof. Sola currently serves as Chair of the Research Committee on International Political Economy, Varieties of Democracies and Decarbonization at the Institute of Advanced Study at the University of São Paulo. 

President of the Brazilian Political Science Association (1996–1998, 1998–2000), Prof. Sola was among the first social scientists elected to the Brazilian Academy of Sciences (2000) and was awarded the Brazilian Order of Scientific Merit (Ordem do Mérito Científico) in 2001 by the Brazilian Government. She was a visiting scholar at universities in the US and Europe, respectively, the Kellogg Institute at the University of Notre Dame (1990), St. Antony´s College, Oxford University (1989), and Berkeley (2000).

She received a Ford Foundation Brazil-sponsored award (1988–1989) to serve as a Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies, University of São Paulo (IEA). From 1987 to 1993, she served as co-chair of the Multidisciplinary Group on Politics and Economics, established at the Institute of Advanced Studies, where she led the project titled The Social and Political Matrix of Inflation in Democratising Latin America.

Prof. Sola was one of the six members of the Council of Ethics in Public Administration, accountable to the Brazilian Presidency. The Council, created in May 1998 by President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, was given the task to write and implement a Code of Ethics for High Administration, eventually launched in 2000. This position was held until May 2003. Comparative politics and the political economy of democratization are the major fields to which most of her research and teaching activities have been oriented. Her recent publications are focused mostly on the links between economic transformation and democratization in Latin America and beyond. 

Prof. Sola’s publications include Ideias Econômicas, Decisões Políticas: Técnicos e Políticos no Governo da Economia (São Paulo: EDUSP, 2023); Democratic Statecraft: Perspectives from an “Unsettled” Global South (co-author, in The Tocqueville Review, vol. 41, no. 2, 2020, pp. 159–182); On Albert Hirschman, by Way of Jeremy Adelman’s Worldly Philosopher: A Latin American Perspective (in European Review of International Studies, vol. 2, no. 1, Spring 2015); Democracia, Mercado e Estado: O B de BRICS (co-edited with Maria Rita Loureiro, 2011); Latin America’s Struggle for Democracy (edited by Larry Diamond, Marc F. Plattner, and Diego Abente Brun, 2008, pp. 124–138); Statecrafting Monetary Authority: Democracy and Financial Order in Brazil (co-authored with Laurence Whitehead, 2006); Banco Central: Autoridade Política e Democratização (co-authored with Eduardo Kugelmas and Laurence Whitehead, 2002); Fédéralisme, Stabilisation Monétaire et Démocratisation au Brésil (co-authored with Eduardo Kugelmas, Critique Internationale, no. 11, 2001); Central Bank Reform and Overcoming the Problem of Moral Hazard: The Case of Brazil (co-authored with Christopher Garman and Moisés Marques in Revista de Economia Política – Journal of Political Economy, São Paulo, vol. 21, no. 3, 2001, pp. 40–64); Sociedade e Estado em Transformação (co-authored with Luis Carlos Bresser Pereira and Jorge Wilheim, 2001); Central Banking, Democratic Governance and Political Authority (co-authored with Christopher Garman and Moisés Marques in Revista de Economia Política – Journal of Political Economy, vol. 18, no. 2-70, 1998); Idéias Econômicas, Decisões Políticas (1994), Estado, Mercado, Democracia (1992), O Estado da Transição – Política e Economia na Nova República (1987); and Lições da Década de 1980 (co-authored with Leda Paulani, 1980).

Prof. Sola served on the 5X����Executive Committee from 2000 to 2003 and as Vice-President from 2003 to 2006, before becoming IPSA’s second woman President, a role she held from 2006 to 2009. During her presidency, she actively promoted gender equality within the Association and at its events, reinforcing IPSA’s commitment to inclusivity. She also established the 5X����Research Committee on International Political Economy (RC51), which aims to bring new perspectives to the analysis of global power transitions by examining the political economy of emergence, with special emphasis on the impact of emerging market democracies. In addition, Prof. Sola established IPSA’s first summer school—the IPSA-USP Summer School in Concepts, Methods and Techniques in Political Science—at the University of São Paulo (USP), Brazil. 

Her term was marked by major institutional achievements, including the launch of the 5X����Global South Solidarity Fund to support scholars from developing countries. She also led the organization of the 5X����conference on New Theoretical and Regional Perspectives (2008), which brought together representatives of Research Committees and Presidents of national associations to discuss the state and future of the discipline. Additionally, during her presidency, 5X����signed a contract with Sage to publish the International Encyclopedia of Political Science, edited by Bertrand Badie, Dirk Berg-Schlosser, and Leonardo Morlino.