The Konrad Adenauer Foundation and the Electoral Tribunal of Panama organized the conference "Research on parliamentary elites in Latin America", by Dr. Manuel Alcántara Sáez, held in the auditorium of the main headquarters of this Panamanian public institution on the afternoon of April 21, 2022.
Dr. Alcántara Sáez is a political scientist and professor at the University of Salamanca. He holds a degree in Political Science and Sociology (1976) and a PhD in Political Science (1984) from the Complutense University of Madrid. He has given courses at various Spanish universities, as well as at the Center for Constitutional Studies in Madrid and at foreign universities: Georgetown University, Tulane University, Sciences Po (Lille), Flacso-Ecuador, Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana (Medellín), among many others.
The research carried out by Dr. Alcántara Sáez with the University of Salamanca represents a strictly methodological perspective to a proposal for the study of Latin American political elites based on the conformation of different interpretative schemes of the political reality -where the valuation of democracy, the role of the state and the partisan life are included- and of their own social origin.
This project is one of the pioneering research projects in the study of parliamentary elites in Latin America. Since 1994, Dr. Alcántara Sáez has been periodically conducting surveys of parliamentarians in 18 countries in the region with the aim of finding out what legislators are like and how they behave, what they have in common and what differentiates them both ideologically and programmatically.
During the event, the university professor was accompanied by the director of the Institute of Democratic Studies of the Electoral Tribunal, Salvador Sánchez González, who is a Panamanian lawyer and specialist in constitutional law and political science; author of numerous publications in specialized magazines in Panama, Spain, Colombia, Chile and Mexico; general director of Legal and Technical Consultancy in the National Assembly; Executive Secretary of Legal Affairs of the Ministry of the Presidency; Vice Minister of the Presidency and Minister (in charge) of the Presidency.
The lecture was addressed to deputies, public officials, Latin American ambassadors, researchers and members of civil society, who were part of an active audience in the subsequent substantive discussion.
