Interview with Professor Mark Deming
Mark Deming is a Lecturer in the Department of Government at William & Mary and teaches courses on Latin American Politics, Political Regimes, Authoritarian Legacies, Comparative Politics, and Research Design. He earned his PhD at the University of Chicago. Before arriving at William & Mary, he was a postdoctoral Teaching Fellow at the University of Chicago. Currently, he is writing a book examining why political parties linked to former dictatorships often crop up and even thrive in new democracies. Find more information on Professor Deming here: http://www.markdeming.net
1. You recently joined the government department. What initially brought you to William and Mary?
A host of factors prompted me to join the Government Department at W&M. As an educator first and foremost, I wanted to join a department with a strong commitment to teaching and teaching innovation. From day one, it was clear to me from that W&M and the Government Department fit the bill.
2. You specialize in political regimes and regime transitions, politics in nascent democracies, and distributive politics—with a focus on Latin America. What inspired you to pursue these areas of study?
After college, I lived and worked in Cuzco, Peru, for five years. During my time there, in 2007, Peru held a presidential election that featured the unlikeliest of candidates: a political novice demanding broad economic redistribution; a former president who had effectively run the country into the ground while in office; and a former dictator who campaigned from exile in Japan. My puzzlement in the face of the election became a major factor in my decision to study these areas.
3. In your research on Peru, you interviewed Alberto Fujimori in prison. Describe that experience and what did you learn from that?
Getting inside the mind of a former dictator during extended interviews is surreal. As someone who researches dictatorship and democracy, I was fascinated to learn how Alberto Fujimori thought about his own time in power (1990–2000). Whereas I tend to think about democracy in terms of elections and civil rights, it was clear that, for Fujimori, democracy was mainly about efficient provision of goods and services to citizens—even if achieving this end at times entailed circumventing democratic institutions and civil rights.
4. If you could give one piece of advice to William and Mary students, what would it be?
Enroll in courses that will challenge you to carefully link ideas to evidence (as well as scrutinize what constitutes “good” evidence). Additionally, learn a foreign language and study abroad. Doing so will profoundly change how you understand the world!
