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This morning, at the age of 57, the sociologist, political scientist and researcher died in the city of Buenos Aires Marcelo LeirasHe had cancer. He was born in Buenos Aires on June 5, 1967. He was the father of two children: Albertina and Manuel. He graduated in Sociology from the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Buenos Aires and received his doctorate in Political Science from the University of Notre Dame. He was an independent researcher at Conicet and advisor to former Minister of the Interior Eduardo de Pedro during the Frente de Todos government.
He was an associate professor in the Department of Social Sciences and director of the Master’s in Administration and Public Policy at the University of San Andrés (Udesa). A specialist in comparative politics, he studied the internal organization of political parties, the effects of federal organization, the influence of civil society organizations on public policies, the relationship between political competition and the stability of the Supreme Courts, and the impact of economic performance on the stability of governments. In recent years, he has researched the sources of social polarization (the “rift”) and its influence on the stability of democratic governments.
Between 2014 and 2020, he headed the Department of Social Sciences at Udesa. He was a postdoctoral researcher at Yale University and a visiting professor at Brown University. He advised national and international organizations such as the Ministry of the Interior, CIPPEC, the United Nations Development Program, Unicef, the International Labor Organization, the Ford Foundation, and the British Embassy in Buenos Aires. Between 2012 and 2018, he published opinion columns in LA NACION.
“[Mauricio] Macri is a very politically skilled person, you don’t become president without being one, and part of that skill is building around him a space with leaders with a vocation to work together, young people with aspirations who have remained within the organization. -he had said in 2018, in conversation with LA NACION-. Containment is a political virtue, too. It is a valuable construction; admirable, I might say.”
He did not have a good opinion of the current president, Javier Milei. “For the first time in Argentina we are facing a presidential candidate who presents himself, explicitly and without any shame, as a continuation of the dictatorial experience,” he said in October 2023 about the candidates of La Libertad Avanza. At the end of July, in dialogue with Action Magazineanalyzed the legislative debate on the Bases law and admitted that Milei had a political virtue: “It sets a clear course; I don’t know if it’s consistent or feasible, but it is clear and recognizable. […]The governments of Cristina Kirchner, Mauricio Macri and Alberto Fernández did not speak as if a change of course was needed. Support for Milei can survive poor economic results, such as those he has had so far. He was concerned that Argentines had a “very short” memory and that the country was in economic stagnation. He detected a “provincialization” of the strategies of political parties and a lack of organizations that could assess national problems (the fiscal one, among them).
“Marcelo recently said that the best teacher was the least inhibitory and the most inspiring, and that was him,” says professor and researcher Eugenia Mitchelstein to LA NACION. Marcelo was sharp and generous: it was a pleasure to disagree with him. I worked with him for twelve years, and I can’t believe we’re not going to continue chatting about ideas, books, politics and movies at university lunches.”
As an author and compiler of books and academic publications, he stands out All the King’s Horses: The Integration of Political Parties and the Democratic Government of Argentina (1955-203) y Reflections on uneven democracies: the legacy of Guillermo O’Donnell (curated by Leiras, Daniel Brinks and Scott Mainwaring).
Intellectuals, colleagues, politicians and students said goodbye to Leiras on social media.
The funeral will be held today from 6 to 12 p.m. and tomorrow from 8 to 10 a.m. at Álvarez Thomas 2671. A funeral service will be held at 10:30 a.m. in the chapel of the Chacarita Cemetery.
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