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Leslie E. Anderson (born November 26, 1957) is an American political scientist. She is a scholar of democracy and of the comparative development and decline of democracies. Her particular focus is on Latin America and Western Europe. Her primary research has focused on the development of democracy and the decline of democracy in Nicaragua and Argentina. Her research takes a broad cross-national and historical focus and compares Latin American countries with France, Spain, Germany and the United States.

Early Life and Career

Anderson received her BA from Bowdoin College in 1979. While at Bowdoin she spent a year studying at the University of Stockholm where she researched an honors thesis on the Swedish decision not to become a nuclear power. Without that national debate and decision in the 1950s Sweden would have become the world's third nuclear power. Anderson went on to receive a Masters in Political Science (1982), a Masters in Public Health (1984), and a PhD in Political Science (1987) all from the University of Michigan. Anderson was a member of the faculty at the University of Colorado (Boulder) from 1988 - 1995. In 1995 she became a faculty member at the University of Florida (Gainesville), where she has become a University of Florida Research Foundation Professor.

Anderson was born in Washington D.C. and spent her youth in Maryland where she attended Charles W. Woodward High School. Her family background is one of educators and academics. Her father, Thornton H. Anderson held a PhD in Political Science (1948) from the University of Wisconsin. Thornton Anderson was a political theorist who spent his career at the University of Maryland. Her mother, Elizabeth Potts Anderson earned her BS from Sarah Lawrence College in 1945. Elizabeth Potts Anderson went on to earn a PhD in Biology from Stanford University in 1950. She became a scientist whose research helped produce a test for galactosemia (luctose intolerance) in infants. Her later professional accomplishments included providing funding for early research on a women's breast cancer gene being conducted by Mary Claire-King at the University of California, Berkeley. Her paternal grandfather, Philip Clive Potts, earned a PhD in education from Johns Hopkins University in 1930 and went on to be an advocate for education for the blind. Her maternal grandmother was a teacher in a one-room school house.

At Bowdoin College Anderson worked with Allen Springer, who oversaw her research on Sweden's decision not to produce nuclear weapons. At the University of Michigan she was awarded a Regents Fellowship to fund her doctoral studies and later received a Fulbright Fellowship to conduct her dissertation research in Central America. At the University of Michigan Daniel H. Levine directed Anderson's dissertation. Her research focused on the political struggles for liberation that were ongoing throughout Central America in the 1980s.

Major Works

The Political Ecology of the Modern Peasant: Calculation and Community (Johns Hopkins, 1994)

This book originated as Anderson's dissertation. She used extensive research and interviews in Costa Rica and Nicaragua to understand why peasants and the rural poor would engage in different kinds of political activism, including the Nicaraguan revolution. The work also examined the decision by other peasants to remain quiescent. The work built upon extensive research done by an earlier generation of scholars who had tried to understand peasant participation in revolution in Vietnam. That earlier worked had produced two contrary explanations for peasant revolution, one emphasizing community (James C. Scott, The Moral Economy of the Peasant) and the other emphasizing rational calculations of self-interest (Samuel Popkin, The Rational Peasant). Political Ecology presented a new theory that resolved this debate by showing that support for and commitment to community was, itself, a rational political decision in one's own self-interest. This motivation could explain many different kinds of political action including revolution, legal political disruption and political quiescence. Political Ecology also illustrated the extent to which peasants and the rural poor incorporate wider understandings of the natural environment and the national political community in making decisions about whether or not to participate in mobilized politics.

Learning Democracy: Citizen Engagement and Electoral Choice in Nicaragua, 1990-2001, (Chicago, 2005), co-authored with Lawrence C. Dodd

Learning Democracy originated out of curiosity about why Nicaraguan citizens, who had given their lives for the Nicaraguan revolution, would decide in 1990 to vote against their revolutionary leader, Daniel Ortega, and replace him with a rightist candidate, Violeta Chamorro. Anderson and Dodd illustrate that citizens, including poor and poorly-educated people, can make informed electoral choices when circumstances have caused them to pay close attention to the issues. Their conclusions challenge standard assumptions about the electorate put forward by scholars of the American electorate. Whereas electoral scholars in the United States argue that the poor are unable to make informed electoral decisions, the data in Learning Democracy show that they are as capable as are the elite of making informed choices. Additionally, scholars of electoral studies argue that the poor primarily use retrospection (looking backward) when voting whereas more educated voters are also capable of using prospection (forward thinking). Because of their low education level, the poor do not use prospection. In contrast to these theories, Learning Democracy demonstrates that the poor and poorly-educated are as capable of prospection as are the elites and the more educated.

Social Capital in Developing Democracies: Nicaragua and Argentina Compared, Cambridge, 2010

Social Capital builds on the argument of Robert Putnam (Making Democracy Work) that social capital is essential for building democracy and that social capital is essentially a democratic influence. Social capital is a broad description for the extensive interpersonal ties that develop among citizens through social activities, clubs, and sports as well as through socializing together. The building of social capital within society helps people come together to work out their differences in the political realm. Anderson challenges this argument by showing that some societies develop democratic (bridging) social capital but that other societies develop a very hostile and anti-democratic form of social capital (bonding) which then undermines democracy. To support the argument Anderson builds on data from Nicaragua, which developed democratic social capital, and from Argentina which developed non-democratic social capital. These developments depended upon the values put forward by the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua and by Peronism in Argentina. The book concludes with the question of how Argentina can have democratized at all given its low level of democratic social capital. Anderson answers this question by arguing that Argentina has a high level of institutional capital upon which it can build a democracy.

Democratization by Institutions: Argentina's Transition Years in Comparative Perspective (Michigan, 2016)

Democratization by Institutions picks up on the final argument from Social Capital in Developing Democracy by examining the development of Argentina's democracy upon the basis of its formal institutions of state. Argentina has adopted a presidential political system, modeled upon the United States political system. This includes a bicameral legislature and a Madisonian model with a separately elected executive and legislature and an independent judiciary. Anderson argues that, in the absence of democratic social capital, Argentina has built its democracy upon the bases of these institutions. The book then examines how robust and healthy that democracy is. Anderson concludes that the American Madisonian model was never intended to be a blueprint for democratization after authoritarianism and extensive human rights violations but that the model is good enough to get the job done. It has allowed Argentina to move forward on extremely divisive issues, including civilian control over the military and human rights trials, union reform and the taming of Peronist labor, and educational reform.

Awards and Fellowships

Anderson has been a Fulbright Scholar three times in 1986, 1993, and 2008. She has won grants from the National Science Foundation in 1996, 2006, and 2017. She was a fellow at Cornell University and at the Kellogg Institute, University of Notre Dame. She is a recipient of a Howard Foundation Fellowship, Brown University. In 2017-2018 she received a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship.

Selected Other Works “Democracy and Oppositional Consciousness in Argentina,” Polity, 2014; “Single-Party Predominance in an Unconsolidated Democracy: The Example of Argentina,” Perspectives on Politics, 2009; “Nicaragua Votes: The Elections of 2001,” with Lawrence C. Dodd, Journal of Democracy, 2002; “Neutrality and Bias in the 1990 Nicaraguan Pre-Electoral Polls,” American Journal of Political Science, 1994; “Post-Materialism from a Peasant Perspective: Political Motivation in Costa Rica and Nicaragua,” Comparative Political Studies, 1990.