Puerto Rico’s Status Conundrum
in Comparative Perspective
During this half-day conference, held on October 21, 2022, world-renowned academics addressed issues passionately discussed in Puerto Rico. The presentations regarding the political status of jurisdictions such as Quebec, Edinburgh, Barcelona, and Corsica touched on many important concerns that Puerto Ricans have. The event, coordinated by our Madrid Policy Bureau and distinguished political scientist and scholar of the UPR Jaime Lluch, Ph.D., was the beginning of a long overdue conversation.
Welcoming Remarks
Jennifer Wolff, Ph.D.
Director, Madrid Policy Bureau
Center for a New Economy
San Juan, Puerto Rico
Click here to read about Jennifer
Jennifer Wolff is Director at the CNE Policy Bureau in Madrid. She has been part of the CNE team in various roles, previously serving as Senior Program Director and as Director of Programs and Communications in CNE’s office in San Juan.
Jennifer joined CNE after a career in journalism and communications. She was General Manager at Hill & Knowlton’s Puerto Rico office and Vice President at Comstat Rowland, where she specialized in corporate communications, crisis management, and public affairs. Before that, she served as investigative reporter, news anchor, and producer of informative shows at WKAQ-TV, WAPA-TV, and WLII-TV, where she covered government, politics, and hard news. She also developed special broadcast reports of international events in countries such as Somalia, Kuwait, Bolivia, and Cuba. Her work garnered over 25 journalism, public relations, and communications awards.
Jennifer holds a Ph.D. in History from the University of Puerto Rico and a Magna Cum Laude Double B.A. in History and Latin American Studies from Duke University. She has served on the board of directors of United Way de Puerto Rico and the Puerto Rico Chamber of Commerce.
Puerto Rico and the Multinational Democracies Paradigm
Jaime Lluch, Ph.D.
Professor, Political Science
University of Puerto Rico
San Juan, Puerto Rico
Click here to read about Jaime
Jaime Lluch is a comparativist who works on the constitutional and political accommodation of national diversity in multinational democracies, comparative federalism, migration and citizenship in comparative perspective, European and EU politics, and comparative public law. He is the author of award-winning publications on the politics of accommodation of ethnonational diversity in multinational democracies, models of multilevel governance and citizenship, and comparative federalism.
Sergio M. Marxuach
Policy Director
Center for a New Economy
San Juan, Puerto Rico
Click here to read about Sergio
Sergio M. Marxuach is the Policy Director and General Counsel at the Center for a New Economy, a non-profit, non-partisan think tank. Prior to joining the Center, Mr. Marxuach served as Deputy Secretary of Commerce and Economic Development for the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and as Special Assistant to the executive director of the Commonwealth’s Office of Management and Budget.
Before joining the Commonwealth government, he was an associate for five years in the New York City law firm of Curtis, Mallet-Prevost, Colt & Mosle LLP, where he worked mostly in Latin American transactions and international corporate matters, structuring cross-border capital market transactions, and arranging vendor financing and syndicated credit facilities for U.S. multinational firms.
His work at CNE has been cited in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The Economist, among other prestigious publications. Mr. Marxuach has also been invited to testify before several Congressional committees and to brief committee staff members as well as U.S. executive branch officials on matters related to Puerto Rico’s economy and fiscal situation.
Mr. Marxuach has a B.A. in Economics and Political Science from Yale University, where he was awarded the Henry Edwards Ellsworth Prize for his Senior Essay. He also obtained a Juris Doctor degree from the Georgetown University Law Center and a Master of Science in Foreign Service from the Graduate School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.
Political Identities, Constitutionalism, and Political Evolution in Multinational Democracies
“Between devolution and independence: Scotland after Brexit”
Nicola McEwen, Ph.D.
Professor, Territorial Politics
University of Edinburgh
Edinburgh, Scotland
Click here to read about Nicola
Nicola McEwen’s work focuses on comparative territorial politics, devolution and multi-level governance; nationalism and the politics of national identity; and Scottish politics. Her research examines the process of devolution and multi-level government in the UK, and how Brexit has impacted the relationships between the four nations/territories of the UK. Nicola is Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and was founding Co-Director of the Centre on Constitutional Change, based at the University of Edinburgh.
“Explaining the Weakening of Secessionism in Quebec”
André Lecours, Ph.D.
Professor, Political Studies
University of Ottawa
Ottawa, Canada
Click here to read about André
André Lecours’ work focuses on Canadian politics and politics, nationalism (with a focus on Quebec, Scotland, Flanders, Catalonia and the Basque country) and federalism. He has authored books on institutional theory, nationalism, secessionism and autonomy, fiscal federal policy, and on the politics of territorial social policy
“The Political Preferences on the Territorial Distribution of Power in Spain and on the Independence of Catalonia. The Contrasts between Spanish and Catalan Public Opinion”
Jordi Argelaguet, Ph.D.
Professor, Political Science
Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona
Barcelona, Spain
Click here to read about Jordi
Jordi Arguelaguet’s main fields of research are nationalism, non-state-wide political parties, Catalan politics and language policy. He has written on the Catalonian pro-independence procés, Catalonian identity, and the dynamics of political parties in Catalonia. Between 2011 and 2021, he was director of the prestigious Centre for Opinion Studies of the Government of Catalonia.
Panel Discussant: Jaime Lluch, Ph.D.
Panel Chair: Deepak Lamba-Nieves, Ph.D. – Research Director at the Center for a New Economy
Click here to read about Deepak
Deepak Lamba-Nieves is the Research Director & Churchill G. Carey, Jr. Chair in Economic Development Research at the Center for a New Economy. He is also an adjunct faculty member at the University of Puerto Rico’s Graduate School of Planning.
He was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Brown University’ s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs and completed a Ph.D. in Urban and Regional Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP) while affiliated to the department’s International Development Group (IDG). His current research interests focus on: the migration-development nexus, economic and social policy, state-society dynamics, and transnational ethnography.
Before joining MIT, he spent close to seven years as Research Director in CNE. While at the Center, he also taught Geography and Planning courses at the University of Puerto Rico’s Río Piedras Campus, and also at the Polytechnic University’s School of Architecture.
He completed a Master’s in City Planning (MCP) at UC Berkeley’s Department of City and Regional Planning (DCRP) prior to joining CNE. His Masters work looked at high-technology policy in Puerto Rico and the contemporary economic development challenges in the island. He spent his college days at the University of Puerto Rico-Río Piedras Campus, where he graduated Summa Cum Laude with a BA in Economics.
Political Identities and Constitutional Accommodation in Small Peripheral Islands in Comparative Perspective
“A Multicultural Conservative Nationalist Jurisprudence? Trumpism and the American Territories”
Rogers M. Smith, Ph.D.
Emeritus Professor, Political Science
University of Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania, United States
Click here to read about Rogers
Roger Smith’s research centers on constitutional law, American political thought, and modern legal and political theory, with special interests in questions of citizenship, race, ethnicity and gender. He served as Penn’s Associate Dean of Social Sciences from 2014 to 2018 and as President of the American Political Science Association in 2018-2019. He was the founding director of the Andrea Mitchell Center for the Study of Democracy.
“Contemporary Corsica: from Assimilation to Autonomy?”
André Fazi, Ph.D.
Professor, Political Science
Università di Corsica Pasquale-Paoli
Corsica, France
Click here to read about André
André Fazi’s research focuses on Corsican and Mediterranean politics, regional and multi-level politics, the issue of insularity, and state-region relations. He has written on multi-level politics of accommodation, Corsican nationalism and Corsican autonomism. He is affiliated with the Groupe D’études Géopolitiques, a Brussels-based think tank.
“Federalism as the Compact among the Weak”
Héctor López Bofill, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Constitutional Law
Universitat Pompeu Fabra
Barcelona, Spain
Click here to read about Hector
Hector López Bofill is an expert in constitutional law, comparative law and European Integration. He has written on constitutionalism, self-determination and secession, Europeism and Catalanism. He is part of the Research Group on Constitutional, European and Supranational Integration Law of Barcelona’s Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
Panel Discussant: Jaime Lluch, Ph.D.
Panel Chair: Jennifer Wolff, Ph.D. – Director, CNE Madrid Policy Bureau
Key Takeaways and Conclusions
“What have we Learned? Comparative Perspectives and Puerto Rico”
Sergio M. Marxuach
Policy Director
Center for a New Economy
San Juan, Puerto Rico
André Lecours, Ph.D.
Professor, Political Studies
University of Ottawa
Ottawa, Canada
Closing Remarks
Miguel A. Soto-Class
President & Founder
Center for a New Economy
San Juan, Puerto Rico
Mike Soto-Class founded the Center for a New Economy (CNE) in 1998, and since then has steered CNE into becoming one of the most credible and influential voices in Puerto Rico. Beginning in 2014, CNE has been recognized yearly as one of the Top Think-Tanks to Watch by the Global Think Tank Report of the University of Pennsylvania.
With offices in San Juan, Washington, D.C. and Madrid, CNE is Puerto Rico’s first think tank, and has evolved into a powerful nonpartisan advocate on behalf of the island in policy circles as well as an important participant of diaspora and Latino groups in the U.S. mainland.
CNE’s policy papers are regularly sought-out by officials in the U.S. Congress, the U.S. Treasury, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and the White House, intent on receiving balanced expertise and policy counsel on Puerto Rico and finding bipartisan options to the challenges faced by the island. CNE’s reports and analyses are also regularly covered by media from the United States, Europe, Asia, and Latin America, and are cited by numerous academic and policy publications.
Mike was an editor of The Economy of Puerto Rico: Restoring Growth, which was published by the Brookings Institution in 2006 and selected that same year as a Notable Book by the American Library Association. He has been a columnist for El Nuevo Día, Puerto Rico’s largest circulation daily, since 2003, and was the host of a weekly news radio program on economics at Radio Universidad in the University of Puerto Rico for several years.
Mike served as an Advisory Board member of the Community Innovator’s Lab at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts; as a Board member of Endeavor Puerto Rico, a non-profit with an international reach committed to supporting high-impact entrepreneurs; as a Trustee of the University Press of the University of Puerto Rico; as the Founding Chairman of Espacios Abiertos, an organization dedicated to growing civic capacity and promoting transparency in Puerto Rico; a member of the YouthSave Advisory Board at the New America Foundation in Washington, D.C.; and as Co-Chair of Re-Imagina, the Advisory Commission for a Resilient Puerto Rico. In 2008, he was selected as an Aspen Institute Ideas Fellow.
He currently serves as Yale Alumni Schools Director for Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, and as the Puerto Rico Delegate to the Yale Alumni Association, as well as a member of the Board of Directors of the Baldwin School of Puerto Rico, and an Emeritus Member of the Advisory Council for the Conservation Trust of Puerto Rico.
Mike has a B.A. from Yale University and a Juris Doctor from Vanderbilt University.