LIST OF PANELS

I.               Background and General Objectives of the Panel

Due to globalization and the excessive use of natural resources, many of the problems that global society faces nowadays have to do with sustainability. After the publication of “The Tragedy of the Commons” by the ecologist Garrett Hardin in 1968 and the “Brundtland Report” in 1987, the concept of sustainable development was then included in many political agendas of the countries worldwide. Even though the scientific literature about sustainable development has varied—especially in economics and political economy—there are still several gaps between many theoretical approaches to the topic and their application in a global society. 

In Latin America, the problem of sustainability and development has exciting and unique connotations, posing additional challenges to the existing problem of inequality and poverty in the region. According to the United Nations, Latin America is today the region with the highest level of inequality globally. Despite its economic growth in the last decades, Latin America still suffers from severe income inequality, abject poverty, and poor policy design and implementation. Moreover, 2020 represented one of the most critical milestones in policy-related issues in recent decades. With Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) making a pandemic, Latin America entered an acute phase not only from a health point of view but also from an economic, social, and environmental point of view. 

Accordingly, COVID-19 revealed a significant problem with access to public goods in Latin America, including technology and the internet. On top of being the region with the highest level of inequality worldwide, the pandemic showed the incapacity of many Latin American countries to guarantee access to technology and connectivity to most people, adding more pressure to its fragile productive structure and social cohesion. This post-pandemic era, together with the consequences of the international conflict between Russia and Ukraine, is now characterized by a wider gap between the rich and the poor in the region, marked by a weakening in the capacity of the governments in producing high-quality and effective policies that would face these challenges.   

Thus, the primary objectives of the panel “Latin America 2030: Sustainable Development and the Digital Transformation of the Region” is to actively promote new policy mechanisms, scholarship debate, and innovative proposals for the three most critical challenges of Latin America: i) Technological transformation and adaptation to the Digital Era; ii) The post-COVID-19 economic and social reactivation plan, and iii) Combating climate change and other environmental challenges in the region. This panel aims to close the gap between theories and methods on sustainability and new technology policies. 

II.             Research Questions

Our primary research question is how to promote and design sustainable development policies using new technologies in Latin America, considering the importance of the post-pandemic challenges and the issue of sustainability and climate change. This question opens the door to many other vital issues the region faces. For example, what policies are the governments implementing to accelerate the economic recovery after the pandemic? How can Latin America reduce the income inequality gap without distorting the market? What are the short and medium-term challenges for Latin America to comply with its international obligations regarding Climate Change? These are the main research questions that this panel will try to address. 

Hence, the challenges for Latin America are multiple. These range from adapting to the new dynamics in a post-pandemic era, namely, enhancing the health systems and other critical public investment, to establishing policies and strategies that ensure the current connectivity challenges and the digital age in the long term. The most pressing issues are threefold:

To address structural issues regarding inequality and difficulties of access to new technologies for the region’s poorest and most disadvantaged people.
To coordinate policies and plans for sustainable regional development in a post-pandemic context that includes economic, social, and political problems.
To discuss the mechanisms through which Latin America can build resilient societies against climate change from a policy perspective. 
 

These issues are connected to the capacity of the public administration of the countries of Latin America to engage in these problems actively. Moreover, it will be necessary to consider the financial limitations and other issues, such as the international context, or the domestic politics of some key countries, that prevent the region from having a better path regarding its development.

III.           Scientific Relevance

This panel offers the possibility to address the main research question of sustainability and connectivity in Latin America, including exploring some key working hypotheses. These hypotheses will cover many issues, such as the relationship between the use of technology and economic growth; the role of the Latin American states in promoting policies to reactivate their financial sector and prevent further economic crises; and whether sustainability can be effectively included in the policy design and implementation in the region. The multidisciplinary approach of this panel will enrich the dialogue of the debate in policy design and implementation, not only of scholars from the social sciences but also from other STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) disciplines. This multidiscipline approach is key to understanding how policies focused on natural phenomena (i.e., climate change or a virus pandemic) can affect social variables, such as migration, poverty, and inequality, among many others. 

Many social scientists are working to combine the traditional perspective of efficacy, efficiency, and effectiveness of policy analysis with a more complex reality that entails using new technologies and the limited usage of natural resources. This new approach will, therefore, be scientifically relevant insofar as it will lead scholars to address the issue of sustainable public policies in a more technologically demanding society. The capacity of the states to adapt to these challenges and the ability of the policy scholars to identify them accurately will be fundamental to public administration in Latin America. Finally, the panel will bring experts worldwide that will share their knowledge and experience in the problem of implementation and analysis of new technologies in developing countries, addressing the issue of sustainable public policies in a post-COVID-19 agenda.

Format of the panel: Onsite

The panel “Latin America 2030: Sustainable Development and the Digital Transformation of the Region” will accept high-quality research papers using theoretical or empirical approaches (or both) and implementing innovative policies focused on technological and sustainable development. 

The Panel will focus on the three most important topics that concern the Latin America development agenda:

1. Technological transformation and adaptation to the Digital Era. 
2. The post-COVID-19 economic and social reactivation agenda. 
3. Combating climate change and other environmental challenges in the region.
 

The panel chairs will seek various disciplines for each main topic to foster the level of debate and discussion. Therefore, this Call for Papers is open to political scientists, sociologists, political economists, anthropologists, biologists, physicists, engineers, and other related disciplines that could contribute with novel ideas about sustainable policies analysis and technology related to the topics of the Panel. Particular attention will be given to any theoretical or empirical approach for either existing policies or new policy proposals regarding sustainability and the use of technology in the policy analysis. 

Papers must be sufficiently detailed to allow the Panel Chair to judge their merits. The authors are asked to submit both: i) a short 150-word abstract to be entered online; and ii) either an extended abstract (3-5 pages, including tables and bibliography) or a completed paper to be uploaded following instructions that will be available online. The abstract should be between 250 and 300 words, and must contain the following:

1. The topic to be addressed (technological transformation, post-COVID reactivation   

     agenda, or climate change and other environmental challenges).
2. The theoretical focus.
3. The data and research methods.
4. The expected findings.
 

All papers must be written in English. A linguistic review is kindly asked if English is not the author’s native tongue. There must be no exceptions to the use of the Latin alphabet: names in different alphabets (Cyrillic, Arabic, etc.) must be transliterated into Latin. The papers shall be submitted between November 15th, 2022, and January 31st, 2023. The deadline will be 23.59 hrs of January 31st 2023, Central Standard Time –CST.  

Format of the panel: Onsite