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Bert Hoffmann (* 6. Februar 1966 in Berlin) is a German Latin America expert at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies in Hamburg. He is head of the GIGA Berlin Office and professor of political science at the Freie Universität Berlin.

Academic Career
Bert Hoffmann studied political science at the Freie Universität Berlin from which he also received his doctorate with a dissertation on "The Politics of the Internet in Third World Development". From 1993 to 1998 he was researcher at the Hamburg-based Institute for Ibero-American Studies (today: GIGA Institute of Latin American Studies); from 1998 he worked at the Latin American Institute of the Freie Universität Berlin, and since 2003 he is back at the GIGA in Hamburg. In 2007 he was visiting scholar at Nuffield College, Oxford University. At the GIGA Hoffmann led the transformation of the institute‘s area studies journals into open access publications. From 2011 to 2014 he served as Acting Director of the GIGA Institute of Latin American Studies. In 2014 he was appointed honorary professor at the Freie Universität Berlin. Since 2015 he is head of the GIGA Berlin Office. Hoffmann’s research focuses on the political and social development of Latin America and the Caribbean. He is an expert on Cuba and has published numerous books and articles analyzing the crisis and transformation in the politics, society and economy of the socialist country since 1989. He interprets the succession from Fidel Castro to Raúl Castro since 2006 as the transition from "charismatic socialism“ to "bureaucratic socialism”, which is promising gradual economic reform and more administrative efficiency than in the personalized leadership model before. A recent research projectlooked at the emergence of new social and racial inequalities on the island. Based on a survey of more than 1,000 interviewees across all provinces, the project found striking differences with regard to income, participation in the economy’s small private sector, travel, Internet access and other indicators of the island which in many ways echo the socio-ethnic hierarchies of pre-revolutionary Cuba. While after the 1959 revolution, the state sector of the economy had been the driver of upward mobility, the depressed state salaries now turn this process around. The research found access to emigrant remittances as starting-capital for private business and the possibility to obtain a foreign citizenship to be crucial assets, which are highly biased towards “white” Cubans, to the detriment of Afro-descendants. Hoffmann’s research interests also include the political implications of the digital media; the conceptual debate on Comparative Area Studies; and the changing relations between states and their emigrated citizens. A research project he led analyzed the emigrant policies of all Latin American states in comparative perspective. Current contributions analyze the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on Latin America and on the Caribbean. Bert Hoffmann is a member of the advisory boards of the European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies and the Asian Journal of Latin American Studies.

Books

 * Emigrant Policies in Latin America and the Caribbean (with Luicy Pedroza and Pau Palop). Santiago de Chile: FLASCO Chile 2016 ISBN 9789562052573 (Open access).
 * Debating Cuban Exceptionalism (in collaboration with Laurence Whitehead). New York/London: Palgrave, 2007; ISBN 9781403980755
 * Cuba. Apertura y reforma económica. Perfil de un debate. Caracas: Nueva Sociedad 1995; ISBN 9789803170738.
 * The Politics of the Internet in Third World Development. Challenges in Contrasting Regimes with Case Studies of Costa Rica and Cuba. New York: Routledge, 323p., 2004; ISBN 9780415650977.

Articles

 * COVID-19 in the Caribbean: So Open, so Vulnerable; in: AULA Blog, 2020. (Full text open access).
 * When Racial Inequalities Return: Assessing the Restratification of Cuban Society 60 Years After Revolution (with Katrin Hansing); in: Latin American Politics and Society vol. 62, no. 2 (summer 2020), p. 29–52.(Full text open access).
 * Assessing the Political and Social Impact of the COVID-19 Crisis in Latin America (mit Merike Blofield und Mariana Llanos); GIGA Focus Latin America, 3 (April 2020) Full text open access
 * Bureaucratic socialism in reform mode: the changing politics of Cuba’s post-Fidel era, in: Third World Quarterly, 37, 9(2016), 1730–1744
 * Communicating Authoritarian Elite Cohesion(with Andreas Schedler), in: Democratization, 23, 1 (2016), 93–117.
 * The international dimension of authoritarian regime legitimation: insights from the Cuban case, in: Journal of International Relations and Development, 18 (2015), 556–574.
 * Latin America and Beyond: The Case for Comparative Area Studies, in: European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, 100, 2015, 111–120.
 * Area Studies (with Andreas Mehler) in: Bertrand Badie / Dirk Berg-Schlosser / Leonardo Morlino (eds.), International Encyclopedia of Political Science, Newbury: Sage, 86–89 ISBN 9781412959636.
 * Turning the Symbol Around: Returning Guantánamo Bay to Cuba, in: Abraham F. Lowenthal / Theodore Piccone / Laurence Whitehead (eds.), The Obama Administration and the Americas. Agenda for Change, Washington D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 2009, p. 136–144; ISBN 9780815703099.
 * Civil Society 2.0?: How the Internet Changes State-Society Relations in Authoritarian Regimes: The Case of Cuba, GIGA Working Paper, No. 156, January 2011, Hamburg: GIGA (Full text open access).
 * Bringing Hirschman Back In: “Exit”, “Voice”, and “Loyalty” in the Politics of Transnational Migration, in: The Latin Americanist, 54 (2010) 2, p. 57–73.
 * Charismatic Authority and Leadership Change: Lessons from Cuba's Post-Fidel Succession, in: International Political Science Review, 30 (2009) 3, p. 229–248.
 * Why Reform Fails: The ‘Politics of Policies’ in Costa Rican Telecommunications Liberalization, in: European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, 84 (2008) p. 3–19.

Weblinks

 * Bert Hoffmann’s website at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies(GIGA)
 * Database with publications of Bert Hoffmann (GIGA – OPAC)
 * Literature of Bert Hoffmann in the catalog of the German National Library