The Center for Legislative Studies will present a spring semester series on “Changing Regional Politics in the 21st Century.” The Department of Political Science, which houses the center, is co-sponsoring the lecture series, along with the James C. Thompson Stewardship Fund.

The first speaker will be Dr. Peter Siavelis, associate professor of political science at Wake Forest University. Siavelis will focus on Latin American politics in his lecture, “U.S. - Latin American Relations: Terror, the Cold War and Persistent Patterns in Interamerican Affairs,” on Wednesday, Feb. 23. Siavelis will argue that much of Latin Americans’ current antagonism toward the United States can be traced to their perception that the U.S. is falling into a traditional pattern of neglect in the region and of dangerous interventionism in other parts of the world.

Siavelis earned his master’s and doctorate degrees at Georgetown University. He is the author of “The President and Congress in Post-Authoritarian Chile: Constraints to Democratic Consolidation” (2000) and numerous articles and chapters concerning the electoral system in this Latin American nation.

The Center for Legislative Studies lectures are free and open to the public. They will begin at 7:30 p.m. in the auditorium of Weatherspoon Art Museum, located at the corner of Tate and Spring Garden streets. The next speaker will be Dr. Ken Menkhaus of Davidson College, discussing “Mapping Africa’s Future: Trends in Africa to the Year 2020,” Wednesday, March 30.