Following Tulio Halperín Donghi's pioneering work, historians have tried to explain why Argentina experienced a dramatic export-led expansion in the first half of the nineteenth century despite a lack of price incentives. This paradox is resolved by a new estimate of Argentina's terms of trade. It suggests that they probably improved by at least 2,000 per cent from the 1780s to the first decade of the twentieth century, so there were considerable price incentives for export-led growth. Labour and capital moved into the export sector, bringing into production the country's Pampean land – a previously under-utilised resource. This suggests that Argentina's expansion in the long nineteenth century was less a result of internal factors than a response to globalisation.

Attempts to use schools to assimilate the Huichols into the Revolutionary nation-state prompted the development of divergent partnerships and conflicts in their patria chica, involving rival Huichol communities and factions, local mestizos, government officials and Cristero rebels. The provocations of teachers, the cupidity of mestizo caciques, rebel violence and Huichol commitment to preserving communal autonomy undermined alliances between Huichol leaders and federal officials, and led to the ultimate failure of the government's project. If anything, the short-lived Revolutionary education programme equipped a new generation of Huichol leaders with the tools to better resist external assimilatory pressures into the 1940s and beyond.

With polling and municipal level data, we analyse the determinants of Salvador Allende's presidential election victory in 1970 and the change in political and electoral support for his government (1970–3). Support for Allende is explained by ideology more than by social class, socio-demographic variables or the economic performance of the country. Allende won in 1970 as an opposition candidate when the outgoing Frei administration enjoyed high approval and the country was experiencing favourable economic conditions. In 1973, when Allende had 49.7% approval, ideology remained the strongest determinant of presidential approval. Economic variables and social class are less important in explaining electoral support for Allende and for his Popular Unity coalition.

This paper discusses the ability of Sustainable Development Reserves to embed (in Karl Polanyi's sense) the economy into the environment through the development of protocols for the sustainable management of natural resources. Based on two decades of work in the Mamirauá and Amanã Sustainable Development Reserves, we question whether the results are good, fair and viable by comparing two alternatives: unregulated markets and fully protected reserves. We evaluate the interest in sustainability; discuss who benefits and who pays for it; reflect on its potential to reduce inequalities; and discuss its economic and political viability.

This article unpacks the effect that the presence of diffuse licit and illicit power structures has on states and citizens in the modern world. It does so by investigating how a drug cartel undermined social movement organisation around electricity provision in the San Marcos province of Guatemala. The cartel's presence contributed directly to the demise of movement activity and impeded the effective development of movement strategies in the face of menacing – albeit veiled – threats. In addition, the state's inability or unwillingness to prevent the violent assassination of movement leaders undermined the legitimacy of the central state in the eyes of movement leaders. This also contributed to the reproduction of the ‘unrule of law’ on the ground through the movement's subsequent rejection of formal state institutions.

If institutions are important for regulating violence, can institutional reforms make societies less violent? This article examines the north-east Brazilian state of Pernambuco primarily between 2007 and 2013, proposing that patterns of declining lethal violence can be explained by changes in both the accountability and effectiveness of formal state institutions and informal social norms. Drawing on two months of qualitative fieldwork, findings suggest that social and political mobilisation enabled a political coalition to initiate substantial changes under the Pacto pela Vida (Pact for Life) public-security programme, which improved the legitimacy and operational effectiveness of the criminal justice system, and coincided with a marked reduction in homicide rates. While showing that these reforms were central in reducing lethal violence in Pernambuco between 2007 and 2013, the article concludes by discussing the challenges of policy continuity in light of increasing rates of lethal violence since 2014.

The Chávez government introduced a ‘Bolivarian’ national curriculum to promote radically different understandings of Venezuelan history and identity. We place the fate of this reform initiative within the broader study of state formation and nationalism. Scholars have long identified mass schooling as the key institution for socialising citizens and cultivating national loyalties, and many states have attempted to alter the nationalist content of schooling with these ends in mind. Venezuela constitutes an ideal case for identifying the specific conditions under which transformations of official national ideologies do and do not gain broader resonance. Using evidence derived from textbook analysis and semi-structured interviews with educational officials and teachers in Caracas, we highlight a new argument, showing that intrastate tensions between the central government and teachers, heightened by a well-established cultural machinery and by teachers’ increasing exclusion from the Chavista political coalition, explain the limited success in government efforts to implement Bolivarian nationalism through the school curriculum.

In this article, I discuss São Paulo's legal apparatus in respect of environmental noise. I begin by situating my analysis within broader citizenship issues. I then focus on three debates on noise control in the city. The first two debates involve noise ordinances created in the 1990s and enforced by São Paulo's Programa de Silêncio Urbano (Urban Silence Programme, PSIU). The first revolves around the evangelical lawmakers’ attempts to exclude, minimize or hinder the impact of a noise ordinance on religious services. The second debate focuses on an ordinance that required bars without acoustic insulation to close at 1 am – a demand that faced strong opposition from businesses involved in the night-time economy. The third debate describes the recent attempt of a group of acoustic engineers to lobby the city administration for the systematic mapping of traffic noise. I contend that environmental noise is a fruitful point of entry to investigate how the state mediates universal equality and individual freedom, welfare principles and economic gain.