This article examines, from a comparative perspective, those electoral practices labelled as ‘corrupt’ in Latin America between 1830 and 1930, in order to gain a fuller appreciation of the significant role played by elections in the history of the region. The article starts by using the term ‘electoral corruption’ in its general sense, as often used by contemporaries themselves when referring to the various practices that, in their view, distorted the vote, and therefore the meaning of suffrage. From this general definition, the article moves on to distinguish between the different types of corrupt practice, with the aim of identifying the extent to which they affected electoral competition. By offering a revision of the assumptions that have hitherto served to undermine the historical meaning of the suffrage, this article aims to encourage the study of electoral history in the region. The examination of electoral corruption is therefore preceded by a brief survey of the historiography of Latin American elections.

This article examines the ideas of Mexican elites about the international market during the porfiriato (1876–1910), an age marked by imperialism and monopoly capitalism. It focuses specifically on their thoughts about foreign trade, investment and workers. They viewed the international economy as a Darwinian battle for survival, but were not isolationists. In keeping with opinions articulated by US imperialists, they maintained that foreign blood, money and goods were essential to Mexico's economic progress. But they also feared that foreign economic penetration would undermine sovereignty. To resolve this dilemma, they championed state regulation of foreign economic interests. Thus, rather than extol the virtues of laissez-faire, members of the Porfirian intelligentsia were ambivalent internationalists.

From 1910 to 1927 workers in the Mexican cotton textile industry took advantage of the larger surrounding revolution to create a revolution of their own. Based on a significant and persistent challenge to workplace authority, millhands radically transformed the labour regime in Mexican industry. Although owners combated the workers' rebellion, they never inflicted a decisive defeat. As a consequence, the conditions of work in Mexican mills improved dramatically. Among the advancements workers fought for, and obtained, were a sharp reduction in the working day from fourteen hours to eight, mandated medical care for work-related accidents and illnesses and union control of hiring and firing. The latter included the union shop and a system of tripartite boards that made it virtually impossible to fire workers who enjoyed union support. The new labour regime reflected changes in the formal and informal institutions of work, but its final institutionalisation empowered unions more than the rank and file workers who fought to change the social relations of work.

This article examines the role of the Supreme Court in the development of the Mexican political system. The judiciary provided an important source of regime legitimation, as it allowed for the consolidation of a state of legality and a claim to constitutional rule of law, at least in discourse. However, the judiciary was in effect politically subordinated to the logic of dominant party rule through both specific constitutional reforms since 1917 that weakened the possibility of judicial independence and a politics of institutional and political co-optation. The constitutional reform of 1994 has significantly altered the nature of the relationship between the executive and the Supreme Court.

For around 15 years Latin America has been undergoing an unprecedented conjunction of political and economic change, from authoritarianism to democracy and from a state-centred matrix of economic development towards free-market economies. This article takes up the theme of the links between politics and economic change in contemporary Latin America. More specifically, it examines the relation between ‘old politics’ and ‘new economics’. It has two main purposes: The first is to re-examine some of modernisation theory's assumptions about the relations between political and economic modernisation. The second, more specific to the Latin American debate, is to question some of the dominant views about the nature of democracy in the region, particularly Guillermo O'Donnell's influential ‘delegative democracy’ model.

This article highlights a number of themes useful in the gendered analysis of democratic consolidation in Latin America by means of a comparative analysis of Argentina and Chile. It starts from the assumption that much of the work on democratisation in Latin America – both orthodox and the literature concentrating on women and transitions – produced up until now, has been too voluntaristic in its approach. It argues that what is needed, particularly in the study of democratic consolidation, is an analysis not only of the impact of women and women's organisations on institutions and structures but also of how these institutions and structures can shape and change gender relations and different women's activities. Any gendered analysis of democratic consolidation must begin by examining the terms of transition which, while they can be subject to some renegotiation later, affect the nature of the subsequent system and the space available to different actors. It is argued that a number of characteristics of the post-transition system are significant: first the impact of more arbitrary populist or presidential systems, second the importance of women's organising both inside and outside the state and party systems and third the existence of an institutionalised party system.

Although Chile is a relatively small country, writings about the Chilean party systems have long been better and more voluminous than is the case with most party systems in Latin America. Several orthodoxies have emerged in this literature: that Chilean parties are strong, that the party systems have been divided into three roughly equal parts, and that they have been relatively stable. The purpose of this article is to challenge these three orthodoxies. These orthodoxies are not completely wrong, but they need to be qualified.

The dominant view that Chilean parties are strong has been overstated. They have been strong in some respects and for some periods, but not in others. Parties have traditionally dominated mechanisms of representation in Chile's democratic periods, overshadowing unions, social movements, and other forms of representation. Party penetration in the electorate, however, has not been powerful. Parties have appeared and disappeared with frequency, and most parties have been relatively weak organisationally. More so than is the case in Uruguay, Venezuela from 1958 until the 1990s, Costa Rica or most of Western Europe, Chile's democratic periods have allowed space for anti-party populists to develop successful political careers, including capturing the presidency.