The article argues that preauthoritarian institutions have strongly influenced postauthoritarian labor politics in Chile and Uruguay. The nature of preauthoritarian labor administration—state corporatist in Chile, pluralist in Uruguay—had a strong impact on postauthoritarian collective outcomes, whether or not they were modified by the dictators or the ideological disposition of the postauthoritarian governments. Variation in preauthoritarian labor politics between Chile and Uruguay gave historical foundation to different union fortunes in the postauthoritarian era. That result points to the contemporary influence of preauthoritarian institutions, with or without authoritarian modifiers.

Government-initiated referendums (GIRs) have so far been neglected by the debate on the effects of institutions on policymaking in presidential systems. The literature on Latin American politics has focused on isolated cases of GIRs, which are largely interpreted as epiphenomenal to a regional trend toward personalistic neopopulism. This article provides a conceptual framework for the systematic comparative study of GIRs. It argues that presidents' propensity to promote legal changes through referendums and their concomitant capacity to dominate policymaking are subject to the interaction of two institutional variables (constitutional rules regulating the competences of elected officials in GIR processes and minimum turnout requirements) and two political variables (preference distribution in the legislature and the position of the median voter). These propositions are tested through a comparative analysis of referendum experiences in Colombia and Bolivia, two cases with similar political settings and significant variation in each of the institutional variables.

Negotiations between the European Union and MERCOSUR aim to establish the first free trade agreement ever between two customs unions. Among the potential obstacles are compliance with World Trade Organization rules, treatment of “sensitive” products, and competition from the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas. This analysis reviews the economic background on both sides, the motivation, and the prospects for success, along with the agreement’s potential impact on the largest third party, the United States.

Studies of the electoral effects of cash transfer programs in Latin America have largely treated the poor as a unitary group. This study considers how the effects of social benefits vary across groups among the targeted poor by exploring the consequences of race for the electoral effects of Brazil’s Bolsa Família program. A matching analysis of LAPOP survey data shows that race shapes baseline propensities to participate in elections and to support the incumbent PT at the polls; these tendencies then shape the mechanisms through which cash transfers boost support for the incumbent. Benefits mobilize Afro-Brazilians to participate but have little effect on their vote choice. By contrast, benefits have little effect on whites’ participation but persuade them to support the PT over the opposition. This article deepens understanding of how social benefits affect the electoral behavior of recipients and highlights how race shapes political behavior among the poor.

This article examines the evolution of transnational Zapatista solidarity networks. Although scholars have described an emerging “mutuality” between the Zapatista movement and its allies at the level of international framing, this article considers how the Zapatistas forged this mutuality on the ground, through active redefinition of alliances with Northern supporters. It argues that the Zapatistas delimited who was included in their solidarity networks, set new terms for partnerships, and redefined legitimacy in their transnational alliances. In so doing, they asserted their autonomy from donors. They also fostered discourses and practices of mutual solidarity and Southern leadership, shifting the balance of power between North and South. The case both illuminates the possibilities for Southern movements to challenge Northern control from within and suggests potential pitfalls of doing so; by defying Northern NGOs' influence, the Zapatistas may have risked their long-term viability.

Mitigating climate change requires a global transition from fossil fuels to a “green economy” driven by renewable energies. This shift has fostered massive investments in mining resources, notably lithium in South America, needed to store renewable energies. These mining ventures often produce harmful externalities where lithium is located. In Argentina, a major producer, striking variation has occurred in the fortunes of lithium-mining projects. In some instances, mining companies offered concessions that mitigated environmental damage and improved local socioeconomic conditions. In others, companies made minimal concessions, and in a third set they halted projects in response to local resistance. Why do mining ventures result alternatively in negotiated, unnegotiated, or aborted extraction? The article proposes a new typology of modes of extraction together with a multilevel explanatory framework that centers on the strengths and strategies of transnational mining companies, subnational governments, and local communities in setting the terms for extracting lithium.

The Flow of drugs from Mexico to the United States has been a source of trouble in US-Mexican relations for at least two decades. The dominant view in Mexico is that the problem arises from the inability of the United States to control its domestic demand for heroin, cocaine, and marijuana. The dominant US view has been that the Mexican government has failed to make effective efforts to control the supply of drugs. At times — in particular after the killing of Enrique Camarena, an agent of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), in 1985 — US government anger at Mexico's alleged failure to maintain the integrity of its anti-drug efforts has been the dominant source of friction between the two nations.

Cuba has entered the decade of the 1990s in a state of profound existential crisis. The countries of Eastern Europe, whose economic and political institutions and ideologies were adopted by Cuba, albeit with some modifications, were abandoning those same institutions and ideologies. Cuba's place in the international system had become one of growing isolation: Cuba had become a curiosity from the 1960s rather than the wave of the future, as it once perceived itself. By mid-1990, it appeared almost certain that the generous subsidization of the Cuban economy by the Soviet Union was about to end. Moreover, the Cuban economy was in serious difficulty as a result of some external factors, namely the convertible currency debt crisis and the problems and uncertainties in its relationship with the Soviet Union since 1985, but also as a result of internal institutional incapacities and deformities.

Twenty minutes by jet or fifteen hours by bus northwest of Bogotá lies the department of Antioquia, with its capital, Medellín, second largest of Colombia's cities. Although the Andes serve as divider and incubator of a diversity oí patrias chicas, each with characteristic accent, folklore, and regional identity, the country of the Antioqueño, or paisa, remains one of the most distinctive. Unlike Colombians from other regions, the Antioqueño has typically been stereotyped as the alien. Whether he has been reviled as a Jew, lauded as a “New Breed,” portrayed as a Basque, a Swiss, a Yankee, or a Protestant, writers have used ethnic interpretations which minimize the Latin, the Catholic, and even the Colombian image of the paisa (Lipset, 1967:27,28).

The term competitiveness is widely applied as a catch-all for investor-friendly policies and institutions. This article argues that sloppy applications of the term ignore the possibilities of policy tradeoffs and varieties of institutional choices. Popular conceptualizations of the term describe three discernible clusters of economic policies and institutions. One cluster captures openness to international trade; a second gauges regulatory impediments to private sector competition; a third refers to public sector investments in human capital, security, and infrastructure. This essay develops three empirical indexes to operationalize these clusters and shows that these concepts are not only theoretically but also empirically distinct. In particular, the correlation between these measures is not especially high in a sample of Latin American countries. The larger economies in the region tend to be more competitive on the regulatory and public goods dimensions but fall well behind smaller economies in terms of external competitiveness, broadly conceived.

The relation between elections and the economy in Latin America might be understood by considering the agency of candidates and the issue of policy preference congruence between investors and voters. The preference congruence model proposed in this article highlights political risk in emerging markets. Certain risk features increase the role of candidate campaign rhetoric and investor preferences in elections. When politicians propose policies that can appease voters and investors, elections may have a limited effect on economic indicators, such as inflation. But when voter and investor priorities differ significantly, deterioration of economic indicators is more likely. Moreover, voter and investor congruence is more likely before stabilization, when an inverted Philips curve exists, as opposed to following stabilization, when a more traditional Philips curve emerges.

This article examines the issue of presidential failure in South America by evaluating the multiple factors that create risk of resignation, removal, or impeachment of presidents. The study draws on various economic variables that have not been thoroughly investigated in the past and uses survival analysis to identify what factors are influential. In performing this testing, the importance of variables such as civil protest, executive wrongdoing, and specific measures of economic hardship—inflation and prolonged recession—becomes clear. Majority legislative support also remains significant, supporting early arguments about the influence of presidential institutions. This investigation provides a unique perspective on presidential survival while evaluating the importance of previously excluded variables in a comprehensive manner.

Argentine-Brazilian relations have undergone a remarkable transformation over the last two decades, from enduring rivalry to cooperation. Dating back to the late 1970s, security cooperation has been a byproduct of two different sets of factors, strategic and military organizational, that propelled the two countries independently but simultaneously toward peaceful settlement. The 1979–80 settlement of disputes over hydroelectric power and nuclear technology not only ended centuries of militarized competition but established the first institutional structures of what is today one of the world's most durable security regimes.

In some Latin American nations, policy change occurs frequently, while in others it is stable, less prone to shifts with the prevailing political climate or shocks. The conditions under which institutional rules and the powers of key actors influence the capacity for governance vary, and this variation is seldom addressed in the literature. This project examines the effects of the interactions between key policymakers (the executive and the legislature) in Latin America on policy stability across different institutional frameworks. Countries with simultaneously strong executives and weak legislatures are shown to have unstable policy environments, as are countries with a history of unified government and, to a lesser extent, candidate-centered electoral systems.

This article argues that the increased participation of women in Peruvian politics in the 1990s and the advances made in some areas of their citizenship rights are connected to the strategies put in place by some sectors of the women's movement and to the openings provided by the Fujimori regime. Some of the impact of neopopulist rule on political institutions is shown to be positively related to women's increased opportunities during this period; yet the weak rule of law and the political use of the women's agenda by an increasingly questionable regime placed the women's movement in a complex political panorama. A disaggregated analysis of the politics of women's citizenship reveals that women from the popular sectors did not benefit from the same progress in their rights claims as women from the feminist movement or women in party politics.

Why have some Mexican states proceeded faster than others in the revolutionary transformation of overhauling criminal procedure? Contributing an original index of criminal procedure reform across Mexico's 32 states from 2002 to 2011 and building on existing research on policy diffusion, this article seeks to answer this question. It finds that the 2008 constitutional reform at the federal level exerts a strong positive effect (federal mandate); being situated in a neighborhood of states that have reformed has a counterintuitive negative effect (spatial proximity); and having a governor from the same party as governors of other states that have reformed has a positive influence (network affinity). These findings yield a better understanding of the vertical, cross-level and horizontal, cross-unit diffusion of reform, with implications for understanding how to overcome challenges to criminal justice reform in Mexico, Latin America, and elsewhere.

Consensus democracy among the main Chilean political forces ended abruptly after the 2013 presidential and parliamentary elections, the most polarized elections since the return to democracy in 1990. Relying on spatial voting theory to uncover latent ideological dimensions from survey data between 1990 and 2014, this study finds patterns of gradual polarization starting at least ten years before the collapse of consensus, based on an increasing demobilization of the political center that misaligned politicians from their political platforms (particularly in the center-left parties). That phenomenon changed the political support for the two main political coalitions and the intracoalition bargaining power of their various factions. The pattern also helps to explain the process behind the 2015 reform of the electoral system.

This article examines the circumstances under which civilians, using protests as a mechanism, alter the strategic use of violence by armed actors (rebels and state forces). By examining the civil war in Colombia between 1988 and 2005, this study finds that combatants decrease their attacks against the population when civilians protest against the enemy. Combatants interpret such demonstrations as costly signals of loyalty. Furthermore, when insurgents are the target of the protests, insurgents increase repression against civilians as rebels get stronger. In contrast, state forces (and paramilitaries) compensate for their weakness in the area by multiplying civilian victims. Both state forces and rebels, however, are likely to decrease violence against civilians when civilians protest against both parties in contested zones. In such contexts, armed actors are likely to refrain from retaliation because any violence might drive noncombatants toward the enemy.

The end of the Cold War raises many questions about the role of Third World states in the emerging “New World Order.” During the “old” world order, however, Latin America played a crucial role in the US sphere of influence. This alone merits study of its recent foreign policy behavior, not only because the region is home to many of the newly industrializing states, but also because it will undoubtedly be an important player in regional and global politics into the 21st century (Brysk, 1992; Lowenthal, 1993). How will Latin Americans respond to a Hemisphere dominated by the United States? Will they resist or endorse the trend towards open markets and economies? This article investigates this question with regard to Ecuador, exploring whether Ecuador's foreign policymakers are in the process of shifting towards embrace of a US-dominated Hemisphere governed by free-market economic ideals or, rather, are developing policies in accordance with their own ideological predilections.