Most literature on drugs and conflict focuses on how the drug trade affects insurgent behavior, paying little attention to its effect on state behavior in conflict settings. This article begins to address this gap by analyzing the impact of drugs on state violence during the internal conflict in Peru (1980–2000), which, in the 1980s, was the world’s major producer of coca for the international drug trade. Drawing on literature on criminal violence and on drug policy, this study theorizes militarization as the main channel by which drug production affects how state forces treat the civilian population during internal conflicts, though it also explores a second channel associated with corruption. The analysis finds that, all else equal, drug-producing localities saw increased state violence in ways consistent with the militarization channel.

In recent decades, Brazilian voters have grown polarized between supporters of the Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers’ Party, PT), known as petistas, and its opponents, known as antipetistas. What explains this animosity? One potential source of polarization is partisan stereotyping, a tendency for partisans to misperceive the social composition of both their own side’s bases of support as well as their opponents’. We show that most Brazilians overestimate the extent to which petistas and antipetistas belong to party-stereotypical groups such as Afro-Brazilians, evangelical Christians, or poor or rich people. We then show that stereotyping is associated with polarization: the greater the bias in perceived partisan group composition, the greater the perceptions of partisan political extremism and feelings of social distance toward the partisan out-group.

Latin American countries experienced a significant reduction in income inequality at the turn of the twenty-first century. From the early 2000s to around 2012, the average Gini coefficient fell from 0.51 to 0.47. The period of falling inequality coincided with leftist presidential candidates achieving electoral victories across the region: by 2009, 11 of the 17 countries had a leftist president—the so-called Pink Tide. Using a difference-in-differences design, a range of econometric models, inequality measurements, and samples, this study finds evidence that leftist governments lowered income inequality faster than non-leftist regimes, increasing the income share captured by the first 7 deciles at the expense of the top 10 percent. The analysis suggests that this reduction was achieved by increasing social pensions, minimum wages, and tax revenue.

The Colombian Naval Corvette Caldas sailed under orders into a disputed zone of the Gulf of Venezuela on 9 August 1987 and began ordering Venezuelan fishing boats and naval craft to leave areas which the Colombian vessel declared were the territorial waters of Colombia. The Venezuelan navy responded by deploying frigates to the scene to reassert Venezuela's claim of territorial jurisdiction over the waters. A protracted naval encounter followed; Venezuelan warships crossed the prow of the Caldas and dispatched Mirage fighter aircraft to overfly it. As the confrontation proceeded, both governments appealed for calm but took steps which to many observers suggested preparations for war.

Current Debates over North American free trade focus almost exclusively on economic issues. Advocates claim that a trilateral agreement will provide impetus for sustained, long-term economic growth in Canada, Mexico, and the United States — and that it will provide a regional counterweight to the European Community (EC) and to Japan. Critics in the United States claim that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) will encourage the export of US investment and employment to Mexico. Canadians fear accelerated debilitation of vulnerable sectors of the national economy, from natural gas to automobile parts. Skeptics in Mexico predict that NAFTA will perpetuate low wages for the Mexican working class and transform the entire country into a massive maquiladora.

The United States, during the past several years, has squandered a heaven-sent opportunity to cement its already deep economic relations with Latin America. There is no certainty that the neglect will be altered in the near term.

A series of transformations made the 1990s an ideal time to consolidate improved economic relations with Latin America. The end of the Cold War meant that US dealings with Latin America could be based on mutual realities in the Hemisphere rather than be shaped through the one-way prism of East-West confrontation. There was a profound paradigm shift that swept just about all the countries of the Hemisphere, away from protectionism and toward open markets as the path to economic growth.

This article examines the influence of subnational economic interests on the formation of supranational trade policy in the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). Accounting for differences in the relative importance of member countries, the article argues that subnational economic interests influenced the structure of Mercosur’s common external tariff (CET). Although the CET was negotiated without direct input from voters or legislators, its structure reflects the interests of geographically specific economic interests in the member countries. The results of a regression analysis of tariffs toward nonmembers indicate that the economic composition of subnational political jurisdictions shaped the structure of the CET. These findings suggest that by overlooking subnational economic interests, much of the current literature on the evolution of Mercosur misses a critical aspect of the policymaking process.

Argentine neutrality during World War II with its suspicious leanings toward fascism has become a cliché in inter-American relations. As far as the United States was concerned at that time, the Argentine Republic was the black sheep of the hemispheric community, the only nation that failed to cooperate wholeheartedly in the crusade against the Axis. The famous State Department “Blue Book,” so conveniently published prior to the Argentine general elections of 1946, spelled out the aid and comfort the Nazis had derived from Argentina's neutrality. By only the narrowest margin did Argentina avoid being drummed out of the hemispheric organization and barred from membership in the new United Nations.

It seems strange, therefore, to recall that it was the Argentine government that first suggested, in the spring of 1940, that the nations of the Western Hemisphere discard the posture of traditional neutrality in the face of the spreading conflagration in Europe, on the grounds that it was anachronistic and did not protect their interests.

In September 1989, President Bush outlined a comprehensive, multi-faceted drug control strategy with both national and international dimensions. The strategy focused on reducing both the demand and supply of illicit drugs. Treatment, prevention/education, research, law enforcement, and international efforts are major components of the strategy. An important goal of the strategy was to reduce the amount of illicit drugs illegally entering the United States by 15% within 2 years and by 60% within 10 years. The president refined the strategy and forwarded it to Congress on 25 January 1990 (US-ONDCP, 1990: 49-52, 120-121). The following year, in February 1991, policymakers modified goals to a 20% reduction by 1993 and a 65% reduction by the year 2001 (US-ONDCP, 1991: 15).

Canada became the odd man out in the Western Hemisphere when it declared war on Germany on September 10, 1939. Other than the Caribbean colonies of the various European belligerents, Canada was the only American country to become an active participant in the European war. The decision to go to war had been freely made by Parliament, but it was clearly determined by Canada's historic ties as a member of the British Commonwealth. As the only independent belligerent in the Americas, Canada's position clearly was anomalous, and the makers of Canadian foreign policy had to go to considerable effort trying to overcome the problems Canada faced as a nation at war in a hemisphere trying to avoid war.

In 1925 a new electoral system was introduced in Chile. This reform changed the electoral formula from a cumulative voting system to a proportional one (d'Hondt) and established new rules about district magnitude and form of voting. It has been argued that this reform was motivated by the emergence of new parties or the expansion of the electorate. This article offers an alternative explanation: in the case of Chile, the main reason for the electoral reform was the parties' need to solve problems of strategic coordination stemming from the characteristics of the Chilean cumulative voting system. In this context, the Chilean case shows that there are many routes to proportionality.

Until recently Colombia has been a mainly rural and agricultural country. At the turn of the century probably 65% to 75% of the labor force was in agriculture; by 1951 this share had fallen to about 55% and in 1975 to about 35%. The share of population in rural areas was a little higher. In 1900 perhaps 50% to 55% of output came from agriculture; though it remains the main producing sector, its share had fallen to 25% by 1974.

Colombia has always had a highly unequal distribution of income, the major historical cause being an extremely unequal distribution of land. Over the years economic policy could be fairly described as “urban biased,” so that the group to whose welfare public policy has contributed the least are the landless agricultural workers, including a good number of migrant workers.

On 20 December 1994, the newly inaugurated government of President Ernesto Zedillo shattered Mexico’s façade of modernity by finding itself, first, forced to devalue the currency by 14% (in real terms), and then, only a few days later and under intense pressure from speculators (sacadolares), to allow the peso to float freely against the dollar. By the end of December, the value of the peso vis-à-vis the dollar had dropped by more than 30%, and the country had lost between $7 and $8 billion in foreign exchange reserves.

With remarkable success, Latin Americans have sought to impose their free trade policy agenda on a very reluctant and internally fractious United States. They have an ally in President George W. Bush, whose senior appointments notably support hemispheric trade integration even as political pressures sometimes have yielded protectionist outcomes. Bush's trade negotiator, Robert Zoellick, pursues a doctrine of competitive liberalization while accepting some linkage between trade and social and political goals. In negotiating the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), the administration will have to balance many domestic pressures without alienating Latin America. Ultimately, FTAA ratification will signal a new Western Hemisphere economic-security alliance for the twenty-first century.

Previous research examining selection to legislative committees has assumed that the impact of constituency preferences on committee assignments is due to the incentives for individual legislators to use their committee seats to increase their personal chances of re-election. Examining the case of the Mexican Chamber of Deputies (where legislators were, until recently, barred from re-election), this study argues that the impact of constituency preferences on selection to committees also occurs because parties have incentives for their members to use committee assignments to increase the party’s chances of being re-elected. Analysis of assignments to 11 committees over 4 legislative terms provides support for the argument. These findings reinforce previous research arguing that concerns with constituency representation and its impact on re-election also apply to political parties and not solely to individual legislators.

The Salvadoran civil war destroyed local community life throughout the province of Morazán. Despite the peace accords, poverty, unequal land distribution, and a “culture of violence” demand structural and institutional transformations well beyond the individual moral regeneration offered by churches. Religion, however, supplies coping tools, especially for youth, women, and repatriated refugees. By focusing on local issues, furthermore, churches are fostering social participation among hitherto disenfranchised groups, a critical element in building an inclusive, robust democracy.

Racism in social media is ubiquitous, persisting online in ways unique to the internet while also reverberating from the world offline. When will racist frames activate in social media networks? This article argues that social media users engage with racist content when they perceive a threat to the in-group status, selecting frames that serve as markers to separate the in-group identity from the out-group identity. Racialized frames serve as these markers, and the perceived threats to the in-group status make racist content cognitively congruent. Evidence of this behavior is provided by examining Twitter activity during the indígena protests in Ecuador in October 2019. A novel, multistep machine-learning process detects racist tweets, and an interrupted time series analysis shows how events that can be perceived as threats to the in-group activate racist content in some social media communities.

An international organization is only as effective as the degree of support which its sovereign members are willing to give it. This axiom would probably not be disputed, except for the fact that the word “degree” has the inherent property of evaluation hidden in its meaning. This evaluation, since it deals with the mainstream of a nation's political life, is not capable of purely quantitative analysis. A nation's ideas on sovereignty are involved in international cooperation. Its foreign policy, be it passive, neutral, or aggressive, is certainly involved. Its domestic status in terms of tranquility or violence, poverty or plenty, is deeply involved. A world power is tempted to pre-empt an undue share of the credit for the success of an international organization, especially in the field of conflict resolution. The contribution of a single weak nation is often overlooked, and yet the sum of the weak nations' contributions may conceivably be the balancing factor among irreconcilable giants.