This article examines the implications of the Ecuadorian Indian movement for democratic politics. During the 1990s, the movement successfully fostered indigenous and popular participation in public life, influenced government policies, and became a contender in power struggles. But in the institutional domain, the participatory breakthrough had mixed effects. While the movement fulfilled functions of interest representation and control of state power, its involvement in a coup attempt demonstrated that its political socialization had not nurtured a sense of commitment to democracy. The evidence is discussed by reference to the proposition that civil society actors may or may not contribute to democracy. The article argues that the study of the democratic spinoffs of civil activism requires a context-specific approach that considers the particularistic orientations of civil associations and pays attention to their definition of means and ends, the institutional responses evoked by their initiatives, and the unintended consequences of their actions.

This article analyzes Luiz Inácio da Silva's resounding reelection victory in the wake of corruption scandals implicating his party and government. Voters with lower levels of economic security and schooling played a critical role in returning Lula to the presidency. Least prone to punish the president for corruption, poorer Brazilians were also the most readily persuaded by the provision of material benefits. Minimum wage increases and the income transfer program Bolsa Família expanded the purchasing power of the poor. Thus, executive power and central state resources allowed Lula to consolidate a social base that had responded only weakly to his earlier, party-based strategy of grassroots mobilization for progressive macrosocietal change. Although Lula won handily, the PT's delegation to Congress shrank for the first time, and the voting bases of president and party diverged. The PT benefited far less than the president himself from government investment in social policy.

Over time, the Organization of American States has become institutionally and normatively more capable of defending democracy in the region. Yet the OAS is as selective in its interventions on behalf of democratic promotion today as it was in the early 1990s. To explain this puzzle, this study disaggregates democratic dilemmas according to issue areas, threats, and contingencies. It finds that the OAS responds more forcefully when the problem presents a clear and present danger both to the offending state and to other members. As threats become weaker or more ambiguous, the OAS tends to act more timidly, unless domestic constituencies cry out for its assistance or the United States puts its full weight behind the effort. Case study capsules provide empirical evidence to illustrate these arguments.

This study of Uruguay's Frente Amplio explores four central questions for the analysis of the “new Latin American left.” How did a leftist alternative emerge and grow inside an institutionalized party system? How do the socioeconomic and political factors that enabled the rise of the left in Uruguay differ from those observed in other Latin American cases? How did Frente Amplio adapt itself to profit from the opportunities that arose during the 1990s? What are the implications of the previous factors for governmental action by the FA? In answering these questions, this study integrates an analysis of the sociological and political-institutional opportunity structures consolidated during the 1990s with one of strategic partisan adaptation processes. This perspective is useful for explaining how, by 2004, Frente Amplio had built a dual support base from its historical constituency and a socially heterogeneous group alienated from traditional parties due to economic and political discontent.

This article explores the conditions that allow judicial councils and impeachment juries to promote judicial autonomy. In theory, these bodies intervene in the appointment and removal of judges in order to reduce executive control over court composition, thereby promoting judicial independence. Using the case of Argentina at the federal and the subnational levels, this study demonstrates that competitive politics enhances the capacity of judicial councils and impeachment juries to bolster judicial autonomy. Interparty competition provides incentives for the executive to develop a meaningful system of checks and balances, which includes an independent judiciary that can check executive power. In contrast, monolithic party control—defined as a prolonged period of unified government under a highly disciplined party—permits the executive to maintain a monopoly on power and thereby control judicial appointments and removals.

Scholars of Cuba have long linked Afro-Cubans' fate to the revolutionary government. As the government's influence on people's daily lives has declined over the past decade, the question arises of whether Afro-Cubans have sustained the gains they achieved in the revolution's first 30 years. This article uses survey data, collected in December 2000 from 334 Cuban families in Havana, to assess the impact of the post-1993 economic reforms on rising racial inequality in Cuba. It asks whether racial inequities occur in accessing dollars through state employment, self-employment, or remittances, and whether educational gains are tied to higher income. Results indicate that the structural means through which racial discrimination was once virtually eliminated through equal access to education and employment, and through which income levels became equalized according to educational level regardless of racial group, has lost its equalizing force in contemporary Cuba.

While financial globalization has created powerful incentives for Latin American governments to privatize old age pension systems, reliance on short-term capital flows has also constrained the ability of cash-strapped governments to enact that reform. Analysis of the technocratic process of pension reform in Argentina and Brazil provides evidence. Instead of simply generating unidirectional pressures for structural pension reform, financial globalization has created a double bind for Latin America's capital-scarce governments, fostering long-term incentives to privatize pension systems while heightening the risk of punishment in the short term.

Legal reforms that make judges independent from political pressures and empower them with judicial review do not make an effective judiciary. Something has to fill the gap between institutional design and effectiveness. When the executive and legislative powers react to an objectionable judicial decision, the judiciary may be weak and deferential; but coordination difficulties between the elected branches can loosen the constraints on courts. This article argues that the fragmentation of political power can enable a judiciary to rule against power holders' interests without being systematically challenged or ignored. This argument is tested with an analysis of the Mexican Supreme Court decisions against the PRI on constitutional cases from 1994 to 2002. The probability of the court's voting against the PRI increased as the PRI lost the majority in the Chamber of Deputies in 1997 and the presidency in 2000.

The latest president in Latin America to adopt social funds on a large scale as an integral part of his government program has been Hugo Chávez Frías of Venezuela. Based on the literature on clientelism and social funds in Latin America, this article finds that Venezuela's latest experiments with social funds were influenced by political variables. It uses empirical data from the distribution of resources for some of the subnational misiones programs to show how, given increased levels of electoral competition and weak institutional constraints, the government used these funds clientelistically, even while distributing oil income to the very poor. Chávez's misiones served two very different purposes: to manipulate the political context and to distribute funds directly to the low-income population.

What conditions facilitate party system collapse, the farthest-reaching variant of party system change? How does collapse occur? Numerous studies of lesser types of party system change exist, but studies of party system collapse are rare. This study draws on the existing literature and the cases of party system collapse in Venezuela (1988–2000) and Peru (1985–95) to advance some answers to the important questions about the phenomenon. The study posits three conditions that predispose political party systems to collapse: the presence of an acute or sustained crisis that questions the ability of system-sustaining political parties to govern; extremely low or extremely high levels of party system institutionalization; and the emergence of an anti-establishment figure with the desire and personal authority to generate a viable alternative to the established party system. The study also posits a three-election sequential process during which collapse takes place.

Parties throughout Latin America have recently addressed two distinct kinds of electoral reforms: primary elections and national-level gender quota laws. This study examines how these reforms interact, their mutual compatibility, and their effect on the nomination of men compared to that of women. It develops a series of hypotheses about this relationship by analyzing the 2003 legislative elections in Mexico, a case in which the three main parties relied on both gender quotas and primaries to select their candidates. Although the percentage of women elected to the Mexican Chamber of Deputies rose, the Federal Electoral Institute interpreted the gender quota law in a way that weakened its effect on women and limited the degree of openness in the primaries that were held.

Brazilians often complain that investigations of corruption by public servants drag on for years or bring few legal sanctions on the perpetrators. This lack of accountability is so pervasive that a slang phrase, acabou em pizza, is often invoked when investigations are inconclusive. This article investigates the role of four Brazilian public institutions charged with keeping public servants accountable. For analysis, it breaks the accountability process into its three component stages: oversight, investigation, and sanction. Through a study of six prominent cases of corruption, it shows that the weakness of the accountability process in Brazil is due not entirely to the toothlessness of individual institutions of accountability, but also to the independence of such institutions at each of the three stages. These findings suggest that institutional arrangements influence the degree of accountability, and thereby also public trust and confidence, in Latin America's largest democracy.

This study analyzes Latin America in light of the post–Cold War transformation of the global system. Much of Latin American foreign policy studies traditionally has been concerned with the region's subordinate position to “core” countries (generally, developed states and their ruling elites) and the degree to which these countries' policies constrain Latin American policies and development. While this juxtaposition is still a major topic, it ignores the leverage of new “spheres of authority” (SOAs), where global rules and norms are increasingly sustained. A hypothesis presented here is that the U.N. system is an example of such an SOA, which creates a new context for the insertion of periphery demands in the international agenda. A second hypothesis is that such insertion is increasingly made through the creation of new regional groupings, which are an expression of national development and security demands. Such processes carry both new possibilities and challenges.

Since President Hugo Chávez came to power in Venezuela in 1998, ordinary women from the barrios, or shantytowns, of Caracas have become more engaged in grassroots politics; but most of the community leaders still are men. Chávez's programs are controlled by male-dominated bureaucracies, and many women activists still look to the president himself as the main source of direction. Nevertheless, this article argues, women's increasing local activism has created forms of popular participation that challenge gender roles, collectivize private tasks, and create alternatives to male-centric politics. Women's experiences of shared struggle from previous decades, along with their use of democratic methods of popular control, help prevent the state from appropriating women's labor. But these spaces coexist with more vertical, populist notions of politics characteristic of official sectors of Chavismo. Understanding such gendered dimensions of popular participation is crucial to analyzing urban social movements.

Twenty years after governments across Latin America began implementing neoliberal reforms in earnest, concern is growing about their impact on the quality of democracy in the region. This article examines this issue in the case of Mexico by exploring how patterns of political participation, especially among the rural and urban poor, have changed since the implementation of free market reforms. It asks whether the institutional innovations associated with free market reforms make it easier or more difficult for the poor to participate in Mexico's political process. The answer is not encouraging. Despite democratic openings, the new linkages between the state and citizens established as a result of the transition to a free market development model stifle the voice of the poor not through the threat of force or coercion, but by creating obstacles and disincentives for political mobilization that affect the poor more severely than other groups.

This article analyzes civil society participation in the free trade debate by focusing on networks that opposed the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) in El Salvador. Drawing on documents, direct observation, and semistructured interviews with civil society leaders, two kinds of opposition coalitions are identified. “Critic negotiators,” emphasizing active engagement and policy research, used the limited participation space opened by authorities to push for reform. “Transgressive resisters,” repudiating the formal consultation process, deployed confrontational tactics and posed more fundamental challenges. This work uses social movement theory to explore coalition resource mobilization, the role of movement entrepreneurs, strategic decisionmaking, mechanisms linking local and transnational activists, and the dynamics of intramovement competition.