This research note analyzes the incentives of different types of policy areas for a president to keep or dismiss a minister. It uses ministerial survival analysis to compare foreign and domestic policy areas, focusing on comparable and analogous presidential decisions among countries and portfolios. The research utilizes ministerial survival data for education, finance, health, and foreign policy between

A growing body of literature has focused on how different states continuously “make race” by legitimizing certain racial categories while invisibilizing others. Much less has been written on the actual processes of transforming race into a bureaucratic category when implementing antiracist public policies. This article focuses on the recent use of verification commissions to validate the racial self-identification

This research note assesses participatory health governance practices for HIV and AIDS in Brazil. By extension, we also evaluate municipal democratic governance to public health outcomes. We draw from a unique dataset on municipal HIV/AIDS prevalence and participatory health governance from 2006–17 for all 5,570 Brazilian municipalities. We use negative binomial regression and coarsened exact matching

Extant literature concurs that fiscal transfers affect local democracy when they grant subnational governments nontax revenue. Yet there is nonetheless a mismatch between this concept and existing measures, which consider the whole transfers local governments receive, including both tax and nontax revenue. This article studies the Fondo Común Municipal (FCM), the most important intergovernmental grant

Two competing narratives characterize the role of race in Brazil’s 2018 election. Journalists observe that Jair Bolsonaro “entranced” nonwhite voters while “insulting them.” Scholars argue that Bolsonaro politicized race, costing him nonwhite support. In contrast, this article argues that racialized patterns of voter behavior were not distinct from those in recent general elections, and that voters’

This research note takes advantage of a novel dataset to analyze legislators’ behavior in Uruguay’s Parliament. Comparing the positions of legislators based on floor speeches and roll-call voting, it discusses the relationship between discourse and voting among individual legislators and parties. The dataset contains more than 57,000 speeches from more than 1,000 Uruguayan legislators between 1985

Could an individual’s perception of the possibility of a future ecological crisis be linked to their level of political trust? Studies of environmental attitudes have identified political trust as an important predictor of support for environmental taxation or risk perceptions surrounding specific local environmental hazards, but less is known about its role when environmental risks are perceived as

Studies show that cash transfer programs increase incumbent approval through their financial impact and clear association with the executive. But does this effect hold when it is the legislature rather than the incumbent proposing the program? Amid the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, more than 60 million Brazilians received an emergency assistance payment that was proposed by Congress against resistance from

In environmental politics, social movements play a crucial role, promoting participatory rights and confronting injustice, inequality, and the interests of the powerful. This article examines an underexplored topic in the literature on social movements, especially in Latin America: the use of litigation to force decisionmakers to comply with participatory formats, specifically in the course of opposition

Firms should be considered as actors that potentially mediate between social movement pressures and policy outcomes. This article shows that at the mining project level, social mobilization can generate important changes in corporate practices toward nearby communities, and that these practices can undermine the cohesion of social movement coalitions advocating for regulatory intervention or reform

Electoral contests in Latin America are often characterized by attempts by political parties to sway the outcome of elections using vote buying—a practice that seems to persist during elections throughout the region. This article examines how clientelist parties’ use of vote buying is jointly shaped by two voter traits: poverty and partisanship. We hypothesize that clientelist parties pursue a mixed

The use of veto points to block policy change has received significant attention in Latin America, but the different institutional venues have not been analyzed in a unified framework. Uruguay is exceptional in that political actors use both referendums and judicial review as effective ways to oppose public policies. While the activation of direct democracy mechanisms in Uruguay has been widely studied

In contemporary Latin America, deep-seated social discontent with political elites and institutions has been, paradoxically, the counterpart of democratic stability and resilience. This paradox suggests that scholarly assessments of democracy are, at least partially, at odds with citizens’ own views of democracy. This article thus develops a framework to describe citizens’ everyday experience with

Legislative allies are widely recognized as key to social movement success, but the emergence of their alliance with activists remains understudied. This article proposes a strategic approach to this phenomenon based on the cases of the environmental, labor, and LGBT+ movements in Chile and their allied legislators. According to this approach, an alliance emerges due to two necessary conditions. Movement

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

Are Latin American presidents at greater risk for removal in remittance-dependent countries? Departing from the debate about whether remittances produce democratic or autocratic outcomes, this article asks whether remittances contribute to presidential removals, which are an important characteristic of Latin American democracies since the Third Wave. It uses questions about supporting a military coup

Because conditional cash transfer programs (CCTs) can address the deep roots of violence, many scholars and policymakers have assumed them to be an effective and innocuous tool to take on the issue. I argue that while CCTs may have positive economic effects, they can also trigger social discord, criminal predation, and political conflict and, in doing so, increase violence. To test this claim, I take

This article describes the process of legal contention between civil society, political parties, and state institutions for the baldíos lands in the Colombian Altillanura region in the last two decades, a region considered the country’s “last agricultural frontier.” The article focuses on the dual and sometimes contradictory roles of the state institutions, both as facilitators of baldíos grabbing

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

How does the execution of horizontal accountability mechanisms affect cabinet members’ instability? This article analyzes distinct features of no-confidence motions (NCMs) in presidential systems, using a mixed-method research design that identifies elements of legislative control mechanisms in Peruvian and Colombian polities. Although the congress in presidential systems rarely approves NCMs, high

Earlier empirical research on party list proportional representation systems shows that women spend less on campaigns than men, particularly when quotas are applied. An analysis of the candidate campaign expenses for the 2014 and 2018 Colombian Lower Chamber elections provides a novel test of this gender gap and its underlying causes. The research design leverages Colombia’s unique context of electoral

States targeted by human rights criticism usually do something—whether ratifying treaties, passing laws, establishing institutions, prosecuting perpetrators, or shifting discourse. But how do we know how coordinated, comprehensive, and effective these actions are? This article proposes five questions to assess how willing a state is to take the steps necessary to meaningfully respond to human rights

Banning political parties is an extreme institutional measure that democracies tend to use sparingly. Nevertheless, Latin American countries frequently proscribe their parties through rules that activate dissolution for not reaching a certain number of votes or seats in an election. Such rules are expected to stabilize and simplify party systems. However, a competing theory suggests that such rules

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

This article analyzes how niche parties may utilize a strategy of policy shifting to garner additional voters. It leverages a unique opportunity in which a Costa Rican political party released two different versions of its party manifesto at different moments during a single election cycle. This rare opportunity uncovers how the party shifted from having a hard conservative stance on social issues

Current approaches to voting behavior in clientelist contexts either predict that clients leave their preferences aside for fear of having their benefits cut off or voluntarily support politicians they perceive to be reliable patrons. These two approaches cannot account for clients’ vote choices in the Sertão of Bahia, Brazil, where voters were free to choose among competing candidates but supported

Postneoliberal regionalism in Latin America has failed to live up to the expectations of its proponents and analysts in the late 2000s and early 2010s. Several causes explain its disappointing result, but a relatively understudied cause may be found in the US policy of competitive liberalization. This policy not only aimed at securing US economic and trade interests but also served as a counterweight

How do sequences of upward and downward socioeconomic mobility influence political views among those who have “risen” or “fallen” during periods of leftist governance? While existing studies identify a range of factors, long-term mobility trajectories have been largely unexplored. The question has particular salience in contemporary Brazil, where, after a decade of extraordinary poverty reduction on

This essay examines how the inhabitants of Putumayo, a department of Colombia both divided and held together by licit and illicit authority structures and markets, engage with varied political orders as they advance individual and collective economic and political projects. Putumayo’s inhabitants adopt four basic strategies to maintain their often illicit livelihoods amid state repression. The first

Drawing on ethnographic research in El Oasis, a highly precarious self-built settlement in Medellín, Colombia, this article examines the illegal practice of autoconstruction as a material expression of hope. It focuses on the multilayered, symbolic meaning of self-built housing, as it represents the pursuit of dignity, permanence, and agency—as opposed to poverty, uncertainty, and lack of agency—and

This article introduces the concept of international clientelism and discusses how this diplomatic tool was employed by Venezuela under Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro as a means to get political support from several Latin American and Caribbean countries. We operationalize the concept and apply it to assess Venezuelan practices put forth in the region. We argue that the reach of Caracas’s diplomatic

This study examines the relationship between personal experience with intimate partner violence (IPV) and political attitudes. I argue that by adopting salient legislation on violence against women, the state enables survivors to evaluate government performance on the basis of their ability to access resources for victims. As such, when survivors are unable to reach specialized public services, they

This article disputes recent studies that find no relationship between homicides and vigilantism. Using a unique panel dataset that controls for time and region, this study shows that the relationship exists. The evidence is consistent with the theory of low-capacity states: high homicide rates indicate unchecked criminal enclaves that further corrode trust in police. The territorial gaps in the central

Studies of futurity typically privilege licit economies and assume that the lines between licit and illicit institutions are largely clear to the actors involved. But what happens to those actors, and their grip on the future, when such lines blur? This article explores the epistemic crossroads of futurity and legality by focusing on ambiguity. From 1986 to 2009, the Stanford Financial Group reaped

Drawing on longitudinal ethnographic research carried out over two-and-a-half decades in barrio Luis Fanor Hernández, a poor neighborhood in Managua, Nicaragua, this article explores how legal and illegal economic activities are socially legitimized, and more specifically, how certain illegal economic activities can end up being seen as legitimate, and certain legal ones perceived as illegitimate.

This article studies how public investment and other types of spending by municipal governments shape perceptions of corruption in Mexico. We argue, drawing on various strands of literature, that investment in visible public works projects should lower corruption perceptions, given the well-known difficulties in directly observing corrupt acts. Contrary to our expectations and common assumptions in

Between 1999 and 2016, 20 former first ladies ran 26 times for the presidency, vice presidency, or Congress in Latin America. Despite the growing importance of this unique type of candidate, political analysts routinely describe them as mere delegates of ex-presidents. We argue that this view has overlooked the political trajectory of former first ladies, and we claim that women with elected political

This article examines the interplay between transnational criminal actors (essentially human smugglers), local crime groups, and drug cartels in the phenomenon of trafficking in persons coming from Central America along Mexico’s eastern migration routes. The analysis focuses on sex trafficking, compelled labor for criminal activities, and other forms of labor trafficking. Through qualitative research

Conventional wisdom among scholars of Latin American politics holds that informal workers are less participatory and less left-leaning than formal workers. Relevant empirical findings, however, are mixed and in need of synthesis. This article provides that synthesis by conducting meta-analyses on the universe of previous quantitative studies of informality and the vote. It finds that informal workers

High commodity prices have led to the proliferation of informal gold mining in the Andes. Despite their limited financial capacity, informal gold miners have proved capable of influencing national-level policy outcomes. Why are they able to do so? This study puts forward a comparative study of Bolivia, where informal miners have been politically incorporated, and Peru, where they have been traditionally

Under what conditions do collaborations between informal workers and the state in public service provision lead to socially beneficial synergies, and when might they intensify inequalities? This article, based on 14 months of ethnographic research, addresses this question through a comparative case study of two attempts to co-produce recycling services in São Paulo. The first, a grassroots organizing

Civil society leaders develop relationships with officials and engage in contentious politics. Some resort to destructive tactics like arson and assault to target the officials they work with. Why do civil society leaders use destructive protest tactics? This article argues that leaders use destructive tactics when both they and officials need clear information and when leaders believe that officials

Comparative political economists often divide Latin American labor markets into those with secure employment (insiders) and those without it (outsiders). Yet this division misses an increasingly important class of contract workers, who hold formal labor contracts but often lack labor stability, welfare benefits, and organizing rights. When do unionized and contract workers share preferences and engage

In many Latin American countries, social policy preferences among economically vulnerable citizens seem largely unpolarized. However, current studies rarely confront citizens with realistic policy options and often lack the required detail to capture the heterogeneity of economic vulnerability. Drawing on the dualization debate, we expect individuals facing different degrees of vulnerability to show

Why hasn’t Uruguay enfranchised emigrants yet? This study examines an underresearched case of nonenfranchisement and engages with debates on external voting, diaspora politics, and citizenship beyond borders. Building on qualitative and participatory methods, the analysis unveils the obstacles to franchise reform despite significant progress from 2004 to 2019. Although external voting was not enacted

To what extent can presidents exert gatekeeping power in opposition-led legislatures? Drawing on a study of roll rates in the Mexican Chamber of Deputies, where presidents lack legislative majorities and often face a legislature controlled by the opposition, this article argues that gatekeeping power is divided among multiple actors. It finds that presidents exert weak gatekeeping power over the agenda

Scholarship on Transnational Advocacy Networks (TANs) increasingly recognizes that even weak states targeted by TANs may respond, and subvert, transnational norm socialization campaigns. It examines both the conditions conducive to such responses and the range of policy instruments available to these states. Yet this emerging work lacks a robust, contextualized account for how states devise the strategy

The literature on comparative partisanship has demonstrated the low rates of party identification in Latin America. Such low rates are commonly interpreted as a sign of citizens’ disengagement with parties and democracy in the region. This article revisits this interpretation by considering voters’ adverse affection toward a party, or negative partisanship. It shows that examining the negative side

After more than a decade of leftist governments in Latin America, the left turn began to reverse course, giving way to the rise of rightist political forces. Even moderate right-wing governments undertook reforms to reduce public spending. This agenda, however, encountered important obstacles. Focusing on the 2017 Argentine pension reform and based on extensive qualitative research, including in-depth

P biography is said to be “the disciplinary poor relation to the study of political science more generally,” and few would agree that, without biography, the discipline risks being “‘a form of taxidermy” (Arklay 2006, 17, 15). Thus, it’s an honor that LAPS editors Alfred Montero and Juan Pablo Luna judged my biography worthy of a roundtable with stimulating commentaries by political scientists whose

J French has written an extraordinary book, from which we can learn a great deal not only about Lula and Brazil, but also about political leadership. Social scientists often worry about delving into the personal, exceptional, and contingent nature of leadership. But contingency is what makes it leadership—recognition of opportunity where its existence was not evident before, identification of a path

S a scholar is able to distill a lifetime of work into a single volume. The labor historian John French has done this marvelously well in his biography of Lula. French links Lula’s life story with the history of the metalworkers’ unions in the ABC region of São Paulo and Brazilian politics more generally.1 Reading the book provokes difficult questions about how Lula’s presidency (2003–10) and that

Do labor unions still motivate their members to participate in politics, or have social and economic changes undermined their political importance? This question is important to revisit, as globalization and economic reform have weakened many popular sector organizations in Latin America, reducing some to mere patronage machines. This article examines the case of the teachers’ union in Bogotá, Colombia

Pension policy is a highly political issue across Latin America. Since the mid-2000s, several countries have re-reformed their pension systems with a general trend toward more state involvement, yet with significant variation. This article contends that policy legacies and the institutional political setting are key to understanding such variation. Analyzing the cases of Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile

In some countries, bicameral discrepancies are solved by the formation of a conference committee. In Chile, conference committees are exclusively and automatically formed when the second chamber rejects a bill passed in the first chamber or when the first chamber rejects the modifications to its original bill made by the second chamber. This article postulates 4 hypotheses for the determinants of conference

This study addresses a void in the literature on public attitudes toward police in Latin America. It integrates three theoretical models of the determinants of citizen satisfaction with police work in Chile: demographic, quality of life in the neighborhood, and experiential. The study tested the integrated model using a novel random sample of 996 individuals living in the Metropolitan Region of Santiago

Janusz, Andrew. 2021. Thousands of Brazilians Who Won Elections as Black Candidates in 2020 Previously Ran for Office as White. The Conversation, January 8. www.theconversation.com Marcus-Delgado, Jane. 2019. The Politics of Abortion in Latin America: Public Debates, Private Lives. Boulder: Lynn Rienner. Sanders, Rebecca, Laura Dudley Jenkins, Siobhan Guerrero McManus et al. 2021. Power Over Rights: