This article examines whether formal and informal workers in Argentina and Chile hold different attitudes toward labor unions. Engaging debates on labor-market dualism and union revitalization, we assess the representation gap hypothesis-which expects weaker union support among outsiders-against the class solidarity hypothesis, which anticipates broadly similar orientations across labor-market positions. Using original 2025 survey data from both countries, we find limited evidence of a systematic insider-outsider divide. Although informal self-employed workers sometimes express more skeptical views, most attitudes among informal workers are statistically indistinguishable from-and in some cases more favorable than-those of formal workers. Cross-nationally, Argentine workers tend to assign greater importance to unions, while Chilean workers report higher willingness to unionize. Taken together, these findings suggest that the representation gap thesis may not fully capture workers' orientations and point to the potential relevance of solidaristic dynamics shaped by national institutional and political contexts.
Over the last 20 years, many countries have experienced the rise of radical right-wing populist (RRP) actors that threaten democratic governance, including in Latin America. These actors have deployed a variety of discursive frames based on economic grievances and (perceived) changing social values. The 2018 elections in Costa Rica were part of this phenomenon: a right-wing populist outsider presidential candidate deployed several frames and earned the most votes in the first round of voting. We analyze support for this candidate to understand which sectors of society were galvanized by the deployment of economic, anti-establishment, and cultural frames. We find that economic frames had much weaker traction than anti-establishment and cultural frames and that opposition to same-sex marriage was the frame with the strongest galvanizing effect across a wide range of demographic groups, beyond the expected ones. These findings support extant scholarship demonstrating the effective politicization of cultural issues by RRP actors for electoral purposes.
In this article we argue that relational work between the state and civil society is crucial for social change, focusing on the relational work between activist bureaucrats and citizen representatives in the development of Bogot & aacute;'s gender and care policies. While existing literature shows that social movement embeddedness within the state helps explain why some governments achieve more egalitarian outcomes, this structural concept lacks micro-level foundations. Highlighting the role of relational work fills this gap. Drawing on three years of ethnographic research-including 54 semi-structured interviews and over 300 hours of observation-we show that the intense relational practices of citizen representatives and activist bureaucrats (materialized in open and effective participation, joint and coordinated advocacy, and translation of bureaucratic jargon to common language) was crucial to advance feminist agendas. This study contributes to an understanding of how everyday relational practices between state actors and citizens can generate policy change.
Costa Rica has been one of the most stable democracies in Latin America since 1953. However, the 2022 election gave rise to a populist leadership combining confrontational tactics, attacks on institutions, and pressure on press freedom. While previous studies document democratic backsliding across Latin America, Costa Rica's case remains understudied. This article proposes the concept of "democracy under strain," a condition distinct from backsliding, in which systematic executive pressure on democratic conditions coexists with institutional resilience. Drawing on Bermeo's (2016) framework, I operationalize this concept through three indicators: decline of press freedom, institutional delegitimization, and decreasing citizen support for democracy. Using a mixed-methods strategy and combining Latin American Public Opinion Proyect survey data, press freedom indexes, and journalistic reports, the evidence shows that institutions remain formally intact and citizen disapproval of anti-press aggression is high, yet pressure is sustained and without historical precedent.
This study examines the complexity of public opinion on abortion in Argentina following the landmark 2020 legalization. Moving beyond binary "pro-life" versus "pro-choice" classifications, we analyze attitudes through the lens of value conflict and ambivalence within a contentious policy domain. Drawing on original survey data (N = 1,021) from May-June 2022, we utilize a heteroscedastic probit model to estimate both the direction and variance of responses across seven scenarios, ranging from historically established grounds to voluntary interruption. Findings reveal that while consensus is high for historical grounds, ambivalence peaks in voluntary scenarios, driven significantly by the interaction between conflicting core values: the sanctity of life and bodily autonomy. Crucially, this value conflict generates measurable response instability even among citizens with firm opinions, challenging the narrative of a rigidly polarized society. Results demonstrate that legislative resolution does not erase moral tension, suggesting democratic discourse must account for citizens' cognitive complexity rather than reducing public opinion to absolute alignments.
Throughout the twenty-first century, anti-gender activism in Colombia and across Latin America has demonstrated a remarkable ability to adapt and reinvent itself. This article examines a recent transformation in its discursive strategies: the rise of anti-woke and anti-progre as new collective action frames for opposing sexual and reproductive rights, LGBTQ+ rights, and a broader spectrum of progressive policies. Drawing on an analysis of 128 actors involved in anti-gender campaigns and the content they produce in digital spaces, we identify two key tactics driving the spread of anti-woke and anti-progre discourses in Colombia: social media platforms and educational initiatives. By tracing these developments, the article sheds light on the evolving dynamics of anti-gender activism and the actors and strategies shaping their adoption of discursive repertoires.
This article investigates whether state efforts to combat violence against women (VAW) shape personally held stigmatizing attitudes toward victims of intimate partner violence (IPV) and views of the stigma society attributes to them. Drawing on the policy feedback effect and source cues literature, we argue that credible sources delivering messages about anti-VAW laws can reduce stigmatizing attitudes toward IPV victims and persuade people that society is more welcoming to victims, thereby reducing public stigma. Using survey experiments collected from Mexico and Guatemala, we find that credible sources matter in predicting a host of attitudes related to personally held and public stigma toward victims, but these effects are conditional on gender and hostile sexism. This article demonstrates that even in contexts of impunity, state efforts can positively shape social norms on VAW.
Although conditional cash transfers are a cornerstone of Latin American welfare states, little is known about the public opinion dynamics that sustain or challenge their long-term viability. Drawing on original, nationally representative surveys conducted in 2022 in seven Latin American democracies (Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Mexico, and Peru), this article examines public support for cash transfers toward children across three dimensions: existence (yes/no), breadth (who should receive them) and adequacy (benefit levels). Across all countries, we find widespread support for such transfers, challenging the notion that only universal policies can create broad social support. However, preferences for expansion vary significantly across countries, with only partial alignment with existing coverage: support is highest in countries with extensive and minimal program coverage. Logistic regression models reveal that gender and household composition (living with children and being of reproductive age) are strong predictors of individual preferences, in addition to ideology and income. These findings contribute to existing scholarship by highlighting the role of gender and household composition in shaping social policy preferences.
Do voters take into account the deaths of family members and close friends when evaluating the government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic-particularly when that response is problematic or even negligent-as in the case of Mexico under the Andr & eacute;s Manuel L & oacute;pez Obrador (AMLO) administration? Using data from the 2021 Mexican Election Study, this research shows that opposition partisans who lost close friends or relatives to COVID-19 are more likely to evaluate the government's response to the pandemic negatively. In contrast, National Regeneration Movement (MORENA) partisans do not hold accountable their co-partisan government. They are no more likely to evaluate the government's response negatively, even when they experience the same losses. Experimental evidence further shows that MORENA partisans do not lower their evaluations of government performance after being informed about the country's high COVID-19 mortality. They are also more likely to underestimate the number of COVID-19 deaths in the country, even after being presented with official mortality figures. These findings underscore how partisanship can cloud accountability, leading some voters to dismiss objective information and to judge government performance primarily through the lens of partisan loyalty. Partisanship can distort the accountability mechanism at the core of retrospective voting even during a major health crisis.
In settings of deep poverty and inequality, implementing policies that balance urgent needs with long-term development is crucial. What strategies are used to build public support for long-term oriented policies? Evidence shows that both left- and right-wing governments have played a role in the expansion of social policy. This article explores the context and meanings that governments with different ideologies assign to distributive policies, focusing on how these policies are communicated. In particular, I argue that ideology significantly shapes the framing presidents use when discussing and announcing social policies. Left-leaning governments emphasize social inclusion while right-leaning governments stress the productivity-enhancing aspects of these policies. Using text analysis techniques, including & agrave; la carte embeddings (ALC) this study analyzes presidential communications from Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile. The findings show how ideology drives communication strategies, revealing that in more polarized societies, presidents distinguish themselves more consistently through how they construct and communicate these policies.
This article estimates separate individual and partisan incumbencyeffects in Uruguay's regional elections (1971-2020). It contributes tothe limited evidence on incumbency effects in developing countries andto the emerging Differences-in-Discontinuities (Diff-in-Disc)literature, which addresses endogeneity and disentangles candidatefrom party effects within the same institutional setting. Exploitingconstitutionally mandated term limits and strong electoralenforcement, we identify clean causal effects using close electionsunder open and closed races. Results show a large and statisticallysignificant individual incumbency effect of approximately 74%,alongside non-significant partisan effects. These findings suggestthat incumbency in Uruguay is primarily personal rather thanparty-based. The results contribute to debates on personalization ofpolitics, proportional representation, and institutional developmentin Latin America, highlighting how strong democratic institutions cancoexist with highly individualized electoral dynamics.
We examine the relationship between partisan social media messages and voters' support for undemocratic transgressions against the president and Congress. Our survey experiments in Brazil, Chile, and Colombia randomly exposed respondents to partisan messages about contentious and consensus issues such as inflation, abortion, crime, and protests. We then assessed whether these messages increased support for undemocratic transgressions. Our findings reveal distinct inter-party differences: opposition voters were more inclined to support presidential impeachment, while incumbent voters were more predisposed to dissolve Congress. However, contrary to our initial pre-registered hypotheses, exposure to partisan social media messages did not consistently augment these tendencies. This implies that while voters often endorse undemocratic measures in line with their partisan leanings, such preferences are not heightened by exposure to partisan discourse on social media.
