In Colombia, the executive has built and reinforced a militarist memory that appeals to the participation of the military in government affairs. Using the theory of "path dependency", it is shown how a contingent event produces the adoption of an institutional agreement and sets in motion a self-reinforcing sequence or a deterministic pattern that manages to be maintained even after a democratic transition. Unlike most studies on civil-military relations in Latin America, which focus on the armed forces as a political actor or on the institutional mechanisms of civilian control over them, this work focuses on the executive branch and introduces the concept of institutional memory to understand militarization in Colombia not as an institutional legacy but as a political construction activated by it.
Not all violence seen in Mexico's electoral campaigns is carried out by organized criminal groups (ocg). In fact, a great deal of physical aggression is perpetrated by candidates for elected office against their rivals and non-aligned voters. By employing the case of the State of Mexico in the 2021 elections, we find evidence that helps show that candidate-based violence is used not only to depress their rivals' votes on election day, but also to reduce rival candidates' ability to run their territorial campaigns. To analyze this violence, we interviewed political actors and constructed an original data base of all acts of violence, aggression, and threats to better understand this understudied phenomenon.
This research examines the feasibility of monetary integration in South America by incorporating both economic and political perspectives. From an economic standpoint, countries belonging to the CAN are better positioned to adopt a common currency compared to Mercosur countries. However, the political analysis concludes that the necessary political conditions for monetary integration in South America are inadequate. The key political limitations include the absence of a regional leader at both political and economic levels, an overabundance of integration projects, reliance on ideological alignments to advance integration processes, reluctance among states to cede sovereignty, and the lack of supranational institutions. Therefore, it is unlikely that monetary integration will occur in South America in the short or medium term.
Scientific election forecasting has a long and growing tradition in established democracies, but it has not made much progress in Latin America. To make progress, we examine citizen forecasts of Mexican presidential elections from 2000 to 2024. We develop novel statistical tools to study whether citizen forecasts are better at forecasting than chance and than vote intention polls. Using 55 surveys, we find that citizens became better over time. While they forecasted who wins worse than chance at the dawn of democracy in 2000, they forecasted recent presidential elections correctly and are now on par with vote intention polls. While citizens are also better than chance at forecasting vote shares, they remain, however, worse than vote intention polls. To understand why, we analyze the bias and variance of citizen forecasts for the first time. We find that the main reasons for their worse performance are socialization under a one-party rule, inexperience with free-and- fair elections, and unwarranted concerns about the cleanliness of the elections.
What are the causes of stability and presidential crises in interim governments in Latin America? To answer this question, 19 interim presidencies are analyzed using crisp-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (csQcA). The results demonstrate that protests against the president are a necessary condition for the occurrence of presidential crises in this type of government. The most significant combination leading to presidential crises is found between protests and the absence of legislative majorities. In contrast, the stability of interim presidencies is explained by the absence of protests combined with the absence of corruption scandals. In the second section, four interim governments -Martin Vizcarra, Carlos Mesa, Luis Gonz & aacute;lez Macchi and Michel Temer- are qualitatively described and analyzed based on the QcA results.
The mobilization of the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity ( MpjD ) in Mexico is acknowledged as a key moment in the country's contemporary history. We analyze how the MpjD has been studied and what we know about this social movement. Based on a review of articles published in the most prestigious journals in Mexico, we argue, first, that most studies about the MpjD are characterized by a non-systematic treatment of information that leads to conclusions that are rather hypotheses that need to be tested; second, that the academic production on this social movement has provided reflections and analyses around six themes relevant to social movement studies.
Latin American party systems are characterized by a proliferation of new parties of very different sizes, backgrounds, and developmental trajectories, which poses a conceptual challenge. Historically, conceptualizations of new parties have often prioritized data accessibility over methodological and theoretical rigor. As a result, they have produced a plethora of highly heterogeneous cases that are ill-suited for theory testing. To address this problem, we propose the development of a conceptual tool aimed at identifying a subset of relevant new parties, termed "break-in parties" (BIP) because of their potential impact on prevailing patterns of representation and party competition. We have identified a corpus of 24 such parties founded between 1960 and 2002 in South America. These parties exhibit sufficient similarity to facilitate meaningful attributions, while also providing variability in relevant independent and dependent variables for testing theories of party system change through the emergence and success of new parties, a topic that has received considerable attention in recent years.
This article analyzes the association between emotions and electoral participation. It asks which encourages or inhibits the vote and whether or not they play the same role in different age groups. To address these questions, we use the results of a survey conducted in Chile during the 2017 elections. It is argued, first, that among the general population, fear and optimism play a role in the decision of the vote. Second, in young people's case, these emotions play an even more significant role. Third, anger is not related to the decision to vote.
This essay analyses the constitutional thought of Emilio Rabasa in relation to federalism. Although Rabasa is known for having been a critic of the 1857 constitution and its unicameral federalism, this paper casts Rabasa as a defender of a kind of federalism that was favorable to the sovereignty of the states, as opposed to the power of the central government. Rabasa supported this argument in two ways: on the one hand the states should be reorganized to achieve the ideal of "executive governments" and on the other the excessive powers of intervention of the three branches of the federal government over the states had to be curtailed. These two dynamics impeded or hindered, according to Rabasa, the necessary political learning that gave life to federalism.
most candidates in democracies with institutionalized party systems are party militants, the cultivation of a personal vote and the declining partisanship contribute to the elec toral success of candidates who are not party militants. Based on a theoretical discussion on the determinants of electoral success, we postulate hypotheses associated to party militancy and affiliation to party lists and the effect of campaign spending on electoral success. We use the case of the constitutional convention in Chile in 2021 where the registration requirements were the same for party militants and independents. This way, 790 of the 1 278 candidates were independents (61.8%). Among the 138 elected members in regular districts, 88 were independents (63.8%), although some ran on party lists. Being an independent in a list of independents had a positive effect. Campaign spending positively impacts the electoral success of independents and party militants.
By matching and contrasting electoral registry data with information gathered through a survey conducted with candidates for municipal and state legislative offices in the State of Morelos during the 2021-2022 electoral process, the effectiveness of electoral quotas for people with disabilities, Afrodescendants, and lGBTIQ+ individuals is examined. The study found that identity impersonation is more common among municipal candidates than among those running for legislative positions, and that some individuals self-identified as vulnerable groups are not registered as part of an electoral affirmative action by political parties. The findings of this study contribute to the affirmative action debates by reflecting on the barriers to descriptive representation, self-identification criteria, and factors behind identity impersonation.
During 2023, Guatemala faced a political crisis marked by three critical moments that threatened democratic stability. The process of democratic weakening intensified during the gen-eral elections with the exclusion of prominent opposition candidates under fabricated accusations. Additionally, the Public Ministry attempted to suspend the legal status of the Semilla party before the second round, and accusations of fraud were leveled against Semilla by nine parties affiliated with the ruling coalition. These actions jeopardized democracy, triggering widespread interna-tional condemnation and intervention by the Organization of American States. Despite Ar & eacute;valo's overwhelming victory in the second round, new attempts by the Public Ministry to reverse the election results in the post-election stage have raised doubts about a peaceful transfer of power. However, these attacks on electoral integrity by actors in the government served as catalysts for citizen's collective action in defense of the electoral results. In tandem with careful international support for the pro-democratic coalition, these citizen-led initiatives successfully thwarted further democratic backsliding. This essay aims to outline the primary attacks on electoral integrity ob-served during the general elections, identify institutional factors contributing to electoral uncer-tainty, and reflect on the future of democracy in Guatemala
Why do some authoritarian regimes improve human development while others do not? Despite advances in research explaining different economic outcomes in democracies, little is known about why autocrats might improve living conditions in their countries. I argue that autocrats who allow executive elections face greater short-term risk of losing power. Consequently, they should be more likely to improve human development. To evaluate this argument, I use a sample of 135 autocracies between 1972 and 2008 and I conduct several cross-sectional time -series models. Evidence suggests that executive elections improve human development in autocracies in the short term.
Why would an individual yield to exogenous incentives and vote against their intrinsic preferences? I aim at answering this question by presenting a game that models the choices of voters who believe that they might receive an incentive associated with their behavior. This game considers the size of the incentive offered, the voter's choice as a strategic best-response to other voters' behavior, and the competitiveness of the election. I find equilibria that show that yielding to exogenous incentives is a best strategy under not very stringent conditions. Finally, I illustrate the predictions from the model using three cases where it has been observed that material or immaterial incentives affected-or still affect-the behavior of voters: vote-buying and voter coercion during the United States Gilded Age, the electoral behavior of African-Americans, and religious voting.
The 1996 electoral reform in Uruguay separated national form the subnational elections. Both elections are held six months apart, but by different electoral systems: two round majority for presidential elections, and plurality for the elections of departmental mayors. In this context, parties that compete in the two elections are strictly the same and the electorates are practically identical. This makes it possible to compare the electoral results in each constituency with a system that encourages strategic behaviors and other that do not. The estimated results point out a robust reducing effect of the plurality system on the effective number of parties and show the effects of strategic behaviors of parties and voters under this electoral system.
In this research note we introduce an original database covering almost a century of legislative political parties (1925-2019) and reconstruct in the long term the evolution of the president's parliamentary support and coalition formation in Latin America. We identify some long-term perspectives that show that presidentialisms in the region have undergone transformations towards a greater fragmentation of the party system, with smaller presidential parties in Congress and the presence of legislative coalitions as a support base. The evidence highlights the importance of coalitional presidentialism in the third democratic wave and has implications for the literature on the factors that explain political stability in the region.
Since 2016, Peru has had seven presidents and has experienced two irregular dissolutions of Congress. How to explain this high political instability? This essay identifies the weakness of the Peruvian party system as the root cause of this political instability. This essay argues that the attack on political institutions in Peruvian politics was latent and with a high probability of breaking into the political scene given the significant weakness of Peruvian parties. Another factor that kept the assault on political institutions latent is the accentuated rivalry among Peruvian political parties. The weakness of the party system, which manifests itself with high volatility, contributed to the emergence of a wide imbalance of power among them. One of these parties (Popular Force) took advantage of this power imbalance for its own benefit to vacate a president and opened the opportunity for a relatively unknown politician to come to power (former President Martin Vizcarra). Vizcarra, a politician with legal issues, found the assault on political institutions effective to weaken his critics and gain popularity. Once the institutional deterioration intensified, as a result of these attacks, political instability amplified and led to more conflict and instability.
