This paper studies the effect of the Law of Employer Criminal Liability in Uruguay, which criminalizes workplace safety violations. Using detailed data on reported workplace injuries, we employ a Regression Discontinuity in Time design to identify the causal effect of the law. Following the adoption of the law, Uruguay experienced a significant 23 % reduction in reported workplace injuries, with the most pronounced reduction occurring in the industrial and primary sectors. We attribute these results to the law’s deterrent effect rather than to increased prosecutions, as only two employers were convicted under the new legislation. Our findings demonstrate the potential of punitive approaches to enhance workplace safety even in contexts where proactive enforcement is challenging or costly. In addition, they show that laws establishing greater employer liability can significantly reduce injuries without imposing additional administrative burdens.

We analyze how new technologies can be used to foster individual engagement that limits deliberation and reduces people's capacity for political action within parties. We present the results of an analysis of the case of the Argentinean Propuesta Republicana (PRO). Using data from in-depth interviews with key actors-party elites and political consultants-we show that new technologies helped to mobilize almost 1 million volunteers in presidential elections, without transforming them into party stakeholders. This incorporation, though successful for organization and mobilization, reinforced the existing distribution of power within the party, by activating new adherents without engaging them in a collective organizational structure.

What is the effect of disrupting tax compliance? In a context of substantial nonpayment, the municipal government in Montevideo, Uruguay sought to reward punctual taxpayers by raffling tax holidays at random to them. Using individual payment records as an unobtrusive outcome measure, we combine natural, field, and survey experiments to study the effects. Contrary to the policy's aims, winning a tax holiday reduced tax compliance on average for two years after the interruption of payments. Our evidence suggests that the negative effect arose because the holiday disrupts the habit of paying taxes. Our findings provide broader insights into behavioral foundations of compliance while also suggesting effective policy modifications to address an abiding challenge for governments: the raising of revenue.

Perceptions of quality and safety are key determinants of people's use of green public spaces. Waste mismanagement, and particularly littering, are among users' main concerns. This research helps fill three gaps in the literature. First, we introduce a counter-intuitive approach of intervening public spaces by subtraction instead of addition (i.e. removal of street furniture). Second, we conducted a randomised controlled trial with a structural intervention in a real-life field setting. Third, we provide an empirical study from the Global South (Uruguay) on a topic - littering - that has mostly been studied only in the Global North. We assess the effect of removing trash bins on the amount of waste in public squares and on citizens' perceptions regarding the infrastructure, greenspace, cleanliness, and overall condition of the squares. We found that the intervention reduced the amount of litter in the squares by an estimated 43.5 %, yet did not significantly affect people's perception of square cleanliness. Our research provides evidence of the impacts of these interventions, and also highlights the need to further explore the causal mechanisms behind perceptions of quality green public spaces.

Extant theories posit that political conflict affords favorable circumstances for successful party building. However, crises do not necessarily engender the emergence of new parties with the capacity to integrate discontent. In this in-depth analysis of Chile, we show how lowering barriers to entry inadvertently precluded the development of a national political organization. We describe the nature of new political actors who emerged from the cycle of protest that erupted in October 2019. Our analysis shows that the traits of the umbrellas of lists of independents conditioned the ability of emerging actors to aggregate demands of different districts. The Chilean case illustrates how a cycle of protest can engender new, electorally successful political actors but does not assure these actors’ capacity to legitimate the political process.

This Element analyzes the incorporation of new information and communication technologies (ICTs) by different parties in Latin America to organize volunteers and mobilize supporters during elections. It assesses ICT-related changes in how parties recruit prospective candidates, collect information about citizens' preferences, and mobilize for elections and how these changes have reduced the power of the rank and file within party organizations. Party leaders have an incentive to incorporate new ICTs to increase electoral efficacy and reduce the role of rank-and-file members in performing essential party functions. However, the result of the incorporation of technology depends on leaders' capacity to control the process within the party. Based on case studies of ICT incorporation by various Latin American parties and electoral campaigns, the authors posit that the incorporation of technology will consolidate a power dynamic that predates the adoption of ICTs to fulfill organizational functions.

We report on a large-scale urban resettlement program in Uruguay. Under the program, thousands of low- to middle-income households were randomly assigned over the course of seven years to ownership of apartments in new buildings in more central areas and received a subsidy averaging $44,000 per household. We match applicants to comprehensive administrative data on employment, schooling, fertility, and voting over the decade after the move. We find that the program led to a small decline in fertility for women and a two-percentage-point increase in formal employment but did not affect school attendance. The relocation program did not result in transformative improvements in the lives of its beneficiaries, likely because of its minimum income requirements and the lack of strong spatial inequality in Uruguay.

Various countries throughout the world have enacted transparency reforms, especially reforms oriented toward increasing access to government information (right to information, RTI). While researchers have published thorough examinations of the impact of such reforms, no study to date has surveyed how the successful exercise of this RTI affects institutional trust. Using a field experiment in Chile, Peru, and Uruguay to elicit information requests, we identify the effect of the successful exercise of RTI on individuals' trust in and perceptions of the transparency of institutions in these countries. Our findings indicate a need to differentiate between how the successful exercise of RTI affects individuals' trust in a specific institution— and especially their perception of its transparency—and how it affects trust in and perceived transparency of governmental institutions in general.

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.

Parties are central agents of democratic representation. The literature assumes that this function is an automatic consequence of social structure and/or a product of incentives derived from electoral competition. However, representation is contingent upon the organizational structure of parties. The connection between a party and an organized constituency is not limited to electoral strategy; it includes an organic connection through permanent formal or informal linkages that bind party programmatic positions to social groups’ preferences, regardless of the electoral returns. This article analyzes how the Movimiento al Socialismo (Movement toward Socialism, MAS) in Bolivia and the Frente Amplio (Broad Front, FA) in Uruguay developed two different forms of relationship with social organizations that result from the interplay of historical factors traceable to the parties’ formative phases and party organizational attributes. Party organizational features that grant voice to grassroots activists serve as crucial mechanisms for bottom-up incorporation of societal interests and demands.

Even though many countries in Latin America have adopted FOI Laws, there are significant differences in the institutional design of FOI oversight institutions. Most explanations highlight the role of political competition in motivating political actors to design strong de jure FOI oversight institutions. The design of FOI oversight institutions in Chile, Peru and Uruguay, however, cannot fully be explained by political competition. We show how isomorphic pressures help explain variation in the de jure strength of the FOI oversight institutions. Our findings highlight the importance of considering domestic constraints on the diffusion of one-size-fits-all models. To analyze each case, we conducted a systematic process-tracing analysis. Our in-depth analysis allowed us to assess different theories concerning the specific institutional design of FOI oversight institutions.

This chapter describes the Chilean Partido por la Democracia (Party for Democracy, PPD) as a group of independents. Since its inception during the transition to democracy, the PPD has achieved meaningful electoral support. However, its electoral stability contrasts with its lack of organizational structure, its difficulties executing horizontal coordination during elections, in Congress, and between local and national levels. Regarding vertical interest aggregation, the PPD builds upon personalistic linkages with particular interest groups in the different electoral districts. The PPD is thus no more than a group of politicians with personal electoral capital in their districts who achieve a minimum level of coordination during elections and in Congress.

There is a resurgence of interest in political parties. This resurgent interest embraces a minimalist definition of political parties, according to which any group that competes in elections and receives a handful of votes qualifies as a party. Parties, however, are expected to contribute to democratic representation, and the party politics literature has extensively shown that many "parties" do not fulfill this expectation. These entities that possess some but not all defining features of political parties can be considered diminished subtypes of the category. A thorough conceptualization of diminished subtypes could improve the analytical value of the study of political parties and of other forms of electoral political organizations. In this article, therefore, we put forth a new typology of diminished subtypes of political parties based on the presence or absence of two primary attributes: horizontal coordination of ambitious politicians during electoral campaigns and while in office and vertical aggregation to electorally mobilize collective interests and to intermediate and channel collective demands.

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