This article offers an articulation of liberation philosophy, a Latin American form of political and philosophical thought that is largely not followed in European and Anglo-American political circles. Liberation philosophy has posed serious challenges to Jürgen Habermas's and Karl-Otto Apel's discourse ethics. Here I explain what these challenges consist of and argue that Apel's response to Latin American political thought shows that discourse ethics can maintain internal consistency only if it is subsumed under the program of liberation philosophy.

We examine here two Ecuadorian towns and the state's efforts to support their development through competitiveness initiatives. Neoliberal, economic globalization is often equated with the insecurities of market competition. However, economic policy makers do not foment competition as much as competitive advantage. Whereas competition requires individual know-how, competitive advantage often involves cooperating to improve the underlying factors that help whole groups of firms. In Ecuador, policies have sought to engineer competitive advantage by creating industrial clusters. In our study, the town of Atuntaqui embraced the idea of clusters, uniting firms to work with international consultants and the Ministry of Industry. The economy has improved, but wealth shows signs of consolidation. The comparative case is a mechanized indigenous craft economy in Otavalo. Exploring how Otavalo's development has generated a set of shared resources anchored in a market plaza, we argue that its economy is best understood as a cultural commons. The experiences of both places have shown that economic development must take explicit measures to defend such commons if the gains of strategic cooperation are to be sustained in the long run.

This paper demonstrates that in Latin America a significant portion of the increased legislative party system fragmentation since the 1980s is explained by the recent political incorporation of ethnic populations. Until now, scholars have likely not identified this relationship because they have not used the nuanced measures of ethnic fractionalization that account for internal diversity of indigenous populations and race, and because they have not focused on the time period when ethnic peoples were politically incorporated. In addition to demonstrating this relationship statistically, we use two case studies from Bolivia and Ecuador to illustrate how in recent years the dynamic relationship between ethnic groups and political parties in Latin American legislatures has changed and resulted in the statistical association between ethnic fractionalization and party system fragmentation that we observe.

Most conditional cash transfer evaluations have focused on estimating program effects on schooling, consumption, and labor supply. Fewer studies have addressed these outcomes using a distributive lens. This article uses data from three programs in Latin America to obtain evidence of their impact on educational inequality of opportunity, measured using primary enrollment. The main results indicate that groups considered vulnerable gain more in terms of access to education and that these interventions help level the playing field. They do not eliminate inequality of opportunity but are certainly a useful complement to equity-enhancing policies.

Why do politicians pursue policy reforms to improve government performance when these are perceived to be costly, both materially and politically? Theories based on advanced democracies stress electoral accountability mechanisms rooted in programmatic parties with strong ties to society. Empirically, these are largely absent in less developed democracies, and this often leads to poor public goods provision. To better understand the incentives for local policy reform in developing democracies, we constructed a comprehensive data set of local natural resource management reforms in Ecuador's cantons during 1997–2008. We find that the presence of “organic” political parties, legitimate participatory decision-making institutions, and high levels of civic engagement increased the incidence of reform. Our findings suggest that even in environments marked by clientelist politics and weak, elite-based party systems, institutions linking politicians with a mobilized civil society (e.g., organic parties and participatory decision-making institutions) can incentivize elected officials to pursue performance-enhancing reforms.

This article introduces the topic of pandillas (street gangs) and their implications for security in Central America. There is minimal scholarly literature on pandillas and security. In part this is due to serious challenges in analyzing pandillas. First, pandilla members consider truth to be situational; data derived directly from them is suspect. Second, those who know most about them are involved in NGOs that rely on foreign assistance for their work. The project reports they produce go to funders abroad and are generally not published. Third, to research and write on pandillas is dangerous.

El modelo de latifundios y oligarquías terratenientes orientadas a la producción primaria fue el predominante pero no el único en América Latina colonial. Convivió con otros modos de producción, entre los cuales se destaca la vitivinicultura, caracterizada por la pequeña propiedad, la agricultura intensiva orientada a la industria, fuertes pautas de movilidad social y la emergencia de incipientes burguesías. En el marco de este tema, el presente estudio procura mostrar el grado de complejidad que alcanzó la industria vitivinícola a través de un indicador: la capacidad para realizar crianza biológica de vino. El desarrollo de este complejo método basado en conocimientos y técnicas especializadas, fue posible por una serie de factores sociales, culturales y económicos.