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Institutional variation is not lacking in Latin America's separation of powers system when it comes to endowing legislatures and presidents with policy-making powers. We only witness lack of variation in terms of symmetry across chambers within bicameral systems. Founders never established two chambers and then gave one a significantly different role in the policy-making process than the other. Beyond that limitation, founders have designed an impressive array of policy-making processes across the region.
To conclude, we summarize our original theoretical argument, the empirical findings that support that argument, and the empirical findings that would lead us to reformulate that argument before seeking to test it again on a different set of observations.
Overall, the evidence presented in this chapter suggests that policy-making powers are likely to affect the degree to which policy positions reflect the moods of policy-makers in charge of bringing them about (congruence), but that they are less predictive of the way in which policies change in response to changes in the moods of policy-makers (responsiveness). When they are found to be predictive, PMPs seem to generate a trade-off between the ability to effectively move policy to a position that is more consistent with the preferences of both presidents and legislators, on the one hand, and the ability to adequately represent a variety of interests in the legislature, on the other. The first objective is more likely to be attained when PMPs clearly favor the executive. The latter objective is better achieved when powers are relatively matched across branches. Either through PMPs that give executives an upper hand or through an ability to respond to annually evolving policy orientations, executives seem to hold more sway over the direction of policy than legislators – a fact that is consistent with the relative levels of responsiveness we find in simulation.
In this chapter, we consider the connection between citizens and policies, accounting for all the intermediate linkages that form the full chain of representation. In general, while we find that median and distribution-aware congruences are higher whenever PMPs empower legislatures, such PMPs make it harder for policy to accurately track the movements of citizen moods over time. In turn, while executive-empowering PMPs make it easy for policy to respond to changes in citizen moods (particularly when legislatures are elected under restrictive rules, and presidents are elected under permissive rules), this increased ability comes at the expense of accurately reflecting the preferences of citizens in terms of proximity. We also find, as we did in the previous chapter, that, even where congruence is low, responsiveness can remain high. In other words, citizens’ moods can be reflected in the direction that policy is moving even when that policy remains somewhat distant from what most citizens would prefer.
This chapter explores the implementation of regulation in Lima in the early twentieth century. It considers the increasingly public debate over prostitution, in which several groups intervened including freemasons, anarchists, anticlerical journalists, and feminists, and the arguments put forward by the medico-legal community in support of regulation in this period. The chapter also examines how the authorities used the powers to police prostitution created by regulation in order to shape its geography and character.
This chapter considers the context in which Lima’s barrio rojo or red-light district was established in 1928. The decision by Lima’s prefect to establish a red-light district in La Victoria, a peripheral part of Lima (geographically and socially), was a response to growing pressure from Lima’s citizens who, particularly in the 1920s, complained of the danger that the proximity and visibility of prostitutes, both clandestine and registered, represented to decency and morality. Such complaints reveal a growing anxiety over the moral contagion that could result from the proximity of prostitutes, an anxiety that reflected broader fears about transgressive female behavior.
The conclusion serves three purposes. First, it provides a discussion of the book’s contributions to the different fields of scholarship with which it is in dialogue: the history of gender and sexuality, the history of medicine and public health, and the history of the state in Peru. Second, it considers in what ways this history can help us to reflect on current debates over prostitution in Peru. Finally, it considers that ways in which the history of prostitution in Peru can inform current debates over patriarchy and male sexual privilege.
This chapter examines the process that led to the closure of the barrio rojo in 1956. In a first section, it considers how the establishment of the barrio rojo coincided with an increasingly widely held negative view of regulation, which reflected the growing influence of abolitionism in the medical community and the public sphere, but it was also fed by the perception that the barrio rojo was a place of criminality and epidemiological threat. The chapter then examines the history of abolitionism in Peru, focusing on the establishment of the Comité Abolicionista Peruano and the activities that its members, a mix of medical doctors, lawyers, and feminists, promoted. In a third section, the chapter examines the campaigns led by publications such as ¡Ya! and Ultima Hora, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, to close down the red-light district. These campaigns, as a final section, drew on abolitionist arguments and contributed to the closure of the barrio rojo in 1956.
This chapter examines the role played by doctors in the regulation of prostitution and in containing the spread of venereal disease. At a time when, around the world, concern about, as well as research into, venereal disease were on the rise, doctors in Peru were drawn to its study. As they began to diagnose venereal disease more accurately, and came to recognize how it affected the Peruvian population, doctors grew increasingly anxious about the institutional capacities to properly treat venereal disease and what a high incidence of venereal disease signified for the nation. The creation in the 1910s of the Asistencia Pública, the institution charged with the medical inspection of prostitutes, and, in the 1920s, of the sifilicomio (syphilis clinic) did little to reduce the spread of venereal disease.
This chapter serves as an introduction to the book. It presents the main arguments of the book and well as the historical context and discusses the scholarship with which it is in dialogue. It also briefly introduces each chapter.