This article proposes a research agenda for the organization of the executive branch in Latin America by reviewing the literature on the U.S. and Latin American presidencies and outlining the research gap between them. The study finds that while strong, regionwide patterns have been established about cabinets in Latin America, research is lagging behind on the presidential center, presidential advisory networks, and their effects in policymaking. The article sets forth a series of research questions and suggests a combination of quantitative, social network, and case study strategies to address them.

Since President Hugo Chávez was first elected in 1998, the Venezuelan opposition seems to have alternated between institutional and extra-institutional power strategies at different junctures. To help explain this pattern, this article constructs a novel theoretical framework from critical readings of both general theory and accounts of the Venezuelan opposition. It proposes that the strategies should be viewed as dialectical rather than discrete. On this basis, it finds that while the Venezuelan opposition has undergone important changes toward institutionalization in its composition, discursive emphasis, and strategic direction, close readings of opposition texts, interviews with opposition actors, and observations of street demonstrations all reveal continuity with previous rupturist and extra-institutional tendencies. Both strategies therefore must be considered to achieve a fuller, more comprehensive vision of the Venezuelan opposition; this conclusion has important theoretical implications for the study of opposition in the wider region.

This article examines post-earthquake aid to agriculture and food security in Haiti. It argues that the much-heralded increase in assistance to rural development is likely to fall short of expectations because it comes with a superficial rebranding of a not very useful approach. Macroeconomic policy content remains largely nonnegotiable, full trade liberalization is still favored, and a reliance on free market forces that tend to favor relatively well off, export-oriented farmers still lingers. Furthermore, conflicting approaches to addressing food insecurity highlight an already severe democratic deficit. It appears that the contours of agricultural and food security policy, and hence the destinies of rural Haitians, stand to be shaped from the outside yet again. While new aid resources may offer some modest relief, they hold out only limited opportunities for addressing the profound deprivations and disparities that afflict the rural hinterland.

Comparative examples of “good government” at the subnational level may underanalyze the “public goods” problem facing politicians. Delegating authority and resources to policymaking agencies is possible when political conflict is low. The benefits can be maintained only if public agencies establish ties of “horizontal embeddedness” with industrial clients. This case study of innovative industrial policymaking in Minas Gerais, which is compared with one from Rio de Janeiro, finds that horizontal, interagency ties were critical to policy success. The contrast leads to an examination of the mineiro system's efficacy in promoting externalities, attracting foreign investment, and planning infrastructure in the state's automotive industry.

More than a decade after Latin America's most recent turn to democracy, unchecked police violence and torture continue and in some cases have increased. This study examines police killings in 19 Brazilian states from 1994 to 2001 and finds that democracy has not substantially reduced these types of human rights violations, for two reasons. First, underlying social conflict has continued to exert a significant impact on the lethal use of force by police officers. Second, pro-order political coalitions, generally represented by right-wing politicians, have blocked effective measures to control police violence and have implemented public safety measures that stress the use of force. The analysis emphasizes the nonteleological nature of democratization processes and demonstrates the strength of political forces working to maintain “illiberal democracy.”

This article examines the functions of the “dual discourse” about Peruvian migrant domestic workers in contemporary Santiago. A 2002 field study found that middle-class employers of Peruvian workers simultaneously praised them as superior workers and denigrated them as uneducated and uncivilized. While this response is not unique to Santiago, this study argues that it fulfilled particular ideological functions in this context. The praise served to discipline the Chilean working class, who middle-class employers claimed no longer knew their place. The epithets served as a foil for Chilean national identity. Stories about Peruvians serve as tools in ongoing ideological contestations over class, race, and nation in Chile and, at the same time, shape the working conditions and integration of the migrants themselves.