This article evaluates the implementation of Mexico's Municipal Reform of 1983 in three states: Chihuahua, Oaxaca and Yucatán. The research focuses on one element of the reform, the transfer of public services from the state to the municipal level. The case studies were selected to examine the impact of two key variables on reform outcomes: fiscal capacity and partisan control of state and municipal governments. Counter to expectations, the reform has not advanced more in municipalities with greater fiscal capacity. Also counter to expectations, there is no evidence that devolution advanced more in municipalities controlled by the opposition. This is due to the fact that state governors have a high degree of discretion that allows them to block implementation for partisan motives rather than rational/technical ones. The Municipal Reform of 1999 attempts to remedy this problem by limiting gubernatorial discretion while increasing the legal recourse municipalities have in soliciting the transfer of services. This recourse includes filing suit before the Mexican Supreme Court.

The issue of whether Central Americans in the United States are ‘political’ or ‘economic’ migrants has been widely debated, yet little empirical research has informed the controversy. Earlier studies have relied primarily on cross-sectional aggregate data. In order to overcome these limitations we draw on recent surveys conducted in five Nicaraguan communities by the Latin American Migration Project. Using retrospective data, we reconstruct a history of a family's migration to the United States and Costa Rica from the date of household formation to the survey date and link these data to national-level data on GDP and Contra War violence. While out migration to both Costa Rica and the United States is predicted by economic trends, US-bound migration was more strongly linked to the level of Contra War violence independent of economic motivations, especially in an interactive model that allows for a higher wartime effect of social networks. We conclude that elevated rates of Nicaraguan migration to the United States during the late 1980s and early 1990s were a direct result of the US-Contra intervention. The approach deployed here – which relates to the timing of migration decisions to macro-level country trends – enables us to address the issue of political versus economic motivations for migration with more precision than prior work.

This article explores the changing meaning of Indianness during the long independence era. Focusing on six towns around Santa Marta, it discusses why these were considered Indian in the late colonial period, why they supported the royalist cause during the Independence struggles and how their inhabitants ceased to be identified as Indians within a few decades of republican rule. While recent subaltern studies have emphasised Indian resistance against the liberal, republican states formed in early nineteenth-century Latin America, here it is argued that some former Indian communities opted for inclusion into the republic as non-Indian citizens.

This study examines an episode in the social history of state planning by focusing on the 1951 Peronist letter writing campaign. Perón's request for popular suggestions to the Second Five-Year Plan was met with enthusiasm from men and women across Argentina. As with other cases of state planning in the postwar world, the Peronist model of planned progress inspired many popular sector individuals and organisations, in part by offering them an intimate mode of political participation within an increasingly restrictive order. This appeal cannot be attributed to Peronist mass politics alone; rather, the regime's ideal of macro-level national planning also reinforced pre-existing practices of social activism in Argentine local communities.

This article aims to address a fundamental question for analysts and students of MERCOSUR: what explains the bloc's survival despite its recurrent crises and frequent pessimistic forecasts predicting its collapse? It argues that the maintenance of co-operation after 1999, when the economic and political economy rationale of the project had almost disappeared, is best understood in terms of the convergent strategic interests of MERCOSUR partners. This convergence of interests in the continuity of the regional regime reflects three types of strategic incentives. First, defensive considerations reflecting external forces and a shared sense of vulnerability vis-à-vis the external environment have provided the main motivation for partners to engage in negotiations and attempt to move the process of integration forward. Secondly, the offensive incentives faced by Brazil, given its relatively stronger position within the region have also worked to foster regional co-operation. But besides these power considerations, the sustainability of co-operation has been at least partially assisted by an emerging process of socialisation among executive officials taking place within regional institutions. These processes of increased interaction and enmeshment have reinforced interests in regional integration, giving way to positive incentives to maintain MERCOSUR.

Among the many consequences of globalisation is the creation of new political spaces. As these emerge, new or redefined power relationships accompany the process. In the course of creating transnational relationships, citizenship, representation and the role of the stakeholders may be redefined. This article focuses on the case of Argentina and on the role of civil society orgnisations (CSOs) in the process of political integration. The relationship between the state and civil society has sparked a debate about the core status of the political system as the third sector assumes roles traditionally belonging exclusively to the state. This raises issues regarding the difference between rights and services, the sources of legitimacy and efforts to enhance accountability, among others. The existing and potential channels of regional cooperation in the context of Mercosur illustrate the interplay between domestic, regional and global norms and institutions. This article emphasises the role of organised civil society in providing sense and meaning in the formation and awareness of supranational concerns, but is sceptical about its possibilities of providing and guaranteeing rights, tasks that still remain in the sphere of the state.