The last two decades or so have seen academic interest in urban Latin American history mature to the point where questions of cultural realities have taken on greater complexity and importance. For reasons bound up with the socioeconomic factors usually studied first, the period between 1870 and 1930 seems fated to be especially attractive. That was the period, after all, when the neocolonial order came of age and, with it, the cultural possibilities born of greater wealth, a larger leisure class, an urban way of life in the expanding port and administrative centers, and the greater access to European cultural models through travel and luxury imports.

This study argues that the costs associated with El Salvador's dollarization clearly outweigh the benefits and that the decision to dollarize was prompted not only by the need to promote economic growth, but also by the impluse to serve the interests of the financial sector and the large entrepreneurs who control the ruling ARENA party. Although the policy facilitates investment and international financial transactions, it has a negative effect on the poor by increasing inequality. To develop this argument, the authors discuss the socioeconomic and political situation in El Salvador at the time of dollarization, examine the Law of Monetary Integration, and analyze die effect of the dollarization policy on the poor.

Conditional cash transfer programs may boost the electoral fortunes of incumbents among beneficiary groups, but do they also influence recipient attitudes toward state legitimacy? This article examines the relationship between Brazil's Bolsa Família program and recipients’ sense of the Brazilian state's political legitimacy, from 2007 to 2014. Using AmericasBarometer data and propensity score matching, this study provides evidence that targeted cash benefits correlate with citizens’ views of the state, but that this relationship is limited to increasing trust in core state institutions, local government, and incumbent political actors. Diffuse dimensions of regime legitimacy, including recipients’ sense of political community, support for regime principles, and retrospective perceptions of national economic performance, are largely unaffected by the receipt of targeted benefits. Over time, the evidence also suggests that the impact of program receipt on these measures of support remains largely unchanged.

This article studies the motivations of party leaders to form “minimum winning” electoral coalitions—alliances that cease to be winning if one member is subtracted. In Brazil, concurrent elections stimulate political actors' coordination, and electoral alliances are allowed. In 2002 and 2006, moreover, the Electoral Supreme Court obliged those parties with presidential candidates to replicate this electoral arrangement in the district. Under “verticalization,” parties with presidential candidates could not form alliances with rival parties in the concurrent legislative and gubernatorial elections. Verticalization arguably pushed party leaders to form minimum winning electoral coalitions. This new rule forced them to reconsider the contributions of each possible ally in the elections for president, federal deputy, and governor. Examining the elections from 1998 to 2006, this study finds that under verticalization, while parties did form more electoral coalitions with those partners they considered crucial to win, they did so at the expense of policy.

This article aims to analyze the impact of domestic politics and international changes that influence Brazilian positions regarding regional integration processes in South America, particularly the Southern Common Market, Mercosur. The dynamics of the international system and their impact on the evolution of the elite's perception of the role the country should play in the world are important variables for understanding these positions. The state's postures in relation to integration were and are based on a real interest, but this interest is also linked with the objective of ensuring better conditions for participation in other international arenas. Starting with the hypothesis that transformations in the international setting have strongly influenced Brazil's positioning, the elements of continuity and change in the country's behavior toward Mercosur are identified, with domestic politics as the main explanation.

This article examines the political strategies of the EZLN, or Zapatista army, in Chiapas and the EPR, which operates mostly in Oaxaca and Guerrero, through a content analysis of their communiquiés. It argues that these two guerrilla movements demonstrate, through their cultural production, significantly different priorities and preferences; and that these differences reflect different strategic choices. Whereas the EZLN has chosen to pursue a revolutionary strategy similar in key respects to the “war of position” described by Gramsci, the EPR remains closer to the “war of movement.”

Like many other Latin American business communities, Brazilian business leaders sharply increased their political mobilization in the 1980s. They were responding to the context of economic and policymaking uncertainty that emerged in the New Republic (1985), the regime following the end of military rule. Two broad concerns lay at the heart of their mobilizing efforts. First, business leaders had come to believe that Brazil needed a new strategic program for economic development. Import substitution industrialization was widely perceived as an exhausted model. Thus, a number of business leaders believed it was necessaty to begin a dialogue about the country’s developmental priorities. These business leaders, moreover, hoped to reverse the tendency under the Ernest0 Geisel administration (1964–85) to exclude business groups from policy making.

A number of excellent studies of the U.S.-Mexican border have indicated that the border is occasionally a barrier but more often a permeable membrane through which goods, services, and people can filter. Employment practices and reciprocal trade across the border, together with tourism, have increased the need for policy cooperation among the jurisdictionally distinct but functionally integrated border communities. Our study represents an exploratory effort to find out how border cities are responding to this imperative of greater policy cooperation despite the presence of an international boundary. We selected the cities of Laredo and Nuevo Laredo for our first analysis of policy cooperation because our preliminary investigations of twin cities had persuaded us that relations between the Laredos were numerous, complex, and friendly. The two cities were obviously interdependent; the incentives to achieve a cooperative community appeared to be strong.

Haitians have been migrating to the United States in significant numbers since the rise to power of Francois Duvalier over a quarter century ago. A few who have been able to meet the strict eligibility criteria of U. S. immigration law have entered as legal immigrants. Perhaps as many as 300,000 others have entered illegally, or have overstayed the terms of their temporary visas. A diverse population composed of professionals and businessmen, students and shopkeepers, journalists, small land holders, and illiterate peasants, it is impossible to capture their individual reasons for leaving Haiti and coming to the United States in a single all-inclusive phrase.

Haiti is the poorest country in this hemisphere. Nearly all who leave to come to the United States are aware that they are trading malnutrition, negligible educational opportunities, and a subsistence standard of living for the greater opportunities afforded by life in America.

This article argues that civil-military relations should be conceptualized not only in terms of democratic civilian control but also for effectiveness in implementing a spectrum of roles and missions. It also argues that achieving effectiveness requires institutional development as a necessary but not sufficient condition. Currently in Latin America, the focus in civil-military relations remains exclusively on civilian control. While there is a growing awareness of the need for analysis beyond asserting control over the armed forces, so far nobody has proposed or adopted a broader analytical framework. This article proposes such a framework, and employs it to analyze differences among four major South American countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Colombia. The explanation for the differences identified by use of the framework is found in the incentives of civilian elites in Chile and Colombia, who have recognized serious threats to national security and defense.

The central purpose of this paper is to show that the character of Peruvian national politics changed substantially during the century after independence from Spain and that a focus on the shifting relations between the central government and social and economic power in the private sector is crucial for appreciating the significance of these political developments and for comprehending their sources. Clearly a wide variety of forces conditioned the organization and exercise of political power in nineteenth-century Peru, but historical interpretations that stress the roles of economic elites (e.g., Bourricaud, 1970), foreign interests (Yepes del Castillo, 1972) or leaders’ personalities (Pike, 1967) obscure the magnitude of these political changes and do not adequately explain them.

Scholarly attention has increasingly shifted from diminished subtypes of democracy to hybrid regimes, particularly competitive authoritarianism. Such regimes retain democracy’s formal features while failing to meet its minimum standards. When properties of distinct concepts like democracy and authoritarianism are combined, however, confusion, inaccuracy, and mischaracterization of cases may occur. By disaggregating political systems into electoral institutions, surrounding rights and freedoms, constitutionalism, and the rule of law, this article complicates the binary distinction between a midrange definition of democracy and competitive authoritarianism. A number of Andean cases are found to fall on the spectrum of defective democracies between these categories. Defective democracies break down when rulers violate the conditions necessary for institutionalized alternation in power by means of public participation and loyal opposition in an electoral regime. Given leaders’ reliance on electoral legitimacy, however, even defective democracies may prove surprisingly resilient.

Party identification is a central concept in studies of parties and elections. Drawing from an extensive literature linking the concept of party identification to the understanding of Mexico's electoral politics, this article explores how the Mexican experience informs the understanding of party identification in general, especially in emerging democracies. There, voters' attachments to political parties are usually seen both as essential to and a positive sign of democratic development. This study finds evidence consistent with these arguments in the Mexican case but also identifies aspects of Mexican party identification that are not so clearly supportive of democratic politics; that indeed may delay or even undermine democratization. These findings illustrate the relevance of the Mexican experience to the wider literature on parties and elections, particularly the well-documented relationship between party identifications and democratization.

In many Latin American countries, corruption and administrative inefficiency have emerged as significant threats to democracy and governability. This case study employs McCubbins and Schwartz’s U.S.-centered model of “fire alarm” and “police patrol” oversight to analyze how effectively Chile’s Congress has conducted its oversight functions. Chile’s experience with authoritarian rule, the weakening of Congress, and changes in the relationships between citizens and state institutions have undermined its tradition of fire alarm oversight, forcing Congress to rely on less-effective police patrol activities.

The Peru-Ecuador boundary issue is the oldest continuing border dispute in the Western Hemisphere. Furthermore,

In 1942, four such friendly nations brought Peru and Ecuador together, after a short but bitter war between them, to settle their differences once and for all by signing a treaty of “Peace, Friendship, and Boundaries,” known as the Rio Protocol. These four countries were Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and the United States. Their representatives also signed that treaty, “as guarantors that the Protocol would be faithfully executed....” (McBride, 1949: 2-3).

Segmentation in the labor markets refers to the fact that a single homogeneous market for labor, as assumed by conventional theory, does not exist. Its definition varies according to different authors. This article will refer to the concept as it is used in the discussion of economic development in Latin America: that is, that created by the type of development which generates a segmentation of the productive structure and, in turn, of the labor markets.

It is difficult to argue with success. Brazil’s public steel firms—once the crown jewels of a state-led model of development—were, by the late 1980s, heavily indebted, unproductive, and dependent on the financial support of a state in fiscal crisis. As if by a wave of the proverbial magic wand, their privatization in the period 1990–94 made them exponentially more productive, financially sound, and competitive. Of the eight major Brazilian steel enterprises, seven were returning profits by the end of 1994. One of the seven, Usiminas, became the most profitable private firm in Brazil in 1993, two years after it was privatized.

This article shows how and why the initial attempts of the Lula administration in Brazil to promote innovative counterhegemonic participatory strategies, such as those put in place by the PT in some of its subnational governments, fell by the wayside. It is argued that the implementation and scope of participatory initiatives under Lula were caught between electoral motivations and the need to secure governability. On the one hand, the need to produce quick results in order to maximize vote-seeking strategies hindered attempts to promote counterhegemonic participation, while Lula and his inner circle opted for policies that would score immediate marks with the poorest sectors or influence public opinion. On the other hand, participation also took a back seat because the PT concentrated most of its energies on reaching agreements with strategic actors, such as opposition parties or powerful economic groups.

The European Union’s attempts to strengthen ties with Latin America relate to a broader international strategy of demonstrating that it is a “global player” and attaining the image of a “civilian power.” Yet many observers suspect that European aid is simply instrumental to trade and investment promotion and other interests. They question whether the EU’s strong position as a donor in Latin America means that Latin America is strongly important to the EU. This article reviews the history, context, and latest trends in EU aid to Latin America, then looks at the prospects for a biregional partnership.

This article assesses how much the emergence of civil society and private market activities are challenging Cuba's ruling communist regime. The assessment is based on a conceptualization of a “civil sphere,” constituted by civil society and private market activities (or the “second economy”), and how this affects democratic transitions from state-socialist societies, using Cuba as a case study. Examining the multiple sectors at play reveals an increasingly organized and vocal opposition, but one hampered by continued government repression. Considering several theoretical and historically possible scenarios, this study concludes that under current conditions, the civil sphere's significant challenge is still not enough for a regime change in the Cuban state.