Scholars of Cuba have long linked Afro-Cubans' fate to the revolutionary government. As the government's influence on people's daily lives has declined over the past decade, the question arises of whether Afro-Cubans have sustained the gains they achieved in the revolution's first 30 years. This article uses survey data, collected in December 2000 from 334 Cuban families in Havana, to assess the impact of the post-1993 economic reforms on rising racial inequality in Cuba. It asks whether racial inequities occur in accessing dollars through state employment, self-employment, or remittances, and whether educational gains are tied to higher income. Results indicate that the structural means through which racial discrimination was once virtually eliminated through equal access to education and employment, and through which income levels became equalized according to educational level regardless of racial group, has lost its equalizing force in contemporary Cuba.

Mexico's 3 × 1 Program for Migrants is a matching grant scheme that seeks to direct the money sent by migrant organizations abroad to the provision of public and social infrastructure and to productive projects in migrants’ communities of origin. To this end, the municipal, state, and federal administrations match the amount sent by hometown associations by 3 to 1. This article explores the impact on the operation of the 3 × 1 of a particular facet of Mexican political life: its recent democratization and the increasing political fragmentation at the municipal level. The study finds a lower provision of public projects in jurisdictions where a high number of political parties compete. This finding casts doubt on the claim that policy interventions such as the 3 × 1 Program actually improve local public goods provision at the local level under increasing political competition.

The article synthesizes contributions from the recent comparative research on civil war and the case-specific literature on Colombia to argue that too often, commentators on this conflict overlook some of its key dimensions. A comprehensive analysis shows that no fewer than six factors are fueling violent conflict in Colombia: economic forces, state weakness, landscape, U.S. policies, long-duration and spin-off violence, and malicious opportunism by non-combatants. The first three are the ones that matter most. The case made here is that when analysts disregard the range and interrelatedness of the factors involved, the result is a distortion of reality and a tendency to support policies that will not enhance the prospects for peace.

Contrary to the predictions of “power sharing” to mitigate ethnic conflicts, multicultural rights recognition can actually increase the frequency of local postelectoral mobilizations. This article demonstrates that the adoption of an ethnic rights regime for electing local government representatives may actually increase conflict if these multicultural laws are not carefully circumscribed to avoid violating human rights. Focusing on the 1995 multicultural rights reforms in Oaxaca, it presents evidence that legal changes purportedly implemented to recognize indigenous rights actually increased postelectoral disputes due to conflicts between county seat communities and peripheral population hamlets over access to funding by the central government. Based on this finding, the article addresses normative implications of “power-sharing” multiculturalism, recommending that multicultural laws be implemented only together with legal mechanisms to solve postelectoral disputes.

This article investigates political opportunities and constraints associated with incorporating the concept of universal citizenship into migration debates. Analyzing the speeches of Ecuador's president Rafael Correa over eight years, the article argues that Correa strategically crafted a narrative of universal citizenship to undergird politically beneficial policies. Political constraints from constituents and rivals, and the populist nature of his governing style, hollowed out progressive migration policy innovations to the point that universal citizenship became a rhetorical device more than a substantive policy agenda. Through this empirical case, the article develops a more nuanced critical understanding of universal citizenship discourses as sites for negotiating the relationship between states and migrants.

Since the early 1990s, World Bank officials in many countries have pressed their government borrowers to include nongovernmental organizations as development partners. What impact has this new partnership norm had in the bank's borrower countries, and why? This article investigates these questions through longitudinal analysis of three cases: Guatemala, Ecuador, and the Gambia. In their first iteration in the 1990s, these bank-sponsored efforts generally failed to take root; yet by the 2000s, NGOs and state actors were engaged in multiple partnerships. This article suggests that over time, bank officials' repeated efforts to embed these new ideas fostered a social learning process that led NGOs to adopt more strategic partnership practices and government officials to see NGO partners as useful. Several factors may affect this learning process: levels of professionalism and the growth of professional networks, the presence of effective “bridge builders,” and the level of historical conflicts.

Legal reforms that make judges independent from political pressures and empower them with judicial review do not make an effective judiciary. Something has to fill the gap between institutional design and effectiveness. When the executive and legislative powers react to an objectionable judicial decision, the judiciary may be weak and deferential; but coordination difficulties between the elected branches can loosen the constraints on courts. This article argues that the fragmentation of political power can enable a judiciary to rule against power holders' interests without being systematically challenged or ignored. This argument is tested with an analysis of the Mexican Supreme Court decisions against the PRI on constitutional cases from 1994 to 2002. The probability of the court's voting against the PRI increased as the PRI lost the majority in the Chamber of Deputies in 1997 and the presidency in 2000.

During the late Empire in Brazil, Rio de Janeiro society felt the stirrings of a new process, one which would seriously alter—and threaten—the traditional way of life in the city. In imitation of Europe, well-to-do citizens began forming voluntary associations for mutual aid and protection. The trend soon reached the middle and upper levels of the proletariat, whose organizations became labor unions. Most sectors of the urban society gradually organized around interest groups, and as the city surged into the new century with over a half-million people, occasional conflict marred the society of “conciliation and reform.” By the 1920s, with the sobering experiences of Europe, Russia, and Mexico in mind, thoughtful Brazilians called for conservative social policy to contain class conflict. Many blamed the excessive liberalism of republican government since 1889 and harked back to medieval institutions for bringing social peace.

Almost every day our newspapers feature accounts of student ferment on one or another of the university campuses in both the “developed” and “developing” nations around the globe. University students appear to have become extremely active in recent years in attempting to influence policy decisions taken by both administrators of higher education and government officials. In Brazil, however, such student political activism is clearly not just a recent phenomenon. While Brazilian university students have played an increasingly important role in national politics since World War II, most recently in their outspoken opposition to the military-dominated governments of the late Castello Branco and that of President Artur Costa e Silva, they enjoy an important tradition of student political activism that cannot be overlooked. In fact, accepting the suggestions made with real insight by E. Wight Bakke regarding the causes of student activism, we find that an examination of the student tradition in Brazil helps to explain current student agitation.

May 10, 1981, not only ushered in a political surprise for France, as well as for its European and American allies, but sent positive shockwaves throughout that part of the Caribbean which is still French. On that date François Mitterrand came to power in the Metropole of France at the same time that the Départements d'Outre-Mer (DOM or overseas departments) of Martinique, Guadeloupe and Guiana rejected his candidacy with a unanimity as stunning as it is rare in West Indian politics. Ever since the DOM have been coping with Socialism in France, decentralization in the Caribbean, and an unprecedented antilleanization of local culture, institutions, and politics. The result has been a paradox of heightened social liberalism combined with intensified political violence; but paradox has always been at the heart of the French Antilles.

The Process of Redemocratization, the “return” to democratically elected government, has been a major trend in much of the developing world in the 1980s. In particular, this trend has been strong in Latin America. The list of countries returning to the democratic fold is indeed impressive: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Uruguay, Ecuador and Peru. Even Haiti, in the Caribbean, witnessed the fall of the Duvalier regime and some initial movement, though halting, toward democracy. It appears in 1988 that Suriname could be rejoining the “democratic club” after several years of near-authoritarian rule, characterized by executions of opposition leaders, curtailment of press freedom, and a protracted insurrection.

The violence in Central America has displaced an unprecedented number of people in the area. While the majority of the approximately two million displaced individuals remain within their native countries, hundreds of thousands have fled to neighboring countries and to the U.S. where they create serious economic and political problems for the host governments. This article explores Mexico's policies toward the estimated 250,000 Central Americans who are seeking protection from the violence of their homelands.

There is considerable controversy over whether these individuals are political refugees. The 1951 United Nations Convention on Refugees defines refugees as those individuals who “due to a well-founded fear of persecution on the basis of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion have left their country of origin.” The convention's emphasis on individuals singled out for political persecution would seem to disqualify many of the Central Americans fleeing generalized conditions of violence.

The literature on comparative partisanship has demonstrated the low rates of party identification in Latin America. Such low rates are commonly interpreted as a sign of citizens’ disengagement with parties and democracy in the region. This article revisits this interpretation by considering voters’ adverse affection toward a party, or negative partisanship. It shows that examining the negative side of partisanship can help us develop a clearer perspective on the partisan linkages in the electorate. To support this claim, this study analyzes an original conjoint experiment in Argentina and Mexico, as well as two other public opinion surveys fielded in Brazil, Chile, and Ecuador. The study presents empirical evidence indicating that negative partisanship helps voters without an attachment to a party to distinguish themselves from nonpartisans, is independent of positive partisanship, and is different from a general distrust of the democratic system.

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.

On 5 April 1992, Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori dissolved the Congress and suspended all constitutional guarantees, thus rendering Peru the first, among the seven leading countries of Latin America, to initiate a formal break away from the trend toward legally-elected civilian regimes which has been sweeping the region since the early 1980s. Peru's rupture of democratic rule occurred during a wave of domestic violence that evolved from, and is the consequence of, at least three major developments.

Comparing the Aylwin and Frei administrations, this article probes the question of why civilian authorities did not always use the legal and political tools they had acquired to respond to the military’s institutional and political demands. Actors’ preferences, leadership style, and strategic decisions influence the way civilian leaders use those tools. Civilian responses have important and sometimes unintended consequences for the stabilization of the civil-military relationship in new democratic regimes.

There are many ways of dealing with events that are perceived by a government as threats to the stability of the existing political system. Two contrasting ways will be discussed in this study of Mexico, and an attempt will be made to evaluate their relative efficacy in controlling activities regarded as subversive by the government in question. The first method to be discussed will be referred to as the legal approach to subversion. Focus will be on both the latent and manifest functions (in Mertonian terms) of the letter, intent, and implementation of the Mexican law.

The ley de disolución social (law of social dissolution) forms part of the Mexican Federal Penal Code, which is applicable throughout the entire republic.

This article studies the processes of nomination and appointment to the Supreme Federal Tribunal in Brazil made by Presidents Sarney through Lula da Silva. It shows that in relations with the Senate, presidential anticipation prevails over presidential dominance. Brazilian presidents are successful appointers because they invest great effort in the moment of selection, when potential candidates are tested in the juridical and political communities. As a consequence, a uniform Senate approval of candidates coexists with a differential pattern of candidate recruitment. Sometimes presidents can select close candidates from their government; sometimes first-choice candidates are ruled out for lack of consensus. The type of coalition the president heads and the number of vacancies available affect the president's chances of imposing a candidate. The filter posed by center-right parties in the Senate induces the selection of nominees with centrist preferences.

To what extent has the North American Free Trade Agreement contributed to strengthening and deepening international environmental management in the Americas? Should the system be broadened to incorporate other nations? While a complete answer to these queries is currently beyond reach, there should be little doubt that NAFTA has influenced and continues to influence the direction of environmental management in North America and the hemisphere at large. The agreement has spawned a series of new institutions that are already reshaping current practices and that have considerable promise for broadening the range of international commitments to environmental management in the Americas. The most prominent and most relevant of these is the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC).

Any examination of the Cuban involvement in Africa should take into consideration the political conditions surrounding such involvement. Only by analyzing the objectives and motivations of those involved, while disregarding any arguments in justification, can one adequately demonstrate the complexity of the relations between Cuba and its African allies. An analysis of Cuba's assessment of its own political and ideological function in Africa or of the objectives of the Soviet Union in Africa is not as important as an examination of the African expectations arising from Cuban military and development aid.