Cabinet coalitions are central to the functioning of Latin American presidential systems. However, the reasons for their formation remain unclear. While recent studies suggest that presidents invite parties to the cabinet to facilitate governability and lawmaking, this study argues that the composition of cabinet coalitions is largely predetermined by commitments made before presidential elections. To analyze this argument, the study introduces the conditional logit model as a new empirical strategy for modeling cabinet choice under this type of regime. Based on a new dataset of 107 cabinets in 13 Latin American democracies, the study shows that pre-electoral commitments strongly affect cabinet formation and thereby also confound the relationship between cabinet formation and governability.

This article advances the idea that coalition formation and maintenance in highly fragmented presidential regimes is not only crucial to overcoming policy deadlock, but in some cases, critical to ensuring government survival. To advance this argument, the article looks at the formation and demise of legislative coalitions in Ecuador between 1979 and 2006. The empirical data suggest that paradoxically, government coalitions became more difficult to sustain after the adoption of institutional reforms intended to strengthen the president's legislative powers. The adoption of those reforms, it is argued, undermined the legislative incentives to cooperate with the government and helped to accelerate coalition erosion. Not only did the reforms fail significantly to avoid policy deadlock, but in some cases they contributed to the early termination of presidential mandates. This article contributes to the study of coalition survival and how it is linked to policymaking.

Between 1996 and 2009, a process of struggle for and (after 2002) partial achievement of the second incorporation of the popular sectors took place in Argentina. This process involved a combination of routine and contentious political dynamics that reformulated state-society relations in the postcorporatist period. As a continuation of the first incorporation (1943–55), the second incorporation displayed some similar features; other attributes were specific to this second process, mainly that it was not corporatist but territorial and that the central agents of transformation were not trade unions but the disincorporated popular sectors, which were territorially organized into a “reincorporation movement.” This article conceptualizes these dynamics and analyzes the role played by the main political actor related to this historical process, the piquetero (picketer) movement.

The aim of this article is to analyze three key issues in current Nicaraguan politics and in the political debate surrounding hybrid regimes: de-democratization, political protest, and the fall of presidencies. First, it analyzes the process of de-democratization that has been taking place in Nicaragua since 2000. It shows that the 2008 elections were not competitive but characteristic of an electoral authoritarian regime. Second, it reflects on the kind of regime created in Nicaragua under Daniel Ortega’s mandate, focusing on the system’s inability to process any kind of protest and dissent. Third, it examines the extent to which the protests that broke out in April 2018 may predict the early end to Ortega’s presidency, or whether Nicaragua’s political crisis may lead to negotiations between the government and the opposition.

Hundreds of thousands of Cuban troops deployed to nearly every corner of the globe—that seemed to be the nightmare of every US administration from the mid-1970s to the end of the 1980s. From its own perspective, President Fidel Castro’s government attempted to use its activist foreign policy first to protect itself from hostile US policies, and second to leverage support from the Soviet Union and other communist countries for Cuba’s own domestic development.

Violence, in its criminal and political aspects, largely reflects the contradictory impulses set in motion by modernization and serves as an expression of the various dislocations — social, economic, psychological and cultural — which accompany that process. Violence increases when the prevailing institutions fail to mediate among the various antagonistic forces unleashed by socio-economic and political change. Colombia represents a country where violence has risen overwhelmingly in recent years, reaching extremes of both extent and duration. A phenomenon well worth scholarly attention, the subject of violence has given rise to an impressive body of literature concerned with exploring its many aspects: its causes, trajectory, and variety of manifestations (see Sánchez, 1991).

In December 1983, when Raúl Alfonsín and his Radical party assumed responsibility for Argentina's transition from authoritarian dictatorship to democracy, the economy was mired in deep crisis. Rather than a repetition of the familiar “stop-go” cycles of previous decades, the mid-1980s crisis was more structural in nature, stemming from a perverse logic deeply rooted in contemporary Argentine capitalism. Few Argentines, regardless of ideological persuasion, doubted that major reforms were imperative if the country's post-1930 model of import-substitution industrialization was to avoid total collapse. For Argentina's fledgling democracy, the task at hand could not have been more daunting — to reverse what Alfonsín himself had referred to as “50 years of decadence.”

Latin America's “left turn” expanded cash transfers and public services, contributing to lower poverty and inequality. Recently, right-leaning candidates and parties have begun to win back seats in the legislature, and in some cases have captured the executive branch. This shift has sparked debate about the future of Latin America's welfare states. This article analyzes social policy reforms enacted by two recent right-leaning governments: that of Sebastián Piñera in Chile (2010–14) and Mauricio Macri in Argentina (2015–). It finds that contrary to neoliberal adjustment policies of the past, neither Macri nor Piñera engaged in privatization or deep spending cuts. Instead, both administrations facilitated a process of policy drift in some sectors and marginal expansion in others. Policy legacies and the strength of the opposition help to explain these outcomes, suggesting that Latin America's political context has been transformed by the consolidation of democracy and the experience of left party rule.

Bolivia and Brazil have universalized their pension and healthcare systems, respectively. Civil society organizations participated actively in social policy expansion, yet they have done so in starkly different ways, reflecting general patterns in each country. Whereas in Brazil, popular participation in social policies takes place through “inside” formal channels, such as conferences and councils, in Bolivia, bottom-up influence occurs mostly via “outside” channels, by coordinating collective action in the streets. Understanding forms of popular participation matters because policies that allow for popular input are potentially more representative, universal, and nondiscretionary. This article argues that differences in the forms of popular participation in social policy expansion can be explained by the characteristics of the institutional context and differences in the types of movements engaged in the policymaking process. By focusing on patterns of participation, these findings add nuance to the literature on Latin America’s welfare states.

Free-market reforms in the last quarter of the twentieth century weakened the point of production—labor unions—as the source of effective nonparty political countermovement to liberal capitalism. Has another significant source of societal resistance arisen in association with the resurgence of market economics? Building on the work of Karl Polanyi, this article argues that circuits of exchange—the commodification of labor, land, and money—can be powerful sources of movement against contemporary forms of free-market capitalism. It draws on the cases of Argentina, Bolivia, and Ecuador to explore how Polanyi's exchange-based approach helps to elucidate three phenomena: the great variety of identities behind the myriad movements against free-market capitalism, the emergence of community as a powerful locus for organizing, and the proliferation of new forms of transgressive and highly disruptive direct action to reinforce the debilitated effectiveness of the strike.

For social movements, coverage in the media is a mixed blessing; but like many movements, the Brazilian Landless Farmworkers' Movement (MST) actively seeks it out. Treatment of the MST in the Brazilian media is analyzed here using the concept of frame. That treatment is determined by a complex interaction between media producers and movement activists. The frames adopted by those on each side influence public perception of the movement. This study identifies five such underlying frames (mostly in print media but with attention to a television soap opera based on the MST's activities) and examines the images of the movement that they present. Though the coverage often presents the MST in a favorable light, it does not necessarily encourage the goal of mobilization that the movement seeks to promote.

The article analyzes and compares the dynamics of business-government relations in Bolivia and Ecuador during the presidencies of Evo Morales and Rafael Correa. It specifically traces the shift from confrontation to rapprochement to a fairly stable pattern of negotiation and dialogue that characterizes the two governments' interaction with core business elites. Drawing on the structural and instrumental power framework developed by Tasha Fairfield, it proposes an explanation that accounts for this overall shift as well as for the main differences between the two countries. In a nutshell, the article argues that the business elites' response to a severe loss of instrumental power and the governments' response to the persistent structural power of business combined to cause the shift toward negotiation and dialogue. The article also probes the plausibility of this power-based explanation by briefly comparing the two cases with other left-of-center governments in the region.

What difference does it make if the state makes people vote? The question is central to normative debates about the rights and duties of citizens in a democracy, and to contemporary policy debates in a number of Latin American countries over what actions states should take to encourage electoral participation. Focusing on a rare case of abolishing compulsory voting in Venezuela, this article shows that not forcing people to vote yielded a more unequal distribution of income. The evidence supports Arend Lijphart's claim, advanced in his 1996 presidential address to the American Political Science Association, that compulsory voting can offset class bias in turnout and, in turn, contribute to the equality of influence.

Observers have long noted Brazil's distinctive racial politics: the coexistence of relatively integrated race relations and a national ideology of “racial democracy” with deep social inequalities along color lines. Those defending a vision of a nonracist Brazil attribute such inequalities to mechanisms perpetuating class distinctions. This article examines how members of disadvantaged groups perceive their disadvantage and what determines self-reports of discriminatory experiences, using 2010 AmericasBarometer data. About a third of respondents reported experiencing discrimination. Consistent with Brazilian national myths, respondents were much more likely to report discrimination due to their class than to their race. Nonetheless, the respondent's skin color, as coded by the interviewer, was a strong determinant of reporting class as well as race and gender discrimination. Race is more strongly associated with perceived “class” discrimination than is household wealth, education, or region of residence; female gender intensifies the association between color and discrimination.

Why do drug gangs develop sophisticated authority functions in some places and not in others? Comparing two Brazilian cities, Rio de Janeiro and Recife, this article argues that territorially embedded informal authority structures from earlier times, coupled with sporadic and extremely violent policing, encouraged drug gangs in Rio de Janeiro to develop authoritative functions and residents to acquiesce to them. In Recife, by contrast, drug gangs inherited diffuse and territorially independent authority structures and confronted a much less lethally violent police force. Consequently, they failed to find common cause with local residents, and their organizational development was truncated.

Parties throughout Latin America have recently addressed two distinct kinds of electoral reforms: primary elections and national-level gender quota laws. This study examines how these reforms interact, their mutual compatibility, and their effect on the nomination of men compared to that of women. It develops a series of hypotheses about this relationship by analyzing the 2003 legislative elections in Mexico, a case in which the three main parties relied on both gender quotas and primaries to select their candidates. Although the percentage of women elected to the Mexican Chamber of Deputies rose, the Federal Electoral Institute interpreted the gender quota law in a way that weakened its effect on women and limited the degree of openness in the primaries that were held.

The tone of European-Latin American relations in recent years has been strongly influenced by the issue of bananas. At stake has been the future of the banana trade between the European Union (EU) and Latin America, which, even if small in relative size (constituting less than 5% of Latin America’s exports to the EU), has loomed large in international political calculations. This article seeks to make sense of a very complex, and still developing, situation by identifying the interests of the various parties directly concerned. The first part examines the background, the problem, and the solution to this issue as set out in the adoption of a new banana regime (NBR) in the EU.

Since 1999, women have democratically won the presidency eight times in Latin America and have named hundreds of ministers. This study argues that under certain conditions, presidentas are more likely than male presidents to improve women's cabinet representation. Two mechanisms, presidenta mandates and gendered networks, appear to drive the relationship. Furthermore, because the pool of ministerial candidates is shallower for women than for men, presidentas are most likely to advance women's representation in cabinets at the beginning of their term and for “feminine” ministries. A case study of Michelle Bachelet's 2006 ministerial appointments reveals initial evidence for the argument. Empirical implications are then tested with an original dataset of 1,908 ministers of all democratically elected Latin American presidents since 1999. Model results are consistent with the theory that presidentas are most likely to “make a difference” when they are least constrained by the supply of female ministerial candidates.

What are the conditions under which participatory institutions increase the voice of marginalized groups in policymaking? Existing studies of local participatory institutions highlight the role of leftist politicians and a strong civil society in determining outcomes, yet they fail to explain significant variation among participatory institutions at the national level. Examining the case of Brazil’s AIDS policy sector, this article argues that to fully understand the dynamics of national participatory governance, we must consider the role of bureaucrats. As studies of state-society synergy have shown, bureaucrats may seek outside political support from civil society when other actors inside the state prevent them from advancing their policy preferences. National bureaucrats may create new participatory institutions, and even help civil society delegates coordinate their engagement in such institutions, as strategies to strengthen their policy alliances with civil society.