Despite repeated conflict with organized labor, the government of Carlos Salinas de Gortari (1988–94) pushed an aggressive divestment agenda that transformed Mexico into Latin America's leading privatizer. Explanations of Salinas's achievements typically emphasize centralized presidential power (including control over the ruling party) and autonomy; technocratic and political savvy; and weak labor opposition. This article questions such a pure “capacity-outcome” approach. Of equal importance are the learning effects of repeated interaction between the state and labor, which changed the course of divestment struggles and thereby influenced their outcomes. Lessons learned in successive confrontations led to patterns of interaction conducive to widescale privatization. The article develops this argument through comparative analysis of major divestment episodes in the aviation, mining, steel, and telecommunications sectors.

The Council occupies a central position in the Organization of American States. The Charter names it as one of the six organs through which the Organization carries out its functions. It is the only body representing all member governments that is continually in session at the seat of the Organization. With some 60 years of consecutive if varied existence, the Council has been constantly subject to the major political influences that have shaped the attitudes of the 21 member governments toward the OAS. The fundamental character of the Council, its authority and its true role in the regional organization are still in a process of evolutionary development.

This article analyzes the campaign of Nicaraguan president Arnoldo Alemán (1997–2002) against organized competitors, what has been called his war against the nongovernmental organizations, or NGOs. Alemán's attacks on the NGO sector are shown to be consistent with the logic of the new populism in Latin America. At the same time, his choice of targets—prominent NGO figures who were often foreign-born and always female—must be explained with reference to the specifics of Nicaraguan civil society and its evolving relationship with the political parties. This study argues that by choosing to respond to the challenges of international neoliberalism and local feminism through the anti-NGO campaign, Alemán helped to weaken democracy in Nicaragua.

In a March 1980 address to the Venezuelan Congress, President Luis Herrera Campíns stated: “Effective action by Venezuela in the sphere of international affairs must take into account certain key facts: Economics—we are a producer-exporter of oil; politics—we have a stable, consolidated democracy; and geopolitics—we are at one and the same time a Caribbean, Andean, Atlantic, and Amazonian country” (Venezuela Up To Date, 1980: 8). President Herrera's statement reveals a Venezuelan interest in geopolitics; at the same time, it outlines the difficulties in achieving a coherent geopolitical strategy.

This article studies voter behavior in Argentina. Do voters vote based on issues? Do they vote based on economic performance? What segments of the population are more or less likely to do so? What is the relative impact of issues and the economy in vote choice? To provide a reliable answer to these questions, this study uses a mixed-logit model of spatial voting with nonpolicy components. Contrary to the common belief, the analysis finds that issue voting is a statistically significant and important factor. Economic voting is prevalent in the middle and upper classes, but not among poor voters.

Desde el momento mismo de la conquista y establecimiento de los españoles en el Nuevo Mundo ha sido de importancia singular el problema de la aculturación de la población indígena. En la primera mitad del siglo XVI se planteó una amplia discusión doctrinal con profundas consecuencias prácticas, en la que fueron agentes activos centrales las más altas instancias políticas y administrativas del Estado español coetáneo, desde el Consejo de Indias a la persona del propio Monarca, encontrándose en el origen de las más importantes decisiones de orden legislativo adoptadas por la Corona, con sus momentos culminantes en la Junta de Burgos, mandada reunir por Fernando III de Aragón en 1512 para estudiar expresamente la problemática humana e ideológica (en la época esencialmente religiosa) de los indios americanos, y en las Leyes Nuevas de 1542 promulgadas por Carlos V bajo la immediata influencia del “grupo de presión” del que era figura prominente el dominico Bartolomé de las Casas.

Using an innovative survey of six major street demonstrations in Mexico City between 2011 and 2013, this study compares political attitudes of protest participants and nonparticipants. The analysis offers three relevant findings. The results suggest that in comparison to protest nonparticipants, demonstrators tend to be more politically involved and experienced individuals, mobilized through their personal and organizational networks. The intensity of these factors’ effects as protest participation predictors varied across demonstrations, showing that protest participation is triggered by different factors. And the diversity of mobilizing factors shows that protest participation in Mexico City is complex, and is a common form of political participation for the plural, mobilized civil society.

Scholarship on Transnational Advocacy Networks (TANs) increasingly recognizes that even weak states targeted by TANs may respond, and subvert, transnational norm socialization campaigns. It examines both the conditions conducive to such responses and the range of policy instruments available to these states. Yet this emerging work lacks a robust, contextualized account for how states devise the strategy and the content of their responses. This article builds on the policy-learning literature to elucidate the process through which states construct their antiTAN approaches. It suggests that states’ policy paradigms in the field of domestic security largely shape those responses, with different paradigms offering distinct priorities and instruments. The comparison of the divergent impact of the Guatemalan state’s contrasting responses to two similar legal-political challenges, undertaken in the context of the same anticorruption TAN campaign, illustrates the argument.

How do peacebuilding institutions affect political behavior? This article studies the historic victory of the Colombian left in the 2022 presidential elections in light of the implementation of local peacebuilding programs through the 2016 Peace Accords. Using a quasi-experimental design, we show that the Development Plans with a Territorial Focus (PDET), a central component of the 2016 Peace Accords between the government and the FARC, increased the vote share for the leftist coalition, Pacto Histórico, in the 2022 elections by increasing voter turnout in PDET regions. In a departure from existing literature, we find that the explanatory effect of violence on vote share is significantly reduced when we include an indicator for PDET implementation and additional covariates. While there is a substantial body of work examining the effects of conflict violence and the presence of armed actors on elections, there has been relatively little focus on how the peacebuilding has affected vote choice and political behavior. We see our project as a bridge to fill this gap in the literature.

Brazil, for many scholars and pundits, showcased the risk of democratic breakdown with the election of a far-right populist like Jair Bolsonaro. Against pessimistic expectations, however, not only has Brazilian democracy survived but politics has returned to business as usual. What can explain this supposedly unanticipated outcome? This article provides an analytical assessment of this this puzzle and offers an alternative explanation. We argue that both the diagnoses of Brazilian institutions and the predictions made were misguided. We explore the role played by the Supreme Court, party system, media, and congressional politics in restricting Bolsonaro’s illiberal initiatives.

Sociolinguistic studies in Latin America generally deal with situations in which one of the official languages is in contact with an American Indian language, one of the major languages of immigration (German, Italian, Japanese), or one of the creole languages or dialects spoken in the Caribbean area. Except for the latter case, such studies have usually emphasized such processes as acculturation or assimilation, internal migrations, or social mobility.

A somewhat neglected research area is that of the coexistence of Spanish and Portuguese along the borders which Brazil shares with a number of Spanish-speaking nations. Just as it is an oversimplification to lump Brazil and its neighbors into a vaguely homogeneous “Latin” America, so also it would appear very risky to rely on the obvious linguistic similarities to generalize about communication between the two major speech communities.

El derecho laboral latinoamericano ha sido repetidamente criticado por su falta de aplicación efectiva. La crítica proviene primordialmente de estudiosos norteamericanos interesados en la problemática social de los países al sur del Río Grande. Robert Alexander, por ejemplo, se refiere a este tópico diciendo que para muchos observadores las leyes laborales y sociales de la América Latina existen sólo en los textos legales pero no son adecuadamente implementadas. En forma más precisa otros autores como Burnett, Morris y Tannenbaum han puesto también de relieve la existencia de serios fallos en la aplicación del derecho del trabajo latinoamericano.

Lo curioso es, sin embargo, que este tema es casi totalmente ignorado por los autores latinoamericanos, los cuales dedican largas y sesudas páginas a la discusión de teorías jurídicas y problemas doctrinales, pero no se hacen cargo de esta deficiencia práctica.

A worldwide scheduled air transportation system for passengers, cargo, and mail has been created since World War II. In its global scope it is almost unique; the International Air Transport Association's only prototype is the Universal Postal Union, which for over a century has been the intergovernment vehicle for arranging the expeditious, reliable interchange of foreign mails between nations. Somewhat comparable to IATA in purpose but much more limited geographically, are such arrangements as those which provide for the transfer of electric power across the border between the United States and Canada, the coordination of highway, waterway, and railway traffic respectively in Europe, and the international telephone, cable, and radio services. The general public does not know—and has little need to know—what has gone on behind the scenes to create these facilities which in essence are large international public utility systems. A typical person's impressions would probably reflect his nationality. An American would probably assume that the individual components of such a utility system were privately owned and operated for commercial profit (except for the Postal Service). A European would tend to assume that electric power companies, railroads, airlines, telecommunications companies, and the Postal Service would all be owned by some government. Each would be substantially correct in his own context.

The reform of Venezuelan land tenure dates from the overthrow of Perez Jiménez in 1958. Acción Democrática, which assumed power after the elections of that year, had already promulgated an Agrarian Reform Law during its short-lived interlude between military governments, 1946-1948. In 1959, it continued its previous policy of subdividing public lands through the agency of the Instituto Agrario Nacional (IAN), established by the earlier law. But the full-scale reform began with the new “Ley de Reforma Agraria” in March 1960. It permits expropriation of lands which are not being adequately used, with the object of replacing the “latifundio system by a just system of property, land tenure and production, based on the equitable distribution of the farmlands, the proper organisation of credit, and the provision of full-scale assistance” (Instituto Agrario Nacional, 1969).

Under what conditions may a social scientist legitimately pass judgment on the geopolitical climate of a region? The question is not easy to answer. First, it presupposes acknowledgement that there are value issues embedded in such judgments. Second, while a value-free attitude may indeed be attempted, such an attitude is difficult to achieve. All too frequently, evaluation of a region's “climate” is based on the values of the evaluator (and often without disclosure of this fact to unsuspecting readers).This is especially likely when the observer adopts a theoretical position, taking insufficient account of the tension between society and actors. Unfortunately, such theories give social scientists the false feeling that they have some sort of preferred cognitive vantage point. Theories which incorporate an “oversocialized conception of man” (Wrong, 196l) or, alternatively, an “overly psychological conception of society,” ignore the fact that people act and make decisions about those actions, both of which are based upon value-judgments, and which do not have a one-to-one correlation with any given social situation.