What allows unpopular judiciaries to gain the trust of the public? Some suggest that judicial confidence depends on procedural integrity. Others emphasize the importance of ideological congruence between the court and the public. This article examines the explanatory power of these two leading hypotheses while also paying closer attention to the moderating effects of political and economic inclusion. It finds that confidence in the judiciary is driven by normative considerations when inclusion is high, but by ideological proximity when inclusion is low. The findings highlight that institutional support does not emerge from a single causal path. Instead, inequalities in the economic and political structure make people trust institutions for different—and sometimes contrasting—reasons.

Do attitudes toward immigrants shape public policy preferences? To answer this question, this article analyzes a prominent example of South-South migration: the Nicaraguan immigrant community in Costa Rica. Over the past two decades, Costa Rica has experienced extensive socioeconomic changes, and Nicaraguans have been frequent scapegoats for the fears and worries generated by these changes. Relying on the 2014 AmericasBarometer survey, this analysis finds that respondents who perceive immigrants as an economic threat are significantly more supportive of punitive crime control policies. Attitudes toward immigrants were also significantly linked to support for government policies to reduce income inequality. However, given the historically strong support for the Costa Rican social welfare state, attitudes toward immigrants did not significantly affect support for government services.

This article argues that growing civilian direction of the defense sector should generate three consequences: greater interoperability of the armed forces, a stronger emphasis on operations outside the national territory (here called externalism), and better defense-diplomacy coordination. An original investigation of the makeup of the drafting committees of three of Brazil’s national security strategy documents since the mid-1990s shows that varying rates of civilian participation in defense policymaking generate an impact on defense policy directives commensurate with theoretical expectations. Defense policy implementation, however, has found varying degrees of success. Using new and systematic quantitative data, this study demonstrates that interoperability has made progress, defense-diplomacy coordination is at an intermediate stage, and externalism, albeit not a failure, is still far from a success. Externalism’s performance is a consequence of rising crime, deficient police forces, the pragmatism of civilian elites, and public support for law-and-order military missions.

Because of its early positive assessments, participatory budgeting (PB) has been and continues to be praised by several policymakers, and the Brazilian model has become an institutional blueprint around the world. No one questions the way the model has evolved in Brazilian municipalities with a long tradition of PB, but it was institutionalized there through practice and not through state legislation. It is thus highly permeable to political will and evolving ideas. Looking at the case of Belo Horizonte, where it was implemented in 1993, this study argues that while the political rhetoric of PB has remained central to political discourse over time, a significant but gradual policy change has occurred in practice. This change has important implications: not only does it have an impact on the policy outcomes of PB, but it also contributes to delegitimating the process for its participants, abetting its gradual deinstitutionalization.

It has normally been argued that because compulsory voting systems present higher turnout rates relative to voluntary voting systems, they do not generate as many biases between different groups of voters. This article qualifies that view. It argues that in cases in which compulsory voting does not ensure near-universal participation, there is no certainty that switching to voluntary voting will increase inequalities. This issue is examined by looking at Chile, a democracy that moved from compulsory voting to voluntary voting in 2012. The research finds that while the reform generated class bias in urban districts, it also substantially reduced age bias and, in national elections, equalized participation between small and large districts. The conclusion is that abandoning compulsory voting does not necessarily increase turnout biases, since much depends on the structure of preexisting biases and how these are conditioned by particular electoral institutions.

This article analyzes the constitution of dockworkers’ power and its impact on trade union strategy in recent labor disputes in Chile and Colombia. Dockworkers’ strategic location in the economies of both countries would predict a high degree of shop-floor power among both groups. In practice, however, Colombian dock-workers had far less shop-floor power than their Chilean counterparts, as a result of mitigating social and political factors. Consequently, they developed a strategy this study terms human rights unionism, relying on external allies and lawsuits for leverage, rather than shop-floor action. Dockworkers in Chile, by contrast, adopted a strategy termed class struggle unionism, relying on nationally and internationally coordinated shop-floor action. This article therefore proposes an expanded model of workers’ structural power, incorporating the roles of state and society to better account for power differentials and divergent strategic pathways among workers who share a common position in the economic system.

This study explores the evolution of the Green Grants program, run by Brazil’s Ministry of Environment, as a means for developing the concept of bureaucratic activism. When the Workers’ Party first took office in 2003, many social movement actors joined the government, especially in that agency. After 2007, however, most of these activists left the government. At the same time, the ministry substituted thousands of temporary employees for permanent civil servants. Surprisingly, this study finds that these public employees carried forward the environmentalist cause, even when this required contesting the priorities of superiors. Examining their attitudes and practices leads to a definition of activism as the proactive pursuit of opportunities to defend contentious causes. The case study helps to develop this concept and to demonstrate that workers inside bureaucracies can engage in activist behavior. It also explores the effects of bureaucratic activism on environmental policymaking in Brazil.

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.

This study analyzes whether Guatemalan success with the kingpin decapitation strategy of bringing major drug traffickers to justice has accomplished its greater objectives of reducing cocaine trafficking and drug-related violence. The analysis finds little evidence of success for the first objective in Guatemala but notable success for the second. One of the few studies to examine the application of this strategy outside Mexico and Colombia, its findings are interpreted in light of their contrasting experiences. The article provides an overview of drug trafficking in Guatemala and concise studies of two of its most important organizations targeted by the kingpin strategy.

Scholars of Brazil’s public health system commonly note the intertwined roles that federal, state, and municipal governments play in delivering care, yet few studies systematically examine varying service performance in areas with overlapping mandates, such as state capitals. This study addresses that gap by developing and analyzing a novel measure of municipal primary care provision that accounts for the proportion of the population without access to private services in 11 large capital cities, then comparing them to the noncapital municipalities in their states. The study finds that capitals generally underperform the noncapital municipalities in primary service delivery. It then draws on a comparative case study in two major capitals, Salvador and Belo Horizonte, and their encompassing states to explore how a history of cooperative or adversarial relations between state and local governments conditions the impact of partisanship, participatory institutions, and public health activists on primary care delivery.

How does international migration affect political parties’ electoral strategies in the sending countries? This article argues that remittances help political parties decide whom to target during elections. Drawing from theories of vote targeting and those on the effects of remittances, this study addresses how political parties’ electoral strategies follow the specific characteristics of remittance recipients. Using individual-level data from Mexico’s 2006 presidential elections, the results show that receiving remittances had a significant impact on experiencing electoral targeting, especially by the then-incumbent PAN. This study reveals the importance of remittances in shaping the strategies of Mexican political parties.

The institutionalization of community participation in the context of policing has become increasingly common in Latin America as a means of addressing the seemingly intractable increase in crime and insecurity. The creation of formal spaces for community participation in security differs markedly from how police forces have historically operated. Moreover, opening spaces for citizen input and oversight could potentially limit an executive’s control over the police, an important political tool. Why, then, do politicians sometimes turn to “participatory security” when reforming the police? This article argues that politicians choose participation as a safety valve to disaggregate societal discontent, particularly when police-society relations are fractious and police capacity and resources are low. Drawing on qualitative evidence from Buenos Aires Province, São Paulo State, and Colombia, this study demonstrates that participation can serve a range of strategic purposes, which, in turn, shape the institutional design of the participatory mechanism.

A significant proportion of the population in Latin America depends on the informal economy and lacks adequate protection against a variety of economic risks. This article suggests that economic vulnerability affects the way individuals relate to political parties. Given the truncated structure of welfare states in the region, citizens in the informal sector receive lower levels of social security benefits and face higher economic uncertainty. This vulnerability makes it difficult for voters to establish strong programmatic linkages with political parties because partisan platforms and policies do not necessarily represent their interests and needs. Using cross-national microlevel data, this study shows that individuals living in informality are skeptical about state social policy efforts and exhibit weaker partisan attachments. The findings suggest that effective political representation of disadvantaged groups remains a challenge in Latin American democracies.

Contending rationales of peace and conflict coexist between countries and within regional spaces as conditions that motivate or constrain militarized behaviors. While the idea of balancing is still a relevant concept to understand contemporary security in South America, the region produces patterns of a nascent security community. This article argues that the regional repertoire of foreign and security policy practices draws on a hybrid security governance mechanism. The novelty brought by the cumulative interaction among South American countries is that the coexistence turns into a hybrid between both practices and discourses. To explain how hybrid formations are produced, this study analyzes the most empirically intense and academically controversial political and security interactions from interstate relations in the two security complexes in the region, the Southern Cone and the Northern Andes.

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.

In many developing countries with weak formal institutions, the protection of state actors is essential for organized criminal activities and illicit markets to emerge and thrive. This article examines the relationship between the state’s regulation of drug trafficking and its associated violence in highly fragmented markets. It argues that political competition influences coordination among the police, generating different types of regulatory regimes. Police with greater coordination implement protection rackets that curb violence; uncoordinated police carry out particularistic negotiations with drug traffickers that exacerbate criminal violence. This argument is illustrated with a subnational comparison of two Argentine provinces that experienced a similar drug market expansion with different patterns of violence. These cases show how corrupt states can obtain relative order in highly fragmented drug markets, and illustrate police influence in shaping the evolution of drug dealing in metropolitan areas.

Previous research examining selection to legislative committees has assumed that the impact of constituency preferences on committee assignments is due to the incentives for individual legislators to use their committee seats to increase their personal chances of re-election. Examining the case of the Mexican Chamber of Deputies (where legislators were, until recently, barred from re-election), this study argues that the impact of constituency preferences on selection to committees also occurs because parties have incentives for their members to use committee assignments to increase the party’s chances of being re-elected. Analysis of assignments to 11 committees over 4 legislative terms provides support for the argument. These findings reinforce previous research arguing that concerns with constituency representation and its impact on re-election also apply to political parties and not solely to individual legislators.

What explains the remarkable resilience of pension regulation in postauthoritarian Chile, even after decades of majoritarian voter discontent and growing international and domestic criticism of Pinochet’s pioneering private capitalization system? This puzzling outcome can be understood only by looking at the combined effect of the pension industry’s long-term power-building investments and its short-term political actions to outmaneuver state and societal challengers. Engaging new theoretical developments in political economy and historical institutionalism, this study examines the long-term process by which the previously nonexistent Chilean pension industry expanded and leveraged its power during key episodes of open contestation. The analysis of pension regulation in Chile between the 1980s and the 2010s illustrates the importance of placing business power in time, motivating new rounds of theory building in the quest to address the perennial question of how business gets what it wants in the political arena.

This article challenges the conventional wisdom that enthusiastic state support is a prerequisite to building strong participatory institutions. Through an analysis of Colombia’s planning councils, this study develops the concept of the societydriven participatory institution, in which civil society actors, rather than the state, undertake the core tasks involved in implementing participatory institutions. The article argues that while state neglect limits their involvement in decisionmaking, society-driven participatory institutions can still develop important policymaking roles in agenda setting and in monitoring and evaluating public policy.