Politicians often buy votes with impunity. Brazil outlawed vote buying for many years, but prosecutions were rare. However, popular pressure mounted against the practice in the late 1990s. Over one million Brazilians signed a petition against vote buying, leading to the country’s first law by popular initiative passed by the national legislature. The law not only surmounted key obstacles to the popular initiative process but also dramatically increased prosecutions for clientelism during elections. Campaign handouts became the top reason that politicians were ousted in Brazil, with over a thousand removals from office. This study examines the role of civil society and the judiciary in the enactment and implementation of this important legislation.

Late in 1982, elections were held in Brazil for governors, congressional representatives in both houses, state legislators, mayors, and city council members. According to many observers, they were the first truly free elections in twenty years, the first unhampered by the ominous presence of an institutional act that had overridden the Brazilian constitution.

América Latina es la región más afectada por la delincuencia en el mundo. Poco, sin embargo, se sabe sobre los costos sociales que esta genera. En este estudio, se emplearon seis rondas del Barómetro de las Américas (2004–2014) y el método de emparejamiento estadístico con el objetivo de estimar el costo de la victimización sobre la percepción de inseguridad, capital social y percepción de la democracia para 16 países de la región. Los resultados muestran que el costo de la victimización se expande a diversos aspectos sociales, afectando en mayor proporción a las mujeres. Además de incrementar la percepción de inseguridad y reducir la legitimidad y confianza en las instituciones encargadas de luchar contra la delincuencia, la desconfianza se desplaza a instituciones sin este rol, a terceros y afecta la propia percepción del barrio. En lo positivo, la victimización incentiva la participación en organizaciones, aunque especialmente en los grupos de menores ingresos y mayores recursos comunales.

Este artigo investiga o impacto da diversidade de denominações religiosas de cunho evangélico no nível municipal sobre a proporção de votos obtidos pelos deputados eleitos que representam esse grupo demográfico. Para alcançar tais propósitos, utilizamos dados demográficos e eleitorais, assim como relativos à composição da bancada evangélica no congresso para as eleições de 2014. Comparamos o efeito da diversidade confessional nos municípios entre dois grupos de deputados eleitos: evangélicos e não-evangélicos. Verificamos que quanto o maior número de igrejas evangélicas com representação no município, maior a proporção de votos obtida pelos deputados evangélicos. O controle do efeito da diversidade confessional no desempenho eleitoral pelos outros parlamentares também nos permitiu confirmar que o efeito observado era exclusivo de deputados evangélicos, não sendo reproduzido em outros representantes. Os resultados aportam evidências empíricas consistentes a favor da hipótese de que existe complementaridade entre denominações religiosas no que se refere ao voto.

Sociolinguistics, itself a relatively young field of scholarly endeavor, more and more has been reflecting an interest in Mexican Americans insofar as they, like blacks and American Indians, constitute a distinct linguistic-social group that is grappling with the problems common to poor ethnic minorities in the United States. This paper intends to survey the literature existing to date on the Chicano speech community as viewed from a sociocultural vantage point.

Se plantea en este texto que la democracia surgida de la transición chilena tiene un carácter elitista tanto en términos de los conceptos que la inspiran, como de las prácticas impulsadas por la cúpula del poder político. Esa concepción está presente de modo transversal al arco político y hunde sus raíces en una tradición anterior a los años noventa, habiéndose reforzado recientemente. Ello no quiere decir que la participación ciudadana no esté presente. Antes bien, está presente en múltiples prácticas, no sólo de la sociedad civil organizada, sino también de programas públicos de ejecución local. Sin embargo, el modelo de gobernabilidad surgido de los acuerdos de la transición democrática a fines de los años ochenta ha impedido hasta la fecha que dichas prácticas se proyecten adecuadamente en el plano político. La sociedad chilena parece estar dando muestras que esa proyección es una necesidad política y que lo que hasta hoy ha producido estabilidad no necesariamente seguirá haciéndolo en el futuro, pues el sistema político va perdiendo representatividad.

In recent years, citizen-run anti-crime organizations have brought important challenges to Mexico and other Latin American countries. Under what circumstances are citizens more likely to seek out their neighbors to confront crime directly? I argue that when citizens do not trust state authorities, their perception of the trustworthiness of their community can increase their likelihood of engaging in anti-crime organization attempts. I analyze data from Mexico and find that an average citizen’s perception of the trustworthiness of his/her neighbors correlates with his/her likelihood of engaging in an anti-crime organization attempt. Further, consistent with the main argument of this paper, I find this link to be stronger among those who distrust the police. These findings contribute by bringing back citizens’ relation to the state as an important moderating force in society, and helping us understand when social trust can translate into controversial forms of state substitution.

Este artículo describe y explica la sub representación de mujeres en los gabinetes ministeriales de Ecuador entre los años 1979 y 2015. A partir de una base de datos inédita y recurriendo a un modelo de regresión lineal, el artículo sostiene que el incremento tanto en el número de legisladoras como en el tamaño de la bancada legislativa oficialista, inciden positivamente sobre la presencia de mujeres en los gabinetes ministeriales. Adicionalmente el artículo discute la importancia política de los ministerios asignados a mujeres a lo largo del período analizado. En este aspecto, el principal hallazgo empírico que se presenta indica que, a pesar del drástico aumento de ministras durante los gobiernos de Rafael Correa, la histórica tendencia de colocar mujeres en Carteras de Estado de menor importancia política continúa en vigencia.

This article examines the clandestine connections between participants in the illicit drug trade and members of state security forces to understand how they impact everyday understandings of the law. Drawing on a unique combination of long-term ethnographic fieldwork in a poor, high-crime district in Argentina and wiretapped conversations drawn from a court case involving a drug trafficking group active in the same area, we find that traffickers use illicit relationships to maintain economic control of the territory, and that collusion fosters widespread cynicism about law enforcement among residents. This article expands the literature on the covert relationships between drug trade participants and agents of the state by detailing the inner workings of collusion. Furthermore, it analyzes residents’ perceptions of police complicity as an underexplored source of legal cynicism. Finally, it offers a methodological blueprint of how to access and analyze data that capture state actions usually hidden from public view.

Decentralization has been considered a tool of democracy promotion because of its ability to improve citizen participation and increase equity by allocating resources to long-neglected populations. I examine these claims by focusing on decentralization's effects for indigenous and Afro-Latino individuals in fifteen Latin American countries. Using AmericasBarometer survey data provided by the Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP), I first analyze how the inclusion of ethnic citizens in local government affects attitudes that are considered crucial for democratic consolidation, such as satisfaction with democratic governance. I then assess whether decentralization has increased inclusion by examining how political, fiscal, and administrative decentralization affect ethnic individuals' participation and engagement in local government. The analyses demonstrate the limits of decentralizing reforms for democratization. I find that the inclusion of marginalized citizens is not substantially enhanced by decentralization, which is especially important given the other significant result of this study: that local inclusion increases ethnic individuals' support for democracy. The results suggest that individual reserves of social capital may be most important for enhancing local inclusion, and hence support for democracy.

Environmentalism in Guatemala has emerged in conjunction with trends toward regional democratization and international economic globalization. These origins have helped form and continue to shape the organizational structure, membership, and policy orientation of the movement as well as its strategies and tactics for policy implementation. The ecology movement became closely associated with party politics during the democratization of the 1980s and eventually established an almost symbiotic relationship with the administration of the Partido Democracia Cristiana under Vinicio Cerezo Arévalo (1986-1990). But this early alliance with the Democracia Cristiana eventually weakened the movement's ability to make independent policy decisions and to protect itself from attacks by opposing parties. The relationship between the environmental movement and the state also reinforced the movement's dependence on international financing. These party and international connections have limited the organizational scope of the movement, with the result being that the ecological movement in Guatemala today remains small and urban-based and lacks a strong grassroots foundation.

Este artículo describe el proceso que llevó a Michelle Bachelet a la presidencia de la república en Chile, las condiciones que lo hicieron posible y las tensiones que vivió el país tras su instalación en el poder en el plano político y también cultural. Se pregunta por el impacto de tener una mujer en la máxima jerarquía política en una sociedad que vive las tensiones de la modernidad y por la medida en que su liderazgo profundizará las transformaciones sociales en curso.

Television is an important political tool in Latin America. In recognition of its ability to shape public opinion and influence political behavior, Brazilian electoral authorities provide political parties with free television airtime in the weeks preceding elections. While Brazil’s publicly financed electoral program levels the playing field between parties, it may contribute to intraparty resource disparities. This article contends that racial considerations influence how party elites distribute television airtime and thus contribute to the political marginalization of Afro-Brazilians. Using original data from Rio de Janeiro’s 2012 municipal elections, it shows that party officials provide Afro-Brazilian candidates significantly less airtime than their white counterparts, even after controlling for theoretically important nonracial candidate characteristics. Moreover, it shows that there are racial differences in how candidates use the airtime they are awarded. Afro-Brazilian candidates are nearly ten times more likely than whites to focus on racial issues in their campaign ads. These results provide new insight about why Afro-Brazilians are rarely elected to public office and, when elected, the types of issues they may address.

O Brasil vem experimentando nas duas últimas décadas mudanças significativas com a queda da desigualdade, estabilidade económica, ampliação das oportunidades no mercado de trabalho formal e ampliação da escolarização. O artigo procura analisar o acesso ao ensino superior dos jovens de 18 a 24 anos por raça e renda com o objetivo de provocar uma discussão sobre as desigualdades no contexto de expansão educacional e os alvos das ações afirmativas no ensino superior em vigor no país, em especial a adoção recente da reserva de vagas nas Instituições de Ensino Superior Federais. Os dados são oriundos da Pesquisa Nacional de Amostra Domiciliar (PNAD), realizada pelo Instituto Brasileiro de Estatística e Geografia (IBGE), nos anos de 1993, 1998, 2003, 2008 e 2011, anos que marcam momentos específicos das mudanças ocorridas nas desigualdades e no sistema educacional brasileiro.

The Catholic Church in Latin America was until the mid-1960s one of the most ignored topics of research in a neglected continent. It was not only overlooked by North Americans and Europeans; stranger still, it received only cursory attention from Latin American scholars. The meagre consideration it did attract was overwhelmingly historical in nature and frequently came from authors promoting or attacking particular religious beliefs and institutions. The controversy in Colombia over the persecution of the Protestants (Goff, 1965), and the dramatic events caused by the reactions of the Church to the Mexican revolution (Brown, 1964), stimulated a literature that was at times extremely biased.

Yet, it is not easy to explain the neglect of the Church in the literature since, unlike peasant leagues or guerrilla movements, it is not a novelty in the region. The Church was founded simultaneously with the Iberian societies; much of the culture of Latin America derives from within the Church and has evolved in relationship to it; social fields such as education and charity have always been heavily influenced by Church doctrine and organizations; and the vast majority of the population are declared Catholics. In addition the Church is a highly structured organization in a region of low organizational development; in all countries Catholic groups have been politically active and in some cases assumed the form of Christian Democratic parties (Williams, 1967) which have held power; and the political models currently being formulated in Brazil and Peru would appear to owe much of their content to traditional Catholic principles of hierarchy, paternalism, and corporate identity.