We examine here two Ecuadorian towns and the state's efforts to support their development through competitiveness initiatives. Neoliberal, economic globalization is often equated with the insecurities of market competition. However, economic policy makers do not foment competition as much as competitive advantage. Whereas competition requires individual know-how, competitive advantage often involves cooperating to improve the underlying factors that help whole groups of firms. In Ecuador, policies have sought to engineer competitive advantage by creating industrial clusters. In our study, the town of Atuntaqui embraced the idea of clusters, uniting firms to work with international consultants and the Ministry of Industry. The economy has improved, but wealth shows signs of consolidation. The comparative case is a mechanized indigenous craft economy in Otavalo. Exploring how Otavalo's development has generated a set of shared resources anchored in a market plaza, we argue that its economy is best understood as a cultural commons. The experiences of both places have shown that economic development must take explicit measures to defend such commons if the gains of strategic cooperation are to be sustained in the long run.

El régimen militar (1973–1990) ha sido investigado en diversos ámbitos: político, jurídico, institucional, económico, derechos humanos, mediático, entre otros. Sin embargo, poco se ha indagado respecto a los cambios y alteraciones que experimentó el entorno estético cotidiano como consecuencia de la dictadura. Menos aún se ha investigado sobre aquellas actividades culturales y/o manifestaciones artísticas que fueron promovidas o apoyadas por el régimen militar. Éstas, analizadas desde una perspectiva de conjunto, podrían dar cuenta de aquellos rasgos que marcaron su producción simbólica, ya sea promoviendo ciertos modos de ver, ritos y sensibilidades o reprimiendo aquellas prácticas e imaginarios propios del sistema democrático. El presente artículo considera algunos antecedentes del golpe estético que vivió Chile entre los años 1973 y 1975, como consecuencia del golpe militar generado el 11 de septiembre de 1973. La expresión golpe estético simboliza el proceso de transformación y cambio experimentado en aspectos de la vida cotidiana, producto del quiebre que se produjo con el proyecto socio-cultural de la Unidad Popular (UP).

I examine how domestic workers have fared legally and politically in post-transition democracies in Latin America. Paid domestic work employs more than 15 percent of the economically active female population in Latin America, yet national labor codes tend to mandate lower salaries and benefits and longer working hours to those working in this sector. They also suffer from race, gender, and class discrimination. Although organizations advocating for domestic workers have demanded equal rights, political actors in the region have been extremely reticent to respond to these demands. By analyzing domestic workers' legal rights across the region and process-tracing political reforms in Chile and Bolivia, I find that although elite resistance to change is a constant, under the right circumstances, domestic workers can gain legal reforms. Domestic workers' social allies are labor, feminist, and indigenous organizations; however, to get the attention of these allies, and consequently to pressure politicians, they must first organize autonomously and publicize their cause. Although leftist parties are more likely to be receptive to their cause, they need pressure to act on behalf of the needs of such a marginalized group. Once they do, however, they need not be majority parties to get the issue on the agenda. The key political battle is getting and keeping the issue of domestic workers' rights on the political agenda; once it goes to a vote, it is unlikely to be rejected.

In a recent article, Montero (2008) sought to clarify the determinants of foreign direct investment (FDI) in Latin America. Testing a number of competing hypotheses, he found that macroeconomic stability, as measured by the current account, had the most consistent effect on FDI flows across countries in the region. Although Montero was interested in the role of macroeconomic stability, he also explored the impact of governance factors, including human rights and regime type. His results suggest that the effects of rights and regime type are inconsistent. Briefly, in his models that focused on governance and cost-related factors, the coefficient for the terror scale (rights abuse) had a positive and significant effect in two of three trials; in the same trials, the coefficient for Polity IV (regime) was negative and statistically significant, which suggests that politically competitive regimes received less FDI. Nevertheless, when Montero modeled the effects of economic reform, rights abuse and regime type were no longer statistically significant (Montero 2008, Table 1). Given the inconclusive nature of his findings with regard to rights and regime type, and the ongoing controversy in the literature, a brief comment on his article is potentially instructive.

The striking development of Chilean public primary education during the nineteenth century has often been noted. Existing explanations emphasize industrialization and social change in shaping societal demand for schooling, and elite consensus, the role of individual leaders, and low levels of inequality and social heterogeneity in shaping the state's educational provision. This article complements existing state-centered arguments by showing that the institutions of local and regional administration were also crucial in transforming policy changes into real progress in primary education. As Chilean schooling spread and became systematized over the course of the nineteenth century, local state officials not only effectively carried out the state's educational policies but also refined it independently and even pushed for the deepening of educational development, and particularly the systematic control of schooling.

Aunque Nicaragua sea el país más pobre de Centroamérica, no cuenta con la tasa de mortalidad infantil más alta de la región. La más igualitaria distribución del ingreso en Nicaragua, en comparación con otros países centroamericanos, es un factor que favorece la relativamente baja mortalidad. Empero, la población indígena nicaragüense afronta grandes desventajas en casi todos los aspectos, aunque esto no se refleja en la desigualdad nacional por ser una población minoritaria. Aprovechando el censo de 2005 y la regresión binomial negativa, modelamos la mortalidad infantil. Mostramos cómo los niños indígenas tienen 33 por ciento más riesgo de muerte, e incluso controlando otros factores, la diferencia del riego es casi del 5 por ciento. Hasta ahora no existían investigaciones cuantitativas que compararan la mortalidad entre grupos étnicos en Nicaragua. En nuestro estudio mostramos que los indígenas nicaragüenses están en desventaja a pesar de la baja desigualdad a nivel nacional.

We present a new data set on the left-right placement of major Brazilian political parties serving in the first five legislatures under democracy. On the basis of survey responses of more than 850 federal legislators from 1990 to 2005, we generate party placements on an ideological scale where 1 = “left” and 10 = “right.” The data are rescaled to account for idiosyncrasies in responses as well as variation in use of the survey scale across time. We discuss both the validity and the reliability of our new measures by comparing them to other data sets. We further discuss three substantive issues that the data reveal. First, ideological polarization has moderated over time. Second, the median legislator has shifted noticeably to the left and now stands equidistant from the influential PT and PSDB, the parties that have anchored recent presidential elections. Third, Brazilian political elites continue to shun self-identifications associated with political conservatism or neoliberalism.