This article draws on participant observation research in a Civil Police station (delegacia) in the city of São Paulo, Brazil, to disentangle existing notions of police resistance to democratic change. Through processes such as “talk of castigation,” the Civil Police reproduce three kinds of authority—public, institutional, and criminal—that influence how police work is done. These authorities are antagonistic, battling over different normative worldviews and notions of acceptable police practice, and these antagonisms result in police work that is often a conflicted amalgam of democratic, institutional, and criminal pressures. The slow pace of democratic change at this police station emerges from not one but multiple modes of resistance that complicate how police can do their work.

El presente artículo reflexiona sobre una de las maneras a través de las cuales la sociedad boliviana contemporánea ha intentado resolver el brusco vaciamiento de la concepción de lo nacional en la era neoliberal. El artículo argumenta que la hoja de coca ha sido uno de los elementos más importantes en llenar este vacío. Su poder simbólico ha hecho posible bajo determinadas circunstancias (políticas, sociales y culturales) pasar de ser un elemento clave de representación local a otro nacional. Asimismo, la hoja de coca contiene la siempre problemática relación entre lo local y la política global de su erradicación. Precisamente, uno de los aspectos que contribuye al fortalecimiento de la hoja de coca como símbolo en determinado momento es la lucha de los productores de coca en contra de tales políticas. Como marco de referencia de la argumentación se utiliza la noción de sistema-mundo de Immanuel Wallerstein, la idea de globalización de Thomas Barnett y la concepción de representación de Ernesto Laclau.

El artículo analiza la movilización y autogestión de empresas recuperadas por sus trabajadores en Argentina, en tanto fenómeno surgido en el contexto de la crisis socioeconómica de dicho país (2001–2002), aunque vigente hasta la actualidad. Nos centramos en aquellos procesos y mecanismos que favorecen la autogestión. Específicamente, analizamos la relación entre el proceso de movilización y el proceso de inserción económica en el mercado por parte de estas experiencias colectivas. Estudiamos, en primer término, la presencia de mecanismos como la articulación política (correduría), la atribución de oportunidades, los cambios de identidad, la certificación y la competencia dados en el contexto argentino actual y que configuran este movimiento social. En segundo término, analizamos las estrategias de autogestión que implementan los trabajadores y la manera en que las mismas están condicionadas por las características de la movilización social.

This study examines the effect of democratization on a key education reform across three Mexican states. Previous scholarship has found a positive effect of electoral competition on social spending, as leaders seek to improve their reelection prospects by delivering services to voters. However, the evidence presented here indicates that more money has not meant better educational outcomes in Mexico. Rather, new and vulnerable elected leaders are especially susceptible to the demands of powerful interest groups at the expense of accountability to constituents. In this case, the dominant teachers' union has used its leverage to exact greater control over the country's resource-rich merit pay program for teachers. It has exploited this control to increase salaries and decrease standards for advancement up the remuneration ladder. The evidence suggests that increased electoral competition has led to the empowerment of entrenched interests rather than voters, with an overall negative effect on education.

Este texto aborda, a partir da estruturação efuncionamento de canais institucionais, a cooperação e influência norte-americana sobre o Exército Brasileiro na década de 1940 e início de 1950. Estes canais foram as comissões militares mistas que funcionaram em Washington e no Rio de Janeiro a partir de 1942, os programas de visita e treinamento de militares brasileiros nos EUA e os programas de assistência norte-americana às instituições de ensino militar no Brasil. Tais programas, somados às transferências de material bélico, resultaram numa forte influência organizacional, doutrinária e política norteamericana sobre as Forças Armadas brasileiras, particularmente sobre o exército. Tal influência, contudo, também gerou resistências, adaptações e tensões no corpo de oficiais.

Latin American women's accession to executive and legislative office has been accompanied by the widespread expectation that their participation will change policies in ways that benefit women's lives. This article uses an in-depth case study of sexual health reform in Argentina to explore the leadership and coalition-building activities of key political actors. As a case study, the article moves beyond critical mass theories, which argue that women's greater presence will result in gender policy reform. Rather, the article demonstrates that women's inclusion, even at high percentages, generates statutory change only when specific leaders build momentum for reform through issue networks and diverse coalitions. More important, leaders must mobilize resources within civil society and across government branches to ensure that successful policies are enacted. Whether Latin American women enjoy material changes thus depends on whether their leaders are committed to passing and implementing gender reforms.

How does civil society affect support for the political system during times of political crises? Some argue that civil society strengthens support for political systems by increasing trust and participation. Yet recent scholarship demonstrates that civil society can also facilitate mobilization and dissent, which may undermine support for the political system, especially in times of crisis. We test these competing claims using individual-level data from a country in the midst of a major political crisis: Bolivia in 2004. We find that membership in civil society organizations leads to higher levels of diffuse support for the political system even during a crisis—and even among those who have recently participated in protest. Civil society, however, is not associated with higher support for government during the crisis. Despite extremely high levels of mobilization, extreme dissatisfaction with government, and evidence that membership in associations actively facilitates political protest, civil society continues to be positively associated with support for the political system.

Coffee production in Guatemala has undergone a dramatic transformation over the last twenty years. Changing tastes among northern consumers have driven new demand for high-quality Strictly Hard Bean coffees that are grown above 4,500 feet. As a result, many of the large, lower-altitude plantations long synonymous with coffee in Guatemala have abandoned production, moving into rubber, African palm, and other crops. At least 50,000 mostly smallholding farmers in the highlands have begun growing coffee to fill this market niche. Building on a capabilities approach to development, this article examines how smallholding Guatemalan producers' desires for a better future orient their engagement with this new market. Most of these small producers live in very modest circumstances with limited resources and opportunities. Yet, as they describe it, coffee represents an opportunity in a context of few opportunities, an imperfect means to a marginally better life.

This article examines the actions that millions of new-poor Argentine citizens took when confronted with impoverishment during the country's economic crisis in 2002. Drawing on World Bank and Latinobarómetro survey data, it explores how their distinct understandings of citizenship; their possession of human, social, physical, cultural, and financial capital; and aspects of their middle-class identity shaped the very specific forms of resistance that they adopted compared to the structural poor. It provides insights into why some citizens perceived their hardship as a political problem, formed collective grievances, and manifested their resistance through protest, while others located the causes of hardship in their own deficiencies and tended to confine their responses to individual self-improvement strategies. It also finds that differences in personal biographies, experiences of poverty, and the changing spaces available to protest influenced individuals' choice of action.

Although it is widely acknowledged that Althusser's writings had a lasting impact in Latin America, the French philosopher's reception in the region has been underresearched. The present article investigates the impact of Althusserianism on the cultural politics of the Argentine New Left during the late 1960s and early 1970s. First, I survey the intellectual trajectory of Juan Carlos Portantiero, a New Left intellectual, scholar, and political activist whose writings left a mark on the Argentine historiography of Peronism. Second, I turn to Los Libros (1969–1976), a journal of cultural criticism run by a 1960 cohort of internationally renowned Argentine intellectuals. I analyze the group's Althusser-inspired intervention into contemporaneous debates on the meaning of Peronism and the link between aesthetics and politics. I close by registering the productive influence of Althusserianism on Argentine intellectual production after the country's transition to democracy in 1983.