Particularistic Political Institutions and Tax Neutrality in Latin America*

2019 ◽  
pp. 144-171
Author(s):  
Mark Hallerberg ◽  
Carlos Scartascini
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Tax Neutrality

Civil sphere and democracy in Latin America

2020 ◽  
pp. 23-40
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Ch. Alexander ◽  
Carlo Tognato
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
The United States ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Global Context ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Class Stratification ◽  
Civil Sphere ◽  
The Everyday

The purpose of the article is to demonstrate that the civil spheres of Latin America remain in force, even when under threat, and to expand the method of theorizing democracy, understanding it not only as a state form, but also as a way of life. Moreover, the task of the authors goes beyond the purely application of the theory of the civil sphere in order to emphasize the relevance not only in practice, but also in the theory of democratic culture and institutions of Latin America. This task requires decolonizing the arrogant attitude of North theorists towards democratic processes outside the United States and Europe. The peculiarities of civil spheres in Latin America are emphasized. It is argued that over the course of the nineteenth century the non-civil institutions and value spheres that surrounded civil spheres deeply compromised them. The problems of development that pockmarked Latin America — lagging economies, racial and ethnic and class stratification, religious strife — were invariably filtered through the cultural aspirations and institutional patterns of civil spheres. The appeal of the theory of the civil sphere to the experience of Latin America reveals the ambitious nature of civil society and democracy on new and stronger foundations. Civil spheres had extended significantly as citizens confronted uncomfortable facts, collectively searched for solutions, and envisioned new courses of collective action. However when populism and authoritarianism advance, civil understandings of legitimacy come under pressure from alternative, anti-democratic conceptions of motives, social relations, and political institutions. In these times, a fine-grained understanding of the competitive dynamics between civil, non-civil, and anti-civil becomes particularly critical. Such a vision is constructively applied not only to the realities of Latin America, but also in a wider global context. The authors argue that in order to understand the realities and the limits of populism and polarization, civil sphere scholars need to dive straight into the everyday life of civil communities, setting the civil sphere theory (CST) in a more ethnographic, “anthropological” mode.

The Portuguese ‘New State’ and the Diffusion of Authoritarian Models in Interwar Latin America

2021 ◽  
pp. 002200942110660
Author(s):  
António Costa Pinto
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Comparative Research ◽  
Political System ◽  
Radical Right ◽  
System Model ◽  
Research Approach ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Power Capacity ◽  
Reform Processes

As an authoritarian ‘gravity centre’ in the interwar period, the Portuguese New State was not the product of strong propaganda or power capacity. Its force of attraction derived, essentially, from having an international means of diffusion: important segments of the Catholic Church's organizations, its associated intellectual politicians, and particularly from having led a corporatist and authoritarian political system model. How and why did Salazar's New State inspire some of the new political institutions proposed by radical right-wing elites or created by many of these regimes? This article tackles this issue by adopting a transnational and comparative research approach, paying particular attention to the primary mediators of its diffusion and analyzing institutional reform processes in selected processes of crises and transitions to authoritarianism in Latin America.

Part Three The Separation of Powers, 9 The President: Problems of Executive Overreach

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Espinosa Manuel José Cepeda ◽  
Landau David
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
National Security ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Separation Of Powers ◽  
Executive Power ◽  
Presidential Power ◽  
Political Crises ◽  
Executive Discretion ◽  
Historical Role

As in much of Latin America, the Colombian president has historically been extremely powerful. The 1991 constitutional designers sought to achieve greater balance in the separation of powers, in part by weakening presidential power. This chapter considers the Court’s attempts to limit executive discretion and protect against excessive amalgamations of executive power. Even in areas where presidents have historically enjoyed almost plenary power, such as national security, the Court has attempted to place limits on presidential power. Most significant in this regard is the Court’s aggressive and successful jurisprudence limiting presidential use of states of exception. The Court has imposed jurisprudential criteria limiting states of exception to true and unexpected social and political crises, thus greatly reducing its historical role in day-to-day Colombian life and forcing political institutions to confront most problems under a situation of normality.

Presidential Institutions and Electoral Participation in Concurrent Elections in Latin America

2017 ◽  
Vol 66 (3) ◽  
pp. 541-559 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miguel Carreras
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Voter Turnout ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Presidential Elections ◽  
Electoral Participation ◽  
Electoral Rules ◽  
Legislative Elections ◽  
Presidential Candidates ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Concurrent Elections

Previous studies of voter turnout in Latin America have found weak and inconsistent evidence for the link between political institutions and electoral participation. In this article, I use data from an expanded dataset of voter turnout in Latin America (1980–2016) to show that institutions do have an impact on citizens’ decisions on whether or not to participate in concurrent elections. Whereas previous studies analyzed the effect of legislative institutions on voter turnout, this article estimates a series of models that demonstrate the impact of presidential institutions and the political context surrounding presidential elections on electoral participation. The findings suggest that when first-order (presidential) and second-order (legislative) elections take place concurrently, electoral participation is influenced primarily by presidential institutions (term length, presidential powers, and electoral rules) and the electoral context in which the presidential elections take place (effective number of presidential candidates).

scholarly journals Political Institutions and Street Protests in Latin America

2011 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 340-365 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fabiana Machado ◽  
Carlos Scartascini ◽  
Mariano Tommasi
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Political Process ◽  
The Political ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Country Level ◽  
Level Information ◽  
Alternative Means ◽  
Latin American Countries

In this article, the authors argue that where institutions are strong, actors are more likely to participate in the political process through institutionalized arenas, while where they are weak, protests and other unconventional means of participation become more appealing. The authors explore this relationship empirically by combining country-level measures of institutional strength with individual-level information on protest participation in seventeen Latin American countries. The authors find evidence that weaker political institutions are associated with a higher propensity to use alternative means for expressing preferences, that is, to protest.

Political Recruitment and Candidate Selection in Latin America

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter M. Siavelis ◽  
Scott Morgenstern
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Candidate Selection ◽  
Selection Processes ◽  
Political Outcomes ◽  
Crisis Of Representation ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Inclusive Processes ◽  
Recruitment And Selection

Candidate recruitment and selection is a complex and opaque process that drives political outcomes and processes. Further, the process of candidate selection is notoriously difficult to study because of its informal nature, the multiplicity of actors involved, and because politicians may prefer to obfuscate their motives when asked about their decisions. Still, the literature has made advances in understanding recruitment and selection (R&S) and this article explores this crucial and understudied topic with respect to Latin America. Much literature has considered the importance of political institutions to candidate selection, but these explanations alone are insufficient. Analyses of political institutions have significantly advanced in the region, but in isolation, their explanatory power can fall short, as evident in examples where similar institutional frameworks yield different outcomes . This suggests the need to include informal processes when analyzing candidate recruitment and selection procedures. Then, armed with a more complete understanding of the processes, we can better assess the impacts of candidate choice on political outcomes. There is extensive work on recruitment and candidate selection in Latin America that focuses on executives, legislators, and gender. Each of these themes provides multiple examples of how outcomes are determined through a combination of formal institutions and informal practices. . The region’s politics have been trending towards more formal, open, and inclusive processes. This is largely a result of the belief that there is a crisis of representation for which parties are to blame. Reformists have thus championed more inclusive selection processes as an antidote to the problem of low-quality representation. By themselves, however, these reforms are insufficient to enhance the quality of democracy and they can have high associated costs for the democratic system. Therefore, the multiple consequences of the R&S process—intended and hidden—should raise caution for scholars and reformers.

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leslie A. Schwindt-Bayer
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Gender Equality ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Research Agenda ◽  
Political Context ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Women's Representation ◽  
Future Research Agenda ◽  
Women’S Representation

In the concluding chapter, Lesile A. Schwindt-Bayer brings together the findings from the arena and country chapters to draw general conclusions about gender and representation in Latin America. She highlights that the chapters show the weakness of cultural and socioeconomic explanations for increases in women’s representation, and instead, they demonstrate the importance of political institutions and the current political context as causes of women’s representation. The chapters show that the consequences of women’s representation are mixed. Women in office promote women’s issues and have worked to improve social policy, but little evidence exists that women are transforming the gendered nature of political arenas. Additionally, the presence of women in different arenas of representation has improved attitudes toward gender equality and democracy but to relatively small degrees. The chapter concludes by describing areas where more research is needed to help set a future research agenda on gender and representation in Latin America.

Pandemic will worsen Latin America's gender inequality

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Gender Inequality ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Poverty Line ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Gender Parity ◽  
Economic Commission ◽  
Labour Participation ◽  
The Caribbean

Significance However, according to the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), the coronavirus pandemic may undo more than a decade’s progress on labour participation, with a disproportionate effect on poorer women. Impacts Even pre-pandemic, one in four women compared with one in ten men lacked an income of their own; this will worsen. The number of women below the poverty line increased by almost one-fifth in 2020, which will affect families and children in particular. Some LAC countries are approaching gender parity in political institutions such as parliaments.

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