Social Communication and Voting Behavior

2020 ◽  
pp. 3-30
Author(s):  
Andy Baker ◽  
Barry Ames ◽  
Lúcio Rennó
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Social Communication ◽  
Peer Effects ◽  
Voting Behavior ◽  
Political Discussion ◽  
Latin American Politics ◽  
Elite Level ◽  
Political Act

This chapter provides an overview of the nature of voting behavior and election outcomes in Latin America. Armed only with vertical understandings of political intermediation, research on Latin American voters “conceives the citizen as an independently self-contained decision-maker,” ignoring voters' embeddedness in peer networks. For this reason, even when referring to groups and so-called social factors, research on Latin American voting behavior is dominated by economistic and psychological approaches that see voters as social isolates. The chapter explains that the book illuminates the influence of horizontal social networks and political discussion on a central political act, voting behavior, in Latin America. Beneath all the elite-level strategizing, messaging, and maneuvering that plays out through vertical intermediaries lies a world of social communication and peer effects that scholars of Latin American politics have roundly ignored.

Clientelism as the Purchase of Social Influence

2020 ◽  
pp. 187-206
Author(s):  
Andy Baker ◽  
Barry Ames ◽  
Lúcio Rennó
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Panel Study ◽  
Political Discussion ◽  
Activity Change ◽  
Informal Networks ◽  
Positive Information ◽  
Potential Yield ◽  
Endogeneity Bias

This chapter assesses elite behavior, demonstrating that clientelistic party machines try to pay off hubs — that is, voters with large political discussion networks who frequently engage in persuasion. In seeking to buy votes, the best strategy a party can pursue is to target citizens who are well-connected opinion leaders in informal networks. These voters represent the machine's highest potential yield because they can magnify the effect of the payoff by diffusing positive information about the machine through their large social networks. The chapter uses the Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP) and the Mexico 2006 Panel Study to show that party machines do target well-connected voters throughout Latin America. It also shows that a finding central to previous theories — namely, that loyal partisans are the most likely targets of clientelism — is driven by omitted-variable and endogeneity bias. In other words, scholarly expectations of party activity change when one recognizes that parties operate in a world of horizontally networked voters.

An Introduction to Gender and Representation in Latin America

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leslie A. Schwindt-Bayer
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Gender Inequality ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
Latin American Politics ◽  
Gender And Politics ◽  
Women's Representation ◽  
Political Crises ◽  
Women’S Representation ◽  
And Gender

In this introductory chapter of Gender and Representation in Latin America, Leslie A. Schwindt-Bayer argues that gender inequality in political representation in Latin America is rooted in institutions and the democratic challenges and political crises facing Latin American countries. She situates the book in two important literatures—one on Latin American politics and democratic institutions, the other on gender and politics—and then explains how the book will explore the ways that institutions and democratic challenges and political crises moderate women’s representation and gender inequality. She introduces the book’s framework of analyzing the causes and consequences of women’s representation, overviews the organization of the volume, and summarizes the main arguments of the chapters.

Elites, Elite Settlements, and Revolutionary Movements in Latin America, 1950–1980: Introduction

1994 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 543-574
Author(s):  
Timothy P. Wickham-Crowley
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
American Politics ◽  
Social Revolution ◽  
Latin American Politics ◽  
Revolutionary Movements

Social revolutions as well as revolutionary movements have recently held great interest for both sociopolitical theorists and scholars of Latin American politics. Before we can proceed with any useful analysis, however, we must distinguish between these two related but not identical phenomena. Adapting Theda Skocpol’s approach, we can define social revolutions as “rapid, basic transformations of a society’s state and class structures; and they are accompanied and in part carried through by” mass-based revolts from below, sometimes in cross-class coalitions (Skocpol 1979: 4; Wickham-Crowley 1991:152). In the absence of such basic sociopolitical transformations, I will not speak of (social) revolution or of a revolutionary outcome, only about revolutionary movements, exertions, projects, and so forth. Studies of the failures and successes of twentieth-century Latin American revolutions have now joined the ongoing theoretical debate as to whether such outcomes occur due to society- or movement-centered processes or instead due to state- or regime-centered events (Wickham-Crowley 1992).

The Sovereign and its Shadow: Constituent Assembly and Indigenous Movement in Ecuador

2003 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 721-750 ◽  
Author(s):  
ROBERT ANDOLINA
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Latin American Politics ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Constituent Assembly ◽  
Institutional Politics ◽  
Ideological Struggle ◽  
Indigenous Movement ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Constitutive Principles

A crucial development in current Latin American politics is the growing involvement of indigenous movements in democracies grappling with the challenges of regime consolidation. This article examines how Ecuador's indigenous movement consecrated new rights and national constitutive principles in the 1997–8 constitutional assembly. It argues that the indigenous movement defined the legitimacy and purpose of the assembly through an ideological struggle with other political actors, in turn shaping the context and content of constitutional reforms in Ecuador. The article concludes that softening the boundary between ‘cultural politics’ and ‘institutional politics’ is necessary in order to understand the impact of social movements in Latin America.

Surveys and the Study of Latin American Politics

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryan E. Carlin
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
American Politics ◽  
Voting Behavior ◽  
Political Support ◽  
Latin American Politics ◽  
Theoretical Understanding ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
Public Opinion Surveys

To understand Latin American politics, one must view it through the eyes and minds of Latin Americans. Since the middle of the 20th century, pollsters in academia, government, and industry have fielded public opinion surveys in an attempt to do just that. Although they are not typically considered political institutions, polls and surveys influence a variety of political processes directly and indirectly thanks to the legitimacy they enjoy among academics, policymakers, and publics. Large strides have been made toward making surveys more methodologically rigorous and toward improving the quality of survey data in the region. Scholars have leveraged the data to advance the theoretical understanding of a range of topics, especially political support, partisanship, and voting behavior. Despite these gains, public opinion surveys face clear challenges that threaten their hard-won legitimacy. To the extent that these challenges are met in the coming decades, public opinion polling’s role in shaping Latin American politics will remain, if not strengthen.

The Political Sociology of a Concept: Corporatism and the “Distinct Tradition”

2009 ◽  
Vol 66 (01) ◽  
pp. 81-106
Author(s):  
Howard J. Wiarda
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Latin American Politics ◽  
Latin American Studies ◽  
University Of Florida ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
Third World Development ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The University ◽  
World Development

The field of Latin American Studies owes much to Professor Howard J. Wiarda, whose pioneering work on “corporatism” and political culture during the 1960s and 1970s helped establish a new conceptual paradigm for interpreting the persistence of corporately defined, institutional identities throughout Latin America, despite the purported triumph of the “Liberal Tradition.” A child of Dutch parents, his early travels throughout Africa, Asia, and Latin America sparked a keen interest in the question of “third world development.” Entering graduate school in the early 1960s, Professor Wiarda gravitated to the newly emergent field of modernization studies at the University of Florida, where he received his masters and doctorate degrees in Latin American politics. It was a time of tremendous social ferment in Latin America and his early fieldwork took him to the Dominican Republic, Mexico and Brazil, among other places. In each instance, he found recognizable patterns that transcended geographic locations, patterns that seemed to directly challenge the predominant arguments set forth in the modernization literature at the time.

scholarly journals Using Joint Scaling Methods to Study Ideology and Representation: Evidence from Latin America

2015 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 363-384 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sebastián M. Saiegh
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Latin American Politics ◽  
Common Space ◽  
Scaling Methods ◽  
Ideological Space ◽  
Political Spectrum ◽  
The Right ◽  
Latin American Countries

In this article, I use joint scaling methods and similar items from three large-scale surveys to place voters, parties, and politicians from different Latin American countries on a common ideological space. The findings reveal that ideology is a significant determinant of vote choice in Latin America. They also suggest that the success of leftist leaders at the polls reflects the views of the voters sustaining their victories. The location of parties and leaders reveals that three distinctive clusters exist: one located at the left of the political spectrum, another at the center, and a third on the right. The results also indicate that legislators in Brazil, Mexico, and Peru tend to be more “leftists” than their voters. The ideological drift, however, is not significant enough to substantiate the view that a disconnect between voters and politicians lies behind the success of leftist presidents in these countries. These findings highlight the importance of using a common-space scale to compare disparate populations and call into question a number of recent studies by scholars of Latin American politics who fail to adequately address this important issue.

The Latin American Left's Mandate: Free-Market Policies and Issue Voting in New Democracies

2011 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andy Baker ◽  
Kenneth F. Greene
Keyword(s):  
Economic Policy ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Voting Behavior ◽  
Free Market ◽  
New Left ◽  
New Democracies ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Electoral Success ◽  
Sectional Analysis

The rise of the left across Latin America is one of the most striking electoral events to occur in new democracies during the last decade. Current work argues either that the left's electoral success stems from a thoroughgoing rejection of free-market policies by voters or that electorates have sought to punish poorly performing right-wing incumbents. Whether the new left has a policy or performance mandate has implications for the type of policies it may pursue in power and the voting behavior of Latin American electorates. Using a new measure of voter ideology called vote-revealed leftism (VRL) and a time-series cross-sectional analysis of aggregate public opinion indicators generated from mass surveys of eighteen countries over thirteen years, the authors show that the left has a clear economic policy mandate but that this mandate is much more moderate than many observers might expect. In contrast to the generalized view that new democracies are of low quality, the authors reach the more optimistic conclusion that wellreasoned voting on economic policy issues and electoral mandates are now relevant features of politics in Latin America.

Military Governments and the Transition to Civilian Rule: The Colombian Experience of 1957-1958

1984 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 245-281 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Hartlyn
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Political Regime ◽  
Latin American Politics ◽  
Military Regimes ◽  
Civilian Regimes ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Coups D'etat ◽  
Shed Light

In the 1960s and 1970s, scholars interested in studying Latin American politics inevitably were drawn to the study of military coups d'etat and their causes. In the 1980s, a number of the countries in Latin America whose civilian political regimes were overthrown by military regimes may undergo or attempt to consolidate processes of democratization or redemocratization. Thus scholarly interest has tended to shift away from seeking to understand the causes for military overthrows of civilian regimes toward the study of prospects and processes of democratization or redemocratization in Latin America. In this context, the reexamination of earlier examples of durable transitions from authoritarian military regimes to civilian regimes may shed light on the relative importance of different factors in determining particular outcomes. This article carries out such a re-examination for the case of Colombia, analyzing the transition from rule by General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla (1953-1957) through the crucial period of the interim military junta (1957-1958) to the consociational National Front political regime.

scholarly journals Chinese geostrategic vision and its incidence on Latin America and Africa

2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (23) ◽  
pp. 1-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlos Alberto Ardila Castro ◽  
Jessica Andrea Rodríguez
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Social Development ◽  
Latin American ◽  
The United States ◽  
Latin American Politics ◽  
Naval Power ◽  
Significant Incidence ◽  
Economic Control

China has had a significant incidence in various sectors of African and Latin American politics, economy, and trade. There is no denying that its foreign policy has strategic interests in both regions. One of the most outstanding features of Chinese politics is its desire to promote cooperation to foster a renaissance between Asia and Latin America and Africa. Unlike the old colonial masters, China is committed to providing these regions with new opportunities for development. Bearing in mind Alfred Mahan’s theory of naval power, and the strategic rearguard that, at a given time, it allowed the United States, China is attempting to maintain the strategic center of gravity, which the economic control of Latin America and Africa and its surrounding resources provides to generate a strategic expansion that would ensure its interests and power in the hemisphere. In exchange, China strives to promote economic, commercial, political, and social development in African and Latin American societies.

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