The auxílio emergencial and stringent social distancing policies in Brazil: the impact on mobility and non-work travel outside the home

Non-pharmaceutical interventions to increase physical distancing have been instrumental in mitigating the spread of COVID-19. Governments have enacted stringent public health policies that impose limits on mobility outside the household. However, for containment policies to be effective, there is a growing understanding that emergency aid programs must be designed to ensure that the most vulnerable receive financial and in-kind aid resources to support their ability to “stay at home.” In this study, we use survey data from an Oxford USP-FGV collaborative research initiative to empirically assess the effectiveness of these two policies in reducing mobility with an eye to those at-risk or living in conditions of poverty in eight Brazilian capitals. We learn that, in general, neither stringent public health policies and receipt nor promised receipt of the Auxílio Emergencial were effective in limiting mobility outside of the home. We do, however, find limited evidence that receipt or promised receipt of the Auxílio Emergencial marginally limited non-work trips outside of the home, especially in city/state combinations with stringent public health policies. We conclude by discussing the policy implications of our findings.

Ready, Set, Vaccine: The Path to COVID-19 Recovery in Latin America

The coronavirus pandemic has ravaged countries across Latin America. Although the region continues to suffer, the promise of vaccinations provides reason for hope. As vaccines become more widely accessible in Latin America, public support for and willingness to receive the vaccine will be essential to pandemic recovery. Recognizing this, politicians in the region are already actively publicly promoting vaccination. In this research note, we explore Latin Americans’ attitudes on vaccine acceptance as well as the influence of political recruitment for vaccination and both consumption of and trust in news from politicians on self-reported attitudes of vaccine acceptance. We learn that, in general, Latin Americans are receptive to vaccination but that acceptance varies as a function of country, time, and recruitment and, interestingly, that Latin Americans are actually dissuaded from vaccination if encouraged by politicians. We conclude with a discussion and a plea that vaccination campaigns remain separate from political ones.

The Unmasked Electorate: Co-Partisanship, Personal Experience, and Perceptions of COVID-19 Risk in Mexico

Research suggests partisanship influences individual perceptions of COVID-19 risk and preventative behaviors. We ask a distinct but equally urgent question: what factors are associated with variation in risk perception among co-partisans? Even among members of the same party, some individuals’ risk perceptions reflect the party line while others deviate from it. We explore this question in Mexico, where the president utilized his rhetoric to downplay the severity of the pandemic. Why do some of the presidents’ co-partisans perceive COVID-19 as a serious risk (despite partisan appeals to the contrary), while others do not? Drawing on theories of risk perception, we hypothesize that this variation is associated with personal risk experience, like knowing someone who contracted COVID-19. We test this hypothesis via a large-n survey of MORENA supporters. We find that personal experiences are consistently associated with variation in risk perception. Strength of partisan ties, meanwhile, is only activated when paired with risk experience.

Argentinian Elections

Election forecasts, based on public opinion polls or statistical structural models, regularly appear before national elections in established democracies around the world. However, in less established democratic systems, such as those in Latin America, scientific election forecasting by opinion polls is irregular and by statistical models is almost non-existent. Here we attempt to ameliorate this situation by exploring the leading case of Argentina, where democratic elections have prevailed for the last thirty-eight years. We demonstrate the strengths—and the weaknesses—of the two approaches, finally giving the nod to structural models based political and economic fundamentals. Investigating the presidential and legislative elections there, 1983 to 2019, our political economy model performs rather better than the more popular vote intention method from polling.

A (In)satisfação com os Serviços Públicos: Um Modelo Dinâmico

Este artigo avalia o efeito da economia na satisfação da população com os serviços públicos. A contribuição empírica central é um índice nacional de satisfação com os serviços básicos do governo - saúde, educação, segurança, habitação, transporte, emprego, meio ambiente e Bolsa Família - de 1989 a 2017-, estimado com o algoritmo de díades. Os resultados mostram que as taxas de desemprego, o crescimento do PIB e as avaliações prospectivas egotrópicas da economia impactam a satisfação com os serviços públicos. Como tal, este estudo conecta duas agendas de pesquisa principais: a qualidade da democracia e a política macro.

Choosing the Lesser Evil: Forecasting Presidential Elections in Peru

The Peruvian political landscape is dominated by the weakness of party organizations, the continuous rotation of political personalities, and, in turn, high electoral volatility and uncertainty. Nevertheless, we observe patterns of electoral competition that suggest candidates learn to capture the political center and compete over the continuation of an economic model that has sustained growth. We use this information to record the vote intention for the candidate viewed as the lesser evil. Our forecasting results predict a good share of the variation in political support for this candidate. The out-of-sample prediction also comes fairly close to the real electoral results. These findings provide some degree of electoral certainty in an area that, to date, remains understudied.

Does Immigration Increase Concerns about the Provision of Public Services? Evidence from Colombia

Although South American countries have experienced unprecedented regional migration in the last decade, there is little research on the impact of these demographic changes on citizens’ political preferences. Does exposure to immigration affect native residents’ concerns about the provision of public services? To address this question, we use survey data from the AmericasBarometer in Colombia before and after the immigration wave generated by the 2015 political and economic crisis in Venezuela. We implement a difference-in-differences design to estimate the effect of distance from border crossings between Colombia and Venezuela on respondents’ concerns about the provision of healthcare and education after the large and rapid influx of immigrants. We find that—after 2015—respondents living closer to a border crossing are more likely to identify a lack of provision of health services but not of education as one of their primary concerns. These results can have relevant political implications since previous research has shown that a fiscal burden on public services can trigger anti-immigration attitudes in host communities.