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This paper analyses the effect of an unconditional cash transfer program, provided by a local government in Mexico, on the voting behavior of its direct beneficiaries. Using a list experiment that employs data from an original survey conducted in Guadalajara, Mexico, we explore if being a beneficiary of the program is a significant issue to cast a vote. The analysis shows that voters are indeed influenced in their voting decisions by being beneficiaries of a social program. The main result of this study indicates that 16 percent of the beneficiaries considered the receipt of the social program in their voting decision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mexico’s political system is currently facing two strong stress tests: first, the arrival to power in 2018 of Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), a populist leader who frequently pushes the limits of conventional democratic norms, has opened questions about the resilience of horizontal mechanisms of accountability and separation of powers. This is a democratic backsliding challenge. Second, the country is facing a long-term security crisis that has created concerns about the ability of the Mexican state to effectively control its territory and has brought an encroachment of the armed forces on civilian affairs, extending well beyond security matters. This is primarily a state capacity challenge. While the two of them respond to different causes, in this paper I suggest that they have become intertwined: the relative resilience of democratic checks and balances seems to have pushed AMLO and the ruling party (MORENA) to seek new strategies to consolidate their power that are likely eroding state capacity. Analyzing several events of political significance that occurred in 2022, I show that the risks of significant democratic backsliding are relatively contained in present day Mexico and have perhaps been overestimated, but the challenges besieging state capacity and civilian control of the military are likely deeper and their imprint will be long-lasting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2021, the Venezuelan government took steps towards an apparent process of political opening. The National Assembly elected in 2020 appointed new electoral authorities with the participation of civil society, who called subnational elections with the presence of international observation. Additionally, in Mexico, the government and opposition started a negotiation process that aimed to re-institutionalize the country. However, even when the opposition returned to the electoral arena, the political opening was truncated when the government withdrew from the negotiations in Mexico, annulled the electoral result in Barinas, and maintained the authoritarian practices of previous years. This paper aims to analyze the sociopolitical context in Venezuela, considering this liberalization attempt. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although in the last few years Colombia has faced significant civil society mobilization, 2021 represented critical juncture in social mobilization that was the result of three converging crises. The COVID-19 pandemic, a health crisis, triggered an economic crisis that exacerbated existing social and economic inequalities. Together they aggravated a pre-existing governability crisis. Unions and other actors convened a national strike on April 28 and the violent police response ignited the protest. The strike lasted almost two months and framed the legislative and presidential elections in 2022. This paper analyzes these events, their effects, and the perspectives for the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]