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This paper analyzes the role of political neighborhood brokers in the execution of public policies in slums. It studies their relationships to the State as well as their capabilities to boost or hinder the implementation of public policies. In particular, the paper focuses on the processes of redevelopment at two slums in the City of Buenos Aires: Rodrigo Bueno and Playón de Chacarita. The evidence gathered shows that if the State and the brokers establish relationships of cooperation the process of redevelopment smoothly moves forward. On the contrary, if they come into conflict the entire process is put at risk. Furthermore, the absence of brokers compels the State to lead the redevelopment without links to the neighborhood which obstructs the development of the project. The same situation occurs if brokers lose their legitimacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article attempts to understand the intellectual influence of Aristotle on Tocqueville in the elaboration of his “new political science”. Our thesis is that, in order to try to counteract the threats inherent in democracy, Tocqueville integrates some Aristotelian categories, and that this is one of the nuclei of his new political science, and is also the origin of many of its ambiguities. The paper is divided into five parts. In the first we will briefly examine Tocqueville’s dissatisfaction with a certain liberalism that precedes him. In the second, we will dwell on the notion of citizenship elaborated by the French aristocrat, with which he attempts to resolve his concerns. The third part argues that the Tocquevillian notion of citizenship has a close kinship with some aspects of Aristotelian practical philosophy. The fourth section offers some reflections on Tocqueville’s political philosophy, and the fifth closes with some brief conclusions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

This is a theoretical paper in the field of democratic theory. It reviews the discussions on one of the elements proposed to measure the quality of democracies: government responsiveness to citizens' preferences. It analyses theoretical discussions on democracy, quality of democracy and in particular the debate on whether responsiveness is useful to measure quality, what challenges it implies and what are its conceptual and empirical limits. It concludes with a research agenda on this topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Affective polarization has recently become one of the phenomena of greatest interest to social researchers. The large number of papers on this concept requires a systematic review to organize its main explanatory theories. In the following, we analyse the distinctive dimensions of affective polarization, a political polarization with non-political effects, and the hypotheses that help us to understand its emergence, from the perspective of the masses, the elites and the media ecosystem. In particular, we are confronted with the possibility that ideological radicalization is at the origin of this affective polarization or that, on the contrary, without being so far apart in ideas, it is the constitution of political identities as social identities that causes a perceptual sense of false polarization that induces greater animosity between the supporters of the conflicting groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the abundant literature on consecutive reelection, few works examine how party leaders’ preferences over incumbent traits can affect the future positions of sitting legislators. This paper examines how consecutive reelection and strong party leader control over candidate selection combine to promote certain types of politicians for renominations for reelection, while others are consigned to candidacies for lower posts or left out of the selection process. We use Mexico’s first experience with consecutive reelection since 1932 to better understand how incumbents’ interests and the demands of party leaders shape candidacy outcomes by examining whether the incumbents from the 2018-2021 term were able to win a renomination bid or were sent to a higher or lower post. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper engages existing research on informal institutions in Latin America, by analyzing informal institutions related to public appointments in Chile with particular reference to what is known as the cuoteo. We extend the analysis from the national to the regional and local levels by considering how these informal institutions shape politics. Our research reveals that the nature and function of the cuoteo change according to the level of government at which it operates. Through this analysis we show how the decline of the cuoteo can lead to the erosion of its ability to contribute to the operation of high-quality formal institutions. We combine a review of literature with the analysis of 132 interviews in six regions of Chile. [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]

This paper explains the configuration of the political scenario in Ecuador after the 2021 general elections. The pandemic left a challenging economic and social aftermath that created policy challenges for the new government. Guillermo Lasso won the elections securing support from the anticorreísmo front. However, this electoral coalition did not translate into the legislative arena. Lasso addressed policy challenges using political strategies widely used in Ecuador by minority governments during the nineties. We focus on Lasso's attempts to push economic reforms to show how his legislative strategy adapted to the prevailing political conditions, namely: 1) aimed for less ambitious policy goals; 2) used his institutional prerogatives to shape the legislative agenda; and, 3) crafted short-lived and informal agreements in exchange for (political) pork. Complex executive-legislative relations can limit the government's ability to address economic and social problems in the future, which could lead to political and economic instability, as in the past. De facto coalitions are necessary for Lasso yet come at a cost for a government quickly losing support. We also provide an overview of other social problems and policy responses relevant throughout this year. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What factors impact on the productivity of legislators? In this paper, we argue that legislative productivity depends not only on party affiliation, seniority, gender, and other contextual considerations (e.g., alignment with the executive), as previous studies have shown, but also on the connections between legislators. Our main argument is that legislators' effectiveness in getting their proposals approved by the chamber depends on their centrality in the cosponsorship network. Unlike previous studies of Latin American legislatures, which usually consider bills as the unit of analysis, we focus on legislators and their individual records. We consider individual productivity as the number of authored bills approved by the chamber in a two-year congress. To test our hypothesis, we use data from the Argentine Chamber of Deputies from 1983 to 2019. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What explains the sudden rise and fall of Latin America's leftist governments during the 21st century? Two competing interpretations have been put forward: either citizens vote positionally or retrospectively. This paper aims to shed light on this debate by analyzing the 2016 constitutional referendum in Bolivia. The results of our investigation of voting behaviour are most supportive of a retrospective voting interpretation. Dissatisfaction with the state of democracy in Bolivia and having experienced regional protests are both shown to be the strongest predictors of a "No" vote. The results support the claim that valence issues most significantly determine voting behaviour in new democracies, yet they also suggest that retrospective assessments of governmental performance extend further than mere economic conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]