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Understanding the state in Latin America requires an understanding of the challenges and challengers that it is facing. This paper argues that the region's three major transitions at the end of the 20th century (i.e. democratization, liberalization and decentralization) each posed distinct challenges to the state. It then uses the concept of infrastructural power to conceptualize the actors who are challenging the state, distinguishing between those who threaten either its territorial power or its relational power. Turning from challenges and challengers to responses, the paper identifies three different types of changes (i.e. policy, institutional, regime) that states have adopted to undercut, accommodate, or defeat challengers. Finally, the paper underscores the difficulty of measuring state deficits in post-decentralization Latin America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the constitution of the area of studies on the history and development of political science in Latin America over the past ten years. Several studies have been proposed to account for this process showing the growth of the discipline in the region. In this paper we will highlight the main actors and their scientific and academic production, as well as the processes of institutionalization and professionalization of political science. This article aims to classify these studies from the early exploratory approaches up to the production of more sofisticated descriptive works, from a comparative perspective, in order to finally arrive at the new current trends that attempt to perform a “metatheoretical" approach with contributions from epistemology, sociology of knowledge and the history of the science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the conditions under which presidents dominate the legislative agenda. To address this issue we analyze the governmental period of 30 Latin American Presidents, developing a qualitative comparative analysis (QCA). The analysis highlights that the combination of a favorable institutional design and a division of Congress in different ideological blocs favors the Executive branch. Two other conditions, reliance on a parliamentary majority and the absence of party fragmentation, are combined with the above elements to ensure the predominance of the Executive. The findings of this comparative study are confirmed by a supplementary statistical analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a significant trend in Latin America of extending term limits for the presidency in order to allow reelection. There is also evidence that incumbency advantage matters of those presidents seeking reelection in different countries tipically win their electoral bids. Based on a dataset of 137 elections in 18 countries in Latina America, this paper describes the evolution of different reelection schemes since the transition to democracy, reports the success rates for presidential incumbents and estimates the impact of incumbency on electoral margins controlling for institutional and economic variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I analyze what personal traits define a good politician from the perspective of the Latin-American legislators. In addition to verifying whether these qualities are the same elected by citizens, in this work I compare them with the qualities that serve to win elections. Furthermore, different analyses remark the effect that political knowledge has on these preferences, making charisma more attractive among citizens with low levels of political sophistication. However, little is known about the impact of this variable for politicians. This article measures a)whether education and political knowledge also alter the perception of the deputies on what characteristics are more valued b) which of these characteristics serve better to gain elections, as well as c) the influence of constituents' political sophistication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the confidence of citizens in Latin American Electoral Bodies by analyzing both its causes and its impact on the quality of democracy. First, a map of the varying levels of trust in Electoral Bodies is drawn using public opinion data (LAPOP). Second, through a boolean analysis it is explored the combined effects of variables related to institutional design, political environment and political culture on trust in Electoral Bodies. Third, it is analyzed the impact of trust in Electoral Bodies on the quality of democracy. For that purpose, a lineal regression analysis has been run, apart from other techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]