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Copyright of Linguagem em (Dis)curso is the property of Revista Linguagem em (Dis)curso and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The author examines an article by Osmel Manzano and Francisco Monaldi on the political economy of oil production in Latin America. The author claims that Manzano and Monaldi have successfully map out the main issues relevant to the problems with taxation of oil production but they are less successful in tying their analytical framework to actual experiences. He summarizes some of the problems about oil production contracts, such as there are rents associated with the production of oil and gas and there is also a time-inconsistency problem because the government cannot commit not to change taxes later on. He also argues that the paper does not provide a synthesis of how the complexities are linked to analyzing the optimal system for each country.

‘geographical pivot of history’ concept, subsequently developed into his famous‘Eurasian heartland thesis’, marginalizes South America, yet his ideas have attracted considerable interest there, including interpretations (and fantasies) of a‘South American heartland’. This paper examines the reception of Mackinder's ideas in Latin American geopolitics and how his heartland thesis was adapted for the South American context. It traces the roots of this adaptation in earlier South American geopolitical writing, and examines these ideas of counter-insurgency policies and global geopolitical strategies, analysing their relationship to military and anticommunist perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a conference paper by Domingo García Belaunde titled "La democracia constitucional en América Latina y las evoluciones recientes del presidencialismo" and delivered at the Encuentro del Instituto Iberoamericano de Derecho Constitucional at the Universidad Externado de Colombia in Bogota on April 23-25, 2008. The paper discusses constitutional democracy and changes in the presidential system of government in Latin America.

Do populist rule lead to more politicization? As populists have had electoral success in many countries in recent years, populism has received much attention both in the public debate and in political science. One aspect of the concept, how populists act once in power and how they relate to the state bureaucracy has however, so far, received only little attention. Populists have been suggested to increase the politicization of the public bureaucracy, i.e. the degree of political involvement in the careers of bureaucrats, as populists are untrusting of the establishment and seek to increase their control of the state. This paper uses time-series cross-section data from Europe and Latin America to test whether populists increase politicization more than others when in power. The results show a positive relationship between populist rule and politicization; however, the effect seems to be driven mainly by a few cases of populists on the fringes of the left-right spectrum. Previous research has found that systems characterized by intense politicization are less resistant to corruption and preform worse on good governance indicators. Therefore, these results indicate that the current populist wave may have hidden implications for the bureaucratic performance of the effected countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista CS is the property of Rafael Silva Vega and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Journal of Politics in Latin America is the property of Sage Publications Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Estudios Socio-Jurídicos is the property of Colegio Mayor de Nuestra Senora del Rosario and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper presents a theoretical discussion of the configuration of the state order. To do this, first discusses the Latin American political science tradition centered on studies of “transition" and “democratic consolidation" and in recent years in the explanations of the “captured states" and “failed states", second takes up the discussion theoretical of the state from a relational perspective, thirdly, to propose a state order analytical model that incorporates the dynamics of social conflict and contentious as fundamental aspects of its structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last thirty years, economic growth, job creation and poverty reduction rates in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) have been much lower than in East Asia. However, thanks to democratization, the end of structural adjustment policies and renewed economic growth since 2002, LAC has succeeded in reducing poverty and inequality, one of the region's seemingly intractable problems. Growing public social investment and the extension of social protection have both supported this development. Social protection measures have included innovative poverty reduction programmes, such as conditional cash transfers and non-contributory pensions for the elderly and disabled. Today, building on this progress, several LAC countries are moving towards comprehensive social protection systems, which entail the adoption of universal policies and safeguarding citizens' social and economic rights. Given the challenges that many Southeast Asian countries are still facing in this respect, it is thus worth assessing the extent to which social protection has contributed to reducing poverty and inequality in LAC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Carta Internacional is the property of Associacao Brasileira de Relacoes Internacionais and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Revista de Sociología is the property of Universidad de Chile and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper analyzes the connection between democracy and human development. In so doing, it examines two main questions: Are democracies better than non-democracies in achieving human development? Among democracies, is there a direct relationship between the actualization of civil and political rights and human development? In answering these questions, we offer a cross-national study of 18 Latin American countries from 1972 to 2001. We use fixed effect models for analyzing our cross-country, pooled time-series data. The evidence suggests not only that democracies are better than nondemocracies in fostering human development (controlling for wealth), but also that differences in degree of democracy have a significant impact on human development in terms of infant mortality and life expectancy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reviews some of the recent literature on the relationship between the legal system and economic development. We also look at the historical, socio-cultural, and political factors that explain the differences in the characteristics of legal systems across countries and thus affect the link between the legal environment and economic outcomes. Although the field of law and economics of developing countries is still in its youth, it is growing rapidly and is a fertile ground for exciting new findings, both theoretical and empirical. Further progress in this field is likely to come from the studies of the elements of the legal system other than the substantive law (enforcement and dispute resolution) and should move beyond specific analyses of the impact of particular success or failure stories towards more general analyses of the determinants and outcomes of successful legal institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of Araucaria is the property of Araucaria-Revista Iberoamericana de Filosofia, Politica y Humanidades and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Scholars typically understand vote buying as offering particularistic benefits in exchange for vote choices. This depiction of vote buying presents a puzzle: with the secret ballot, what prevents individuals from accepting rewards and then voting as they wish? An alternative explanation, which I term "turnout buying," suggests why parties might offer rewards even if they cannot monitor vote choices. By rewarding unmobilized supporters for showing up at the polls, parties can activate their passive constituencies. Because turnout buying targets supporters, it only requires monitoring whether individuals vote. Much of what scholars interpret as vote buying may actually be turnout buying. Reward targeting helps to distinguish between these strategies. Whereas Stokes's vote-buying model predicts that parties target moderate opposers, a model of turnout buying predicts that they target strong supporters. Although the two strategies coexist, empirical tests suggest that Argentine survey data in Stokes 2005 are more consistent with turnout buying. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper demonstrates that in Latin America a significant portion of the increased legislative party system fragmentation since the 1980s is explained by the recent political incorporation of ethnic populations. Until now, scholars have likely not identified this relationship because they have not used the nuanced measures of ethnic fractionalization that account for internal diversity of indigenous populations and race, and because they have not focused on the time period when ethnic peoples were politically incorporated. In addition to demonstrating this relationship statistically, we use two case studies from Bolivia and Ecuador to illustrate how in recent years the dynamic relationship between ethnic groups and political parties in Latin American legislatures has changed and resulted in the statistical association between ethnic fractionalization and party system fragmentation that we observe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cardoso is among the most famous thinkers on development and dependency theory. He successfully combines sociology, economics and political science to build an interdisciplinary view of Latin America's transformations. This paper analyses Cardoso's "radical" theoretical evolution between two major books, Dependency and Development in Latin America (1970) and Charting a New Course: The Politics of Globalization and Social Transformation (2001). The positions he occupied when he wrote these two books, academician-political opponent and then politician, could explain his evolution. Cardoso claims that new political and economic conditions have taken place and a new theory is thus required in order to "chart a new course". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Students of presidential regimes claim that while the combination of plurality rule for presidential elections and concurrent electoral cycles favors bipartism, majority rule for electing presidents favors multipartism. I argue that a reverse causality also affects the relationship between party systems and electoral systems. Using a bargaining model of institutional change, I propose that while dominant and large parties are likely to choose plurality rule and concurrent elections, small parties are likely to choose majority rule. I also argue that military rulers and military-civilian coalitions tend to follow the logic of electoral choice of small parties. These hypotheses are supported by a statistical analysis of the determinants of electoral choice in 49 cases of constitutional change in Latin America. Mechanisms of choice are analyzed in several episodes of electoral reform, including a negative case that suggests explanations of electoral choice not covered by the model presented in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The notions of governability and Populism have been used increasingly in political sciences papers on Latin America. The lack of precision in theirs meanings increased the same way. In this article, we argue that such difficulty lies in theirs uses in three ideal types of speech registries: the academic speech, the bureaucratic speech, and the political speech. We consider that these three uses of Populism and governability, with theirs respective logics, can generate much confusion. We propose therefore some reflections that try to clarify theses notions from the logic of the academic speech, but taking into account the uses that are made in both other registries of speeches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Mexicana de Ciencias Politicas y Sociales is the property of Revista Mexicana de Ciencias Politicas y Sociales and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper presents a typology of different constitutional conceptions, which are designed to help us classify the constitutional conceptions and debates that appeared in Latin America during the nineteenth century and to compare the opposing ideas that were present at the time. Three broad categories of constitutional projects are defined: (1) conservative models, characterized by the defense of political elitism and moral perfectionism; (2) majoritarian or radical constitutions that sought to reach out to the popular sectors and anchored themselves in a form of moral populism; and (3) the individualist or liberal constitutions. This analysis explores the ideas and principal architects of these various constitutional initiatives for a number of Hispano-Latin American nations for the 1810-60 period, when the basic features of their constitutions were shaped. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Relaciones Internacionales (1699-3950) is the property of Autonomous University of Madrid, Spain, International Relations Studies Group (GERI) Law Faculty and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Background and objectives: Latin American (LA) countries have begun to adopt a variety of regulations targeting sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) for public health reasons. Our objective was to characterize the regulatory strategies designed to reduce SSB consumption over the last decade, and assess the available evidence on their enforcement and impact. Methods: We searched legal and public health databases for public and private SSBs regulations in 14 LA countries and then conducted a systematic review of the available literature. We tracked comparative variations in the type of body issuing the regulations, their scope, and binding status. We present data following a 5-category framework we named NUTRE that classifies SSBs regulations as: (1) restrictions to SSB availability in schools (N), (2) taxes and other economic incentives to discourage consumption (U), (3) restrictions on advertising and marketing (T), (4) regulations on government procurement and subsidies (R), and (5) product labeling rules (E). Results: Since 2006, 14 LA countries have adopted at least 39 public and private SSB regulatory initiatives across the NUTRE framework. Comprehensive efforts have only been approved by Chile, México and Ecuador, while the rest have comparatively few initiatives. 28 out of the 39 regulatory initiatives were passed by legislative and executive bodies; 11 initiatives represent self-regulatory undertakings by the beverage industries. An 86% (24/28) of public sector regulations are binding; 56% (22/39) contain explicit monitoring or evaluation methods; and 62% (24/39) provide for sanctions. Moreover, 23 regulations specify the body in charge of monitoring the new rules and standards. Conclusions: LA countries are targeting SSB consumption through a variety of mechanisms, particularly via restrictions to availability in schools and through taxes. Interdisciplinary evidence comparing alternative regulatory strategies is scarce, and few studies offer data on impact and implementation challenges. More evidence and further comparative assessments are needed to support future decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Historia y Memoria is the property of Universidad Pedagogica y Tecnologica de Colombia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The study of Latin American politics has always generated great new research questions, and within Latin America, no country-s experience has generated more interesting questions than Venezuela since the election of Hugo Chávez in 1998. Contemporary Venezuela raises fascinating questions about the collapse of a highly institutionalized party system and the erosion or breakdown of what had been the third-oldest democracy outside of the advanced industrial democracies. What accounts for these stunning developments? What can we learn from them? These issues go to the core of important developments in Latin American politics, and they are major issues for comparative political scientists beyond Latin America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Derecho del Estado is the property of Universidad Externado de Colombia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Díkaion is the property of Universidad de la Sabana and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Based on ethnographic reanalysis and on current qualitative research on poor people's politics, this article argues that routine patronage politics and nonroutine collective action should be examined not as opposite and conflicting political phenomena but as dynamic processes that often establish recursive relationships. Through a series of case studies conducted in contemporary Argentina, this article examines four instances in which patronage and collective action intersect and interact: network breakdown, patron's certification, clandestine support, and reaction to threat. These four scenarios demonstrate that more than two opposing spheres of action or two different forms of sociability, patronage, and contentious politics can be mutually imbricated. Either when it malfunctions or when it thrives, clientelism may lie at the root of collective action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article suggests that the lack of advancement in both the actual protection of citizens' rights and institutional democratic reforms of the security sector in Latin America is due to a complex and intertwined set of political conditions. Three sets of conditions are key: (1) the political context (institutional and political constraints and opportunities); (2) social perceptions and demands on security; and (3) the institutional development of security forces. While policymakers and academics have focused mostly on security institutions themselves, this article argues that they need to be situated within a broader set of incentives and constraints within the political system. The challenge for civil society groups is how to advance a pro-civil rights agenda under such an unwelcoming set of incentives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses the presence of utopia in the myths of Latin American cities and nations. The author explains that utopian values and ideals rise from European myths of creating a New World, and that Latin American nation building is connected to this notion. Also important to Latin American nation building are the involvement of writers and intellectuals in defining utopia. Topics include how utopias are destroyed within a society, the connection between writers and politics, and cultural aspects of Latin America.

Africa and Latin America secured independence from European colonial rule a century and half apart: most of Latin America by the 1820s and most of Africa by 1960. Despite the distance in time and space, they share important similarities. In each case independence was followed by political instability, violent conflict, and economic stagnation lasting for about a half-century. The parallels suggest that Africa might be exiting from a period of postimperial collapse and entering one of relative political stability and economic growth, as did Latin America almost two centuries ago. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Desafíos is the property of Colegio Mayor de Nuestra Senora del Rosario and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This introduction presents the core concepts that shape this special issue on the impact of violence and the processes of development in Central and South America. The understanding of development is considered in terms broader than the economic context alone, in order to assess wider social and political aspects. With a similarly expansive scope, forms of violence are addressed that range from direct physical harm and bodily attack to the often more subtle aggression of racialised abuse or the pressures on community-centred production from dominant market forces. In these contexts, violence, economic initiatives, and political allegiances form unintended and often dangerous networks of consequence for development matters. All the articles in this volume exemplify further the spatial environments of violence and diverse 'landscapes of fear' that shape our existence and help to define our actions, territories, and understanding of what happens around us. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Colombia Internacional is the property of Universidad de los Andes and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

A widely accepted argument among scholars of Latin American presidential regimes is that interbranch cooperation is impaired when the president's party falls short of a majority of seats in the legislature. This argument fails to consider three factors that affect the performance of minority presidents: the policy position of the president's party, the president's capacity to sustain a veto, and the legislative status of the parties included in the cabinet. This article argues that the greatest potential for conflict in a presidential regime occurs when the president's party lacks the support of both the median and the veto legislator and no cabinet coalition holding a majority of legislative seats is formed. This hypothesis is supported using data on executive-legislative conflicts and on interrupted presidencies in Latin America during the period 1978-200 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the views of the postcolonial theorists regarding the undemocratic foundations of democracy in Latin America. Accordingly, from the colonial experience of the country, the modernity, capitalism, nation building, and democracy have been understood as organically linked with colonialism, as parts of the same historical movement of European expansion and domination over the modern or colonial world system which has evolved from the discovery of America in 1492 by Spanish colonizers to British and U.S. colonial regimes.

Left–right semantics are commonly employed by scholars, the media, and politicians in reference to Latin American politics. Yet, how do citizens understand these terms and what determines the meanings they assign to them? I investigate the significance of left–right labels, as potential political heuristic devices, among and across a selected group of citizens in Mexico and Argentina. Subjective understandings of the left–right semantics were tapped using Q-sort methods. Analyses of these data reveal quite different conceptions across individuals and national contexts. Further, and as hypothesized in the text, the analyses demonstrate that ideological labels (a) reference valence issues, in addition to political actors and policy stances; (b) differ across contexts in ways that correspond to elite packaging; and, (c) vary by individual partisan leanings and political sophistication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As municipal governments in Latin America acquire greater responsibility for public goods and services and the promotion of economic and social development, and play a greater role in local citizenship, questions about the quality of municipal democracy also need to be taken much more seriously. This article proposes a ‘relative power approach’ that examines the distribution of social power at the microregional level and its impact on municipal governance as the starting point for the analysis of municipal democratisation in Latin America. The approach lays particular emphasis on historical changes in the distribution of local productive assets, the political organisation of local social actors, coalitions between and divisions within local social sectors and the ways in which local power relations are shaped by global and national forces. The article then explores the practical application of the relative power approach to three municipalities in rural Ecuador. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tackles the relationship between collective action tradition and the democratic deficits that led to the proposed citizen participation in public political life in Latin America. Moral and ethical aspects of collective action politics; Controversies concerning political ideas and formations in the region; Influence of post-independence political thought on collective action tradition.

Recent scholarship on budgeting in Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries indicates that political institutions impact the level of budget discipline. Building upon this previous research, we argue that the principal problem that must be addressed in both the government and the legislature to insure strong fiscal discipline is the common pool resource (CPR) problem. At the cabinet level, the CPR problem arises because ministers consider the implications of decisions on their ministries only. The level of the CPR problem in the legislature depends upon the electoral system. Using a data set of LAC countries for the period 1988–97, we find that executive power in the budget process is most effective in reducing budget deficits when electoral incentives for the personal vote is high in the legislature, while strengthening the president (or prime minister) in countries where the personal vote is low in the legislature has no effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What are the political consequences of economic reform in new democracies? Is the effect of economic reform on democratization the same across regions? Some scholars of transitology argue that economic reform has negative consequences on democratization largely because the resistance of established groups can undermine democratization due in large part to the region's distinctive historical and structural legacies. The heated debate between Philip Schmitter with Terry Karl and Valerie Bunce provides ample opportunity to (re) think about democratization in a more contextual and cross-regional perspective. However, there has been little systematic empirical analysis across regions. This analysis attempts to fill the gap by examining whether the dominant research paradigm of democratization is empirically valid regions in transition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This section seeks to provide a brief theoretical framework for the study of citizenship in Latin America by focusing on two characteristics which are of relevance to the essays collected here: belonging and political agency. It then goes on to discuss some key themes which emerge from a reading of the collected articles: methodology; civilisation and deviation; citizenship as the organisation of subordinate inclusion; popular ideas of citizenship as ‘fairness’; role of public performance in defining political relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the development of political relationships between people and politicians since around 1820 in Latin America. In particular, it develops the idea of client-ship as a form of political agency and contrasts it to citizenship, linking both to ‘natural’ and ‘historical’ interpretations of inequality. The piece claims that client-ship has dominated political relations and that its twin tools of charisma and votes-for-goods allows it to thrive today in the form of neo-populism. In contrast, citizenship has been thwarted by the efforts of parties which control political agency by imposing norms of intellectual superiority and hierarchies of disdain. Throughout, I argue that issues of race, gender and class are central to political relationships which are the cultural terrain of power, and conclude that parties must begin to take citizens – and citizenship – seriously if they wish to avert a crisis of democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What political factors drive fiscal behavior in Latin America's presidential democracies? This work seeks to identify the political determinants of the level of public spending and the primary balance of ten democratic regimes in Latin America between 1980 and 1998. We consider, besides the influence of traditional variables such as the government's ideological orientation and electoral cycle, the impact of other institutional and political aspects, such as the legislative strength of the president, ministerial stability, and the degree of centralization of budget institutions. Methodologically, the work is based on a pooled cross-sectiontime-series data analysis of 132 observations. Our main findings are that presidents supported by a strong party and leading a stable team of ministers—and ones more to the right on the political spectrum—had a negative impact on public spending and a positive effect on fiscal balance, and that the electoral cycle deteriorates the latter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses why indigenous social movements formed electorally viable political parties in Latin America in the 1990s. Examination of institutional reforms in several South American countries; Correlation of the success of the parties with the changes in electoral systems; Necessity of institutional change for the emergence of ethnic parties.

This article is about how political regimes should generally be classified, and how Latin American regimes should be classified for the 1945-99 period. We make five general claims about regime classification. First, regime classification should rest on sound concepts and definitions. Second, it should be based on explicit and sensible coding and aggregation rules. Third, it necessarily involves some subjective judgments. Fourth, the debate about dichotomous versus continuous measures of democracy creates a false dilemma. Neither democratic theory, nor coding requirements, nor the reality underlying democratic practice compel either a dichotomous or a continuous approach in all cases. Fifth, dichotomous measures of democracy fail to capture intermediate regime types, obscuring variation that is essential for studying political regimes. This general discussion provides the grounding for our trichotomous ordinal scale, which codes regimes as democratic, semi-democratic or authoritarian in nineteen Latin American countries from 1945 to 1999. Our trichotomous classification achieves greater differentiation than dichotomous classifications and yet avoids the need for massive information that a very fine-grained measure would require. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the book "Markets and Government: In Search of Better Coordination," edited by Juro Teranishi and Konosuke Odaka. The book contains fourteen papers that discusses a redefinition of the role of government in Chile and its impact on other Latin American countries; reform and rent-seeking in Indonesia; long-term changes in the role of market and government in India; weak government as an impediment to development in sub Saharan Africa; a third transition model represented by Russia, as distinct from Eastern Europe's shock-therapy and China's gradual approach.