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This paper analyzes several key advantages and disadvantages of measuring regimes through the judgment of experts. Using results from the Survey of Experts on Provincial Politics carried out by the author to assess levels of democracy in the 24 provinces of Argentina, the paper discusses the following advantages: 1) the possibility to assess many and diverse dimensions of democracy, 2) the particular aptitude of the method to identify hybrid regimes, a regime type of increasing prominence that poses special measurement challenges, and 3) the possibility to estimate measurement reliability through inter-rater (or inter-expert) agreement statistics. Two disadvantages are discussed: 1) the problems of comparability brought about by relying on unit-specific (i.e., provincespecific): there may be systematic inter-provincial differences among the experts in terms of knowledge, neutrality, and evaluative standards, and 2) the inevitable inter-unit differences in levels of measurement error. Finally, the dimensions of democracy measured by the expert survey are compared to objective indicators of democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In most contemporary democracies governments play a dominant role in the law-making process, as they introduce a significant proportion of bills to the legislature. However, the probability of success of these bills varies considerably. For example, in Argentina, the number of government bills approved as a percentage of all government-sponsored bills introduced in the Chamber of Deputies from 1983 to 1996 amounts to an average 64 percent(including and a minimum of 49% in 1986 and a maximum of 80% in the previous year). This paper studies how cross-voting affect governments' legislative success. I argue that uncertainty about legislators' support for government bills and limited governmental resources to engage in "vote buying" explain why defeats occur. The paper shows that Argentine presidents' overall legislative success has not been very different from other presidential regimes. However, by looking at the content of those bills that never made it through congress, I identify a peculiar policymaking pattern that may account for Argentine governments’ poor performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I argue that democratization (suffrage expansion, multiparty competition and the secret ballot) is neither sufficient nor necessary for generating fiscal redistribution (tax burden, progressivity of the tax structure, redistributive government spending). I offer a simple model of democratization as the result of intra-elite conflict that explains why this might be the case. I provide empirical evidence consistent with the model using detailed national and subnational data for the case of Argentina (1880-1950), which I collected during 10 months of archival research. Despite the fact that Argentina enjoyed per capita wealth on par with Canada, was ethnically more homogeneous that the United States, and did not suffer from the landlord-peasant social structure typical of other Latin American countries, the period of democratic rule (1912-1930) did not usher in redistributive taxation and spending as predicted by the workhorse median-voter models. Democratization caused horizontal redistribution across provinces rather than from rich to poor citizens. Strangely, taxation became more progressive and redistributive spending increased with the military coup of 1931. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This chapter examines brokers' strategies to mobilize clients. It shows how brokers can employ several strategies. Authoritarian strategies include monitoring, threatening, and punishing clients while democratic strategies use persuasion through relationships of loyalty and mutual trust. There are alternatives like switching parties and factions to get a following. I study these practices of electoral mobilization in political rallies and primary elections in Buenos Aires. By using qualitative, quantitative, and archival data, I measure how popular and effective are these practices in getting brokers elected as municipal officials. My findings show that although successful brokers employ mixed strategies, authoritarian strategies are significantly more effective than democratic. This finding has important implications for the success of local democracies in the developing world. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on regime oscillation between authoritarianism and democracy. I argue that, both Turkey and Argentina during the post-WWII era constitute cases of regime oscillation, however, they have divergent patterns of oscillation. In Turkey, be ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout the 1970s and 80s, many countries transitioned from military rule to democracy. These military regimes were often responsible for serious violations of human rights including kidnapping, rape, torture, and execution. Once the democratic transition began, the new civilian government faced a difficult choice: prosecute and risk upsetting the transition or move on and provide immunity for the military leaders. In Argentina, after initial efforts to prosecute the military, the new government under Raul Alfonsín backed off in an effort to limit the scope of its prosecutions. After several military rebellions, the government stopped all judicial proceedings and in 1990, Argentine President Carlos Menem pardoned the members of the military regime.In Chile, General Pinochet ensured his departure would not expose himself to prosecution by remaining head of the armed forces until 1997. Subsequently, he and other members of the military government became senators for life, a title that brought an exemption from prosecution. Thus, in both Argentina and Chile, while truth commissions endeavored to chronicle the past, almost no one from the military regime appeared likely to pay for their crimes. Despite the apparent finality of judicial proceedings in these two countries, the desire to bring the perpetrators to justice remained. In Chile, Pinochet?s indictment while in the United Kingdom sparked a legal battle that holds out hope for bringing him and others to justice. In Argentina, the efforts of President Nestor Kirchner and the Argentine legislature have also opened the door for renewed efforts to prosecute surviving members of the junta, over ten years after the matter seemingly had ended.Several questions are evident that will be the focus of this paper. Why has the desire to hold these leaders accountable remained despite the passing of several years and a multitude of obstacles? What are the key factors that rekindled these efforts and why now? What lessons can be learned for others to hold leaders accountable for human rights abuses? ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presidential decree authority is a powerful instrument for chief executives in the politics of emerging democracies. Focusing on Argentina and Russia, two important emergent democracies that have endowed their presidents with significant decree-issuing authority, we examine the dynamics of chief executives' reliance on these decision-making instruments. We find that the level of presidential decree activity is predicted not only by certain institutional and socioeconomic factors, but also by domestic contextual circumstances and executives' leadership style. The level of hostility of the domestic context (political and socioeconomic) for chief executives is especially critical to their decree-issuing activity. We conclude that executive decrees represent a reliable unilateral means by which presidents can attempt to influence events and consolidate their power. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In countries that have shifted between dictatorship and democracy, what effect does each regime have on voters' partisan attachments? If competitive elections and party mobilization are the motors driving partisan identification, we would expect attachments to grow during democracy and erode under dictatorship. But some observers of today's new democracies have suggested that party affiliations become frozen during authoritarian interludes only to be destabilized under democracy, when party leaders have a chance to hold power, squabble with each other, and disappoint voters. We examine these questions in the context of Argentina, one of the world's most frequently interrupted democracies. Using surveys and disaggregated ecological data over the sweep of a century, and controlling for factors that may mask underlying processes of partisan identity formation, we show that democratic processes, when they are allowed to run their course, do produce a growing stability in people's electoral choices, a stability that erodes during authoritarian interludes. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]