This essay explores the possibility that Latin America may deploy new strategic options in its relations with Washington at the beginning of the twenty-first century. It starts by evaluating what have been the five major foreign policy models of the region with regard to Washington since the end of the Cold War. It proceeds by evaluating the recent dynamics of Latin American insertion into world affairs. Then it introduces three new alternatives for handling U.S. Latin American relations in the coming years. It concludes by pointing out the importance of understanding the scope of the hemispheric challenges for both the region and Washington.

This article addresses the relationship between institutionalized citizen participation at the municipal level and clientelism. It argues, contrary to what the literature has suggested, that the institutionalization of local citizen participation does not necessarily lead to the erosion of clientelism. Drawing on a comparative case study of participatory experiences in two Mexican municipalities, León and Nezahualcóyotl, this study argues that participation does matter, but that not all types of participation have the same effect on state-society relations. Institutional design is important in assessing the significance of popular participation in defining the relationship between the state and its citizens, but informal practices are even more important determinants of citizens' level of autonomy in institutionalized participatory mechanisms. This level of autonomy, in turn, determines the potential for such local institutions to become a means to overcome clientelism as the mechanism traditionally characterizing state-society relationships in Mexico.

Latin America is a region of sharp ethnic inequalities. Uruguay has usually been considered an exception to this pattern, although no data were available to confirm this assumption until recently. This article uses the Household Survey of 2006 to analyze the wage gap between Afro-descendants and whites through OLS equations, decompositions, and quantile regressions. The analysis finds that discrimination explains approximately 50 percent of the racial wage gap for men and 20 percent for women. Discrimination operates partly through occupational segregation. Differences in schooling are the most important explanatory factor for the rest of the gap. Quantile regressions show that discrimination declines across percentiles for men.

This article studies voter behavior in Argentina. Do voters vote based on issues? Do they vote based on economic performance? What segments of the population are more or less likely to do so? What is the relative impact of issues and the economy in vote choice? To provide a reliable answer to these questions, this study uses a mixed-logit model of spatial voting with nonpolicy components. Contrary to the common belief, the analysis finds that issue voting is a statistically significant and important factor. Economic voting is prevalent in the middle and upper classes, but not among poor voters.

This article aims to analyze the impact of domestic politics and international changes that influence Brazilian positions regarding regional integration processes in South America, particularly the Southern Common Market, Mercosur. The dynamics of the international system and their impact on the evolution of the elite's perception of the role the country should play in the world are important variables for understanding these positions. The state's postures in relation to integration were and are based on a real interest, but this interest is also linked with the objective of ensuring better conditions for participation in other international arenas. Starting with the hypothesis that transformations in the international setting have strongly influenced Brazil's positioning, the elements of continuity and change in the country's behavior toward Mercosur are identified, with domestic politics as the main explanation.

The term competitiveness is widely applied as a catch-all for investor-friendly policies and institutions. This article argues that sloppy applications of the term ignore the possibilities of policy tradeoffs and varieties of institutional choices. Popular conceptualizations of the term describe three discernible clusters of economic policies and institutions. One cluster captures openness to international trade; a second gauges regulatory impediments to private sector competition; a third refers to public sector investments in human capital, security, and infrastructure. This essay develops three empirical indexes to operationalize these clusters and shows that these concepts are not only theoretically but also empirically distinct. In particular, the correlation between these measures is not especially high in a sample of Latin American countries. The larger economies in the region tend to be more competitive on the regulatory and public goods dimensions but fall well behind smaller economies in terms of external competitiveness, broadly conceived.

Unequal income distribution in Latin America and the Caribbean is linked to unequal distributions of human and physical assets and differential access to markets and services. These circumstances, and the accompanying social tensions, need to be understood in terms of traditional fragmenting forces; the sectors of the population that experience unfavorable outcomes are also recognized by characteristics such as ethnicity, race, gender, and physical disability. In addition to reviewing the general literature on social exclusion, this article surveys several more specific topics: relative deprivation (in land and housing, physical infrastructure, health and income); labor market issues, including access to labor markets in general, as well as informality, segregation, and discrimination; the transaction points of political representation, social protection, and violence; and areas in which analysis remains weak and avenues for further research in the region.