The association between how citizens perceive economic performance, insecurity, or corruption and how they evaluate the president varies systematically across Latin American countries and within them over time. In particular, while presidential popularity reflects these outcomes in the average Latin American country, survey data from 2006–17 confirm that the connection between government performance and presidential approval is generally stronger when unfragmented party systems or single-party majority governments make assessments of political responsibility easier. While these results suggest that the region’s citizens do not blindly blame the president for outcomes where political responsibility should be shared, they also remind us that there are many countries in the region where fragmented party systems weaken the conditions for effective political accountability.

Although sociological research has examined the reproduction of Chile’s elites, there is little empirical evidence of how different forms of capital operate among them. Using datasets for members of the Chilean political elite from 1990 to 2010, this country note examines and measures the effect of political, social, and cultural capital on the access of certain individuals to strategic positions in the political field, comparing the legislative and executive branches as represented by deputies and ministers. The empirical analysis includes logit models.

The objective of this article is to explain the territorial variation in indigenous political representation at the subnational level in Peru. The Peruvian state introduced a weak indigenous electoral quota, and its effects have varied across provinces. This article presents a typology that combines descriptive and substantive dimensions of political representation. Using a subnational comparative method, the four cases studied illustrate distinct dynamics. The article argues that these differing dynamics are explained by a combination of sociostructural variables (i.e., political articulation and cohesion of indigenous organizations as a result of a conflict) and individual variables (i.e., candidates’ political capital). This article demonstrates how, even in an institutionally adverse environment that does not feature ethnic parties, both descriptive and substantive indigenous political representation can be achieved, and that these two dimensions are not necessarily related. The article is based on fieldwork and interviews with key provincial political actors.

I am very pleased to participate in this dialogue on the effect of collective protest on social spending in Latin America, which initiated when the editors of LAPS invited me to review the research note titled “Organized Labor Strikes and Social Spending in Latin America: The Synchronizing Effect of Mass Protest.” Dongkyu Kim, Mi-son Kim, and Cesar Villegas engage with my paper, published in Comparative Political Studies (Zarate-Tenorio 2014), which analyzes the effects of organized labor strikes and mass protests on social security and welfare, health and education spending in Latin America, 1970–2007.

The aim of this article is to analyze three key issues in current Nicaraguan politics and in the political debate surrounding hybrid regimes: de-democratization, political protest, and the fall of presidencies. First, it analyzes the process of de-democratization that has been taking place in Nicaragua since 2000. It shows that the 2008 elections were not competitive but characteristic of an electoral authoritarian regime. Second, it reflects on the kind of regime created in Nicaragua under Daniel Ortega’s mandate, focusing on the system’s inability to process any kind of protest and dissent. Third, it examines the extent to which the protests that broke out in April 2018 may predict the early end to Ortega’s presidency, or whether Nicaragua’s political crisis may lead to negotiations between the government and the opposition.

Decentralization has triggered widespread use of the subnational comparative method in the study of Latin American politics. Simultaneously, it has created challenges for this method that deserve careful attention. While subnational governments after decentralization can often be treated as potentially autonomous policy jurisdictions, their autonomy is also subject to new constraints and incursions, which may limit scholars’ ability to treat them as relatively independent units. By taking stock of the vibrant literature that has emerged in recent years, this article explores three major challenges that complicate the use of the subnational comparative method. Two are vertical in nature: how to theorize national causes of subnational variation, and how the varied linkages between subnational governments and transnational actors can be conceptualized in work that compares subnational units. The third challenge is horizontal, referring to interactions between governments at the same subnational level that can either enhance or subvert autonomy.

Once upon a time, pluralist (Dahl 1961) and modernization theories (Lipset 1959) described liberal democracy as a political regime that tended to exclude violence, insurgency, and corruption. A few decades later, Francis Fukuyama (1992) argued that in the long run, liberal democracy would triumph over other political alternatives, and about the same time Samuel Huntington (1991) revealed a massive wave of democratization (or redemocratization) in different parts of the world.