This article argues that the common narrative of a Bolivian backlash against neoliberalism should be reconsidered in light of the continuities and mutual constraints between popular mobilization and neoliberal policy reforms. The study draws on literature that conceptualizes neoliberalism as a particular construction of state and social forms; but unlike those works, it includes an analysis of International Monetary Fund policy shifts to understand how popular mobilization constrains policy implementation. Responding to popular mobilization between 1985 and 2006, the IMF came to accept divergence from orthodox policy in order to encourage political stability. The government of Evo Morales and the IMF are mutually constrained by concern for the investment climate. This study further advocates that analysts probe beyond simple binary divisions between “neoliberalism” and “alternatives” and look more seriously for pragmatic strategies for negotiating neoliberal spaces.

This article examines decentralization through the lens of the local dynamics it unleashed in the much-noted case of Bolivia. It argues that the national effects of decentralization are largely the sum of its local-level effects. To understand decentralization, therefore, we must first understand how local government works. The article explores the deep economic and institutional determinants of government quality in two extremes of municipal performance. From this it derives a model of local government responsiveness as the product of political openness and substantive competition. The quality of local politics, in turn, emerges endogenously as the joint product of the lobbying and political engagement of local firms and interests and the organizational density and ability of civil society. The analysis tests the theory's predictions on a database containing all Bolivian municipalities. The theory proves robust. The combined methodology provides a higher-order empirical rigor than either approach can alone.

Brazil has an “African-origin” population that is proportionally more than four times larger that of African Americans in the United States, but white Brazilians mostly dominate electoral politics. How do ordinary citizens explain this phenomenon? Drawing on a large-sample survey of public opinion in the state of Rio de Janeiro, this article explores perceived explanations for nonwhite underrepresentation in the political arena. It also examines attitudes toward a particular black candidate, Benedita da Silva, to discern the state of negro identity politics. Most Brazilians in Rio de Janeiro cite racial prejudice to explain nonwhite exclusion, although whites do this less than nonwhites. Indicators of a racial undercurrent in political preferences suggest the importance of allegiances based on perceived common racial origins. Class is robustly associated with voting preferences, suggesting that, in contrast to the United States, class differences among nonwhites in Brazil could attenuate the success of negro identity politics.

The postmaterialist thesis has spurred a large body of literature and debates, yet postmaterialism has not been studied among political elites. Empirical studies of the legislatures and legislators of Latin American nations in general and Puerto Rico in particular, moreover, are sorely lacking. This article examines postmaterialist values among Puerto Rican legislators. It finds that Puerto Rican legislators have high levels of postmaterialism and that they order the components of the postmaterialism scale in ways similar to those of the mass publics of other countries, including those of Latin America. More important, the postmaterialist scale proves of little use in explaining the positions legislators take on a host of issues, many of which are closely associated with postmaterialism. An alternative explanation is that the scale really measures attachment to democratic norms.

Scholars of support for democracy traditionally have been concerned with its causes, with the assumption that higher citizen support for democratic values will enhance democracy's chances of survival in a country. Beyond this fundamental proposition, however, the consequences of varying levels of support for democratic values remain largely unexplored. This article examines the relationship between support for democratic values and views toward immigration in Latin America, a region that is experiencing an unprecedented increase in the movement of people across borders. Through an analysis of Ecuadorian attitudes toward Colombian immigrants, this study finds strong evidence for the argument that support for democratic values has potential benefits not only for democratic sustainability in the region, but also for the reduction of social conflict and distrust that can stem from increasing immigration in a volatile economic context.