More than a decade after Latin America's most recent turn to democracy, unchecked police violence and torture continue and in some cases have increased. This study examines police killings in 19 Brazilian states from 1994 to 2001 and finds that democracy has not substantially reduced these types of human rights violations, for two reasons. First, underlying social conflict has continued to exert a significant impact on the lethal use of force by police officers. Second, pro-order political coalitions, generally represented by right-wing politicians, have blocked effective measures to control police violence and have implemented public safety measures that stress the use of force. The analysis emphasizes the nonteleological nature of democratization processes and demonstrates the strength of political forces working to maintain “illiberal democracy.”

Guatemala has one of the highest levels of killings of women and impunity for violence against women in the world. Despite laws created to protect women, Guatemala, like other countries, generally fails at implementation. This article examines justice system obstacles in contemporary Guatemala to processing cases of feminicide—killings of women because they are women in a context of impunity—comparing two recent feminicide cases. It argues that the sociopolitical context in Guatemala, including structural violence, widespread poverty, inequality, corruption, and normalization of gender violence against women, generates penalties, or “legal tolls,” that are imposed on victims' families and contribute to impunity through undermining victims' attempts to navigate the justice system. The analysis focuses on the tolls of fear and time: the need to overcome fear of retaliation and the extraordinary time and effort it takes to do so in a corrupt and broken system.

The following pages examine the relationship between the transactions that constitute systems of patronage and clientage and politics as it operated in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais in the mid-1960s. The objective will be to show how the asymmetrical exchanges of patronage and the political-electoral system served to articulate local communities with the institutional systems of the larger society.

The data and analysis will be presented through an examination of the activities of individuals in two small municίpio communities in the Zona da Mata of the State of Minas Gerais during the critical election campaign for governor in the year 1965. By examining some of the activities of a local doctor and a lawyer involved in politics, we shall be able to make explicit the transactional process by means of which segments of local communities in the region were articulated, through the political-electoral process, to the state and national level institutions of Brazilian society.

For years, nongovernmental terrorism in Latin America was considered an epiphenomenon of the Cold War. The persistence of this type of political violence in the 1990s, however, not only belied many assumptions about its causes but also led scholars to reexamine the phenomenon. This article investigates the validity of a number of hypotheses by applying a pooled time-series cross-section regression analysis to data from 17 Latin American countries between 1980 and 1995. Findings indicate that nongovernmental terrorist acts in Latin America are more likely to occur in poorly institutionalized regimes characterized by varying degrees of political and electoral liberties, a deficient rule of law, and widespread human rights violations. The analysis also shows that nongovernmental terrorism in the region tends to surface in cyclical waves; but it finds no association between economic performance or structural economic conditions and the incidence of nongovernmental terrorism.

Chile is Often portrayed as an exceptional case among recent transitions from authoritarian rule for a number of reasons. It was the last of the "bureaucratic authoritarian" regimes to democratize; the transition followed the timetable and conditions set by the military more closely than in Argentina and Uruguay; the prognosis for economic and political stability seems optimistic relative to the rest of the region. An important reason for Chilean exceptionality was the fact that, unlike in other cases, Chile's business and landowning elites supported the military government to the end. Why did they do so?

This article examines the incidence of liberal and “illiberal” democracy in Latin America from 1978 through 2004. It demonstrates, first, that illiberal democracy—which combines free and fair elections with systematic constraints on citizens’ rights—became the norm throughout the region. Second, it shows that regime transitions most often ended not in liberal democracy but in illiberal democracy. Third, rare events logit analysis reveals that two variables, hyperinflation and presidential elections, had significant impact on movement toward fuller democracy. As a form of short-term economic shock, hyperinflation generates widespread discontent; given the opportunity to vote, citizens elect reformist opposition candidates who, once in office, remove controls on civil liberties. This scenario substantially increases the likelihood of transition from illiberal to liberal democracy.

The process of political coalition building surrounding trade reform in Mexico had implications for the 1994-95 peso crisis. This article traces the formation of a free trade coalition between state and business elites across several episodes of trade opening, focusing on the NAFTA negotiations. The consolidation of this powerful but narrow coalition helped to cement the Salinas government’s neoliberal reform agenda, boost investor confidence, and restore moderate levels of low-inflation growth in the early 1990s, but it also gave rise to the macroeconomic imbalances and political instability that led to the 1994 crisis. Since then, the economic basis of the neoliberal coalition may have recovered, but its political viability may be questionable.

Ethnodevelopment is a relatively new type of participatory policy that targets the poverty of marginalized ethnic groups with a focus on identity and self-management. While observers have recognized the empirical significance of this new paradigm, little has been done to conceptualize ethnodevelopment. This article argues that national-level ethnodevelopment implementation is a form of corporatism. Examining ethnodevelopment institutions in Ecuador, it shows that the state has structured, subsidized, and partially controlled the indigenous sector through ethnodevelopment policies and agencies. However, certain components of classical corporatism, such as monopolies of representation, do not characterize this paradigm. This article therefore classifies ethnodevelopment as a diminished subtype of corporatism. It challenges corporatism's long association with a particular historical period in the region and finds that Latin American states and social groups have called on historical institutional repertoires in responding to the newly salient ethnic cleavage in the region.

The Literature on democratic transitions suggests two opposite sorts of dangers that the successful democratizer must avoid: too much uncertainty on the one hand, and too little on the other. The first can lead to conflict, violence, and abortive transitions (Karl and Schmitter, 199D; while the second means there is no democracy at all, but leads to something less which has been variously called: "tutelary democracy," "electoralism," or "democradura."

Before the government of Patricio Aylwin took office in Chile in March 1990, most observers anticipated that the return to democracy would bring considerable social conflict and political instability. Expressing a widely held view, one expert wrote: "Any return to democracy in Chile would entail vocal demands, from a variety of social groups and movements, to reverse the policies instituted by the regime since 1973" (Loveman 1986-87:29). The need to confront human rights abuses during the military government was another potentially explosive political issue.

This article examines the internet's potential to democratize gender equality advocacy in Latin America. Based on field research in Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico, it challenges the assumption that the internet's horizontal organization and widespread dissemination inherently or inevitably lead to greater democratization. It advances two interrelated arguments. First, the internet's potential to foster democratic relations and effective strategies in civil society depends on the consciousness with which advocates adopt, share, and deploy the technology. Second, the internet is a critical resource for marginalized or socially suspect groups and subjects, providing a unique means to express and transmit often ostracized ideas and identities.

This article challenges the conventional wisdom that enthusiastic state support is a prerequisite to building strong participatory institutions. Through an analysis of Colombia’s planning councils, this study develops the concept of the societydriven participatory institution, in which civil society actors, rather than the state, undertake the core tasks involved in implementing participatory institutions. The article argues that while state neglect limits their involvement in decisionmaking, society-driven participatory institutions can still develop important policymaking roles in agenda setting and in monitoring and evaluating public policy.

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.

This article takes up the question of whether civil society organizations (CSOs) can and do act as mechanisms of representation in times of party crisis. It looks at recent representation practices in Argentina, Bolivia, and Brazil, three countries where political parties have experienced sharp crises after several decades of mixed reviews for their party systems. At such moments, any replacement of parties by CSOs should be especially apparent. This study concludes that the degree of crisis determines the extent that CSOs' representative functions replace partisan representation, at least in the short term. Where systems show signs of re-equilibration, CSOs offer alternative mechanisms through which citizens can influence political outcomes without seeking to replace parties. Where crisis is profound, CSOs claim some of the basic party functions but do not necessarily solve the problems of partisan representation.

In 1973 Alfred Stepan published an article with the descriptive title “The New Professionalism of Internal Warfare and Military Role Expansion.” In this article, he used the cases of Brazil and Peru to discuss “how the ideology of new professionalism arose and how it contributed to the expansion of the military's role in politics.” He proposed to do this by identifying “some of the institutional and political variables that are peculiar to Brazil and that help account for some of the special characteristics of the present military regime” (1973). He then set out the paradigms of the “old professionalism” as formulated in the carefully constructed analysis of Samuel P. Huntington (1957) and compared these to the stated missions and observed activities of the Brazilian army in the 1960s. This comparison led him to conclude that because the army's missions and activities were clearly different from those in the Huntington model they must flow from a different definition of the military profession rather than merely being lapses from the “old professionalism” (Stepan, 1973: 48).

There is a growing scholarly consensus that Latin American regionalism has entered a new phase. For some observers, the increasing complexity of regional cooperation initiatives renders collective action ineffective. For others, the creation of new schemes signals a “posthegemonic” moment that has opened a space for collaboration on social issues. Both camps attribute this shift to the absence of the United States and the presence of left-leaning governments. By contrast, this study demonstrates that this agenda is not new, nor has the United States impeded similar initiatives in the past. In fact, the United States was instrumental in expanding regional cooperation on social issues in the early twentieth century. Instead, this article argues that agenda shifts are best explained by an evolving consensus about the role of the state. The “new agenda” is in line with historical attempts by governments to use regionalism to bolster their own domestic reforms.

The sequencing of transitions to democracy and to a market economy shaped the outcome of labor law reform and prospects for expanded labor rights in Argentina, Brazil, and Chile. Argentina and Brazil experienced democratic transitions before market economic reforms were consolidated in the 1990s. During the transition, unions obtained prolabor reforms and secured rights that were enshrined in labor law. In posttransition democratic governments, market reforms coincided with efforts to reverse earlier labor protections. Unable to block many harmful reforms, organized labor in Argentina and Brazil did conserve core interests linked to organizational survival and hence to future bargaining leverage. In Chile this sequence was reversed. Market economic policies and labor reform were consolidated under military dictatorship. During democratic transition, employers successfully resisted reforms that would expand labor rights. This produced a limited scope of organizational resources for Chilean unions and reduced prospects for future improvements.

As institutions are created to engage citizens and civil society organizations more directly, who participates, and what effect does participation have? This article explores two of Peru’s participatory institutions, the Regional Coordination Councils and the participatory budgets, created in 2002. Specifically it asks, once these institutions are set up, do organizations participate in them? and what effect does this participation have on the organizations? The data show that the participatory processes in Peru are including new voices in decisionmaking, but this inclusion has limits. Limited inclusion has, in turn, led to limited changes specifically in nongovernmental organizations. As a result, the democratizing potential of the participatory institutions is evident yet not fully realized.

As part of an emerging research agenda on the political impact of remittances in high-migration countries, this article explores the conditions under which organized migrants are likely to engage in transnational public-private partnerships with their home governments through a comparison of Mexico and El Salvador. Both countries have well-organized migrants who have cofinanced community projects back home. But this collaboration has been more sustained, multifaceted, and negotiated in Mexico than in El Salvador. These outcomes are linked to four factors: the density and type of migrant organizations, the territorial distribution of state authority and resources, the extent and nature of diaspora outreach, and legacies of state-society relations. The article discusses how this framework might be applied to other high-migration countries and whether there is room for agency in creating more favorable conditions for migrant-state collaboration.

Twenty years after governments across Latin America began implementing neoliberal reforms in earnest, concern is growing about their impact on the quality of democracy in the region. This article examines this issue in the case of Mexico by exploring how patterns of political participation, especially among the rural and urban poor, have changed since the implementation of free market reforms. It asks whether the institutional innovations associated with free market reforms make it easier or more difficult for the poor to participate in Mexico's political process. The answer is not encouraging. Despite democratic openings, the new linkages between the state and citizens established as a result of the transition to a free market development model stifle the voice of the poor not through the threat of force or coercion, but by creating obstacles and disincentives for political mobilization that affect the poor more severely than other groups.

Chile presents a paradox for legislative studies. In most comparative research on the political power of presidents and assemblies in Latin America, the Chilean presidency is considered one of the most powerful in the region. The country's congress is seen, accordingly, as weak and lacking influence over public policy. Such evaluations, however, tend to be based on constitutional and legal faculties (that is, formal powers), and they overlook the substantial influence exerted by the Chilean Congress through informal political channels. This article analyzes literature on informal politics that shows the substantial influence of Chile's Congress on public policy; and, for comparison, presents an empirical study that adds several details to current accounts of congressional influence on the bureaucracy in Chile and describes two mechanisms of congressional influence not contemplated by recent research.