The article analyzes and compares the dynamics of business-government relations in Bolivia and Ecuador during the presidencies of Evo Morales and Rafael Correa. It specifically traces the shift from confrontation to rapprochement to a fairly stable pattern of negotiation and dialogue that characterizes the two governments' interaction with core business elites. Drawing on the structural and instrumental power framework developed by Tasha Fairfield, it proposes an explanation that accounts for this overall shift as well as for the main differences between the two countries. In a nutshell, the article argues that the business elites' response to a severe loss of instrumental power and the governments' response to the persistent structural power of business combined to cause the shift toward negotiation and dialogue. The article also probes the plausibility of this power-based explanation by briefly comparing the two cases with other left-of-center governments in the region.

In 2015, a center-left government introduced an electoral reform that replaced the binomial electoral system governing parliamentary elections since 1989 with a more proportional system. This article provides an account of the reform process, describes the new electoral law, and discusses the factors explaining the reform. We argue, first, that it was possible, due to the incentives the government provided, to secure the support of an ample majority of parliamentarians; also, a new and favorable political scenario had emerged, in which the support of the main right-wing parties was not necessary for the reform to pass. Second, we maintain that the reform sought mainly to resolve problems affecting the parties of the governing coalition related to negotiations of coalition lists for elections. As a complementary objective, the reform promoted a general interest by establishing rules that allowed a “fairer” system of representation and improved competitive conditions.

Why have some Mexican states proceeded faster than others in the revolutionary transformation of overhauling criminal procedure? Contributing an original index of criminal procedure reform across Mexico's 32 states from 2002 to 2011 and building on existing research on policy diffusion, this article seeks to answer this question. It finds that the 2008 constitutional reform at the federal level exerts a strong positive effect (federal mandate); being situated in a neighborhood of states that have reformed has a counterintuitive negative effect (spatial proximity); and having a governor from the same party as governors of other states that have reformed has a positive influence (network affinity). These findings yield a better understanding of the vertical, cross-level and horizontal, cross-unit diffusion of reform, with implications for understanding how to overcome challenges to criminal justice reform in Mexico, Latin America, and elsewhere.

In 2015, Chile fundamentally reformed the electoral system it had used since 1989. The old system was characterized by high levels of malapportionment, or differences across districts in the ratios of voters to representatives. In the first elections after redemocratization, malapportionment favored the ideological right, but elections since 2000 have yielded no evidence that malapportionment produced ideological bias. The new, postreform electoral system reduces malapportionment in the lower chamber, although it remains pronounced in both chambers. Nevertheless, analysis of results from previous elections, coupled with information about the new districts, suggests that, consistent with recent experience, malapportionment will not produce ideological bias in elections to either chamber.