The field of Latin American politics has undeniably achieved major advances in the last several decades. Nevertheless, one detects a growing intellectual unease and a sense that the excitement engendered by the pathbreaking work and heated debates of previous decades—focusing on authoritarianism, democratization, and market restructuring and related structural transformations—has waned and perhaps given way to a certain “normalization” of our intellectual enterprise.

This brief article is designed to highlight an unfortunate discrepancy in the field of Latin American political economy. The field’s raison d’être has never been more compelling. Latin American societies have simultaneously been experiencing profound transformations—including democratic consolidation, demographic transition, and the growth of identity politics—and a palpable sense of déjà vu animated by the recovery of commodity prices and the return of populism. In a nutshell, the region is undergoing a deep economic transformation, which takes place in the context of unprecedented levels of political participation.

Murilllo, Schrank, and Luna opened up Pandora’s Box. From time to time, scholars need to be warned about what they are doing. They sounded the alarm, and we who study or live in Latin America should thank them for calling us to reason. They are right to call our attention to our past. We are heirs of Hirschman, O’Donnell, Cardoso, and others. Moreover, as the mere reference to these names makes clear, we are members of a community in which political engagement is a must. Latin Americanists are politically committed to the future of the region they were born in or professionally adopted. We study this region because we care about the future of those who live in it.

The plea by Murillo, Shrank, and Luna (MSL) for a more “grounded” political economy approach to the study of Latin America is much welcome, and it merits a serious debate among scholars of the region. To help advance that debate, this essay raises several issues regarding the substance and methods of the political economy they advocate.

Luna, Murillo, and Schrank (LMS) do our field a very valuable service by raising questions on the state of research on the political economy in Latin America and where it should be going. They cover a lot of ground in a short space, leaving a smorgasbord of issues to mull over, question, or endorse. To my mind, some of the most promising critiques in the memo are that there are gaps in the field and that those gaps are due in part to methodological fashion. Yet the discussion of gaps in LMS is somewhat ungrounded and underspecified. Closing the essay with a call for more research on democracy, development, state formation, inequality, and international linkages seems to miss the fact that most recent research is actually related to these five topics. Many readers probably would react by saying to themselves that they have been conducting some research in one or more of these areas.

The essay by Murillo, Shrank, and Luna constitutes a much-needed and welcome wake-up call for those of us who study Latin America—and for political scientists more generally. The authors make a plea for “a rigorous, comparative, and empirically grounded” study of Latin American political economy. I fully agree with their diagnosis of this field and their recommendations. I also praise the authors for defining political economy broadly—rather than narrowly, through a focus on research methods. They understand political economy to encompass all the economic, social, and political factors that are either contextual conditions or consequences of major macroeconomic transformations. Thus the authors lay out an important research agenda for the study of Latin American political economy that includes not only issues of economic development and inequality, but also patterns of democratic politics, state capacities, the rule of law, identity politics, and international linkages, among others. For the authors, the major political and economic transformations that the region has undergone since the start of the twentyfirst century—in its postneoliberal era—cry out for a contextualized research agenda and, I would add, open a host of opportunities for theoretical and conceptual innovation.

This article analyzes the conditions that facilitate the ousting of Latin American presidents and the mechanisms that prevent their downfall. Drawing lessons from the impeachment of Paraguayan president Fernando Lugo, it extends previous arguments about the “legislative shield” to show that the same forces that sometimes conspire to terminate an administration at other times work to resist its demise. The argument underscores the interaction between legislators and social movements, two prominent actors in the literature on presidential instability. The article presents a two-level theory to identify possible configurations of mass and legislative alignments, and tests some implications of the theory with data for 116 Latin American presidents over 28 years. Multiple comparison tests based on random effects logistic models show that popular protests can be neutralized by strong support in Congress, and hint at the possibility that legislative threats can be neutralized by loyal demonstrators in the streets.

This article examines whether conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs have had a significant effect on reducing murder rates in Mexico and Brazil, using time-series municipal-level data on murders in both countries. The findings, over the period 2005–8, show that the greater the proportion of beneficiaries enrolled in a CCT program in each municipality, the lower the number of murders. There are, however, important differences between the two countries, with a much larger effect in Brazil than in Mexico. This holds even when controlling for GDP and levels of development.

Social conflict in Peru has increased dramatically since 2004. The economic origins of these disputes, which result mostly from the growth of mining operations, have received considerable scholarly attention. The emergence of collective action directed at the performance of regional and local government, however, has received little notice. This essay examines Peru's regional and local governance conflicts on the basis of hundreds of reported cases. It investigates the nature of these episodes and the strategies adopted by community organizations to get their complaints addressed. It finds that the political opportunity of the posttransition period, dissatisfaction with government performance, and new participatory rights have helped to give rise to such collective action. Community protagonists choose between institutional and noninstitutional strategies but often combine them to help ensure success. Maintaining legitimacy proves essential to both sides. This article argues that these events represent both constraints and favorable developments for subnational democracy in Peru.

Authoritarian responses to rising violent crime rates have become a serious problem in Central America. Inspired by theories of agenda setting and media framing, this article examines the influence of news media coverage of crime on attitudes toward crime control. Using an original survey experiment, it tests the relationship between crime news, fear of crime, trust in government institutions, and support for authoritarian crime control measures in Guatemala. It finds that crime news influences support for authoritarian crime control via its effect on lowering citizen trust in government institutions. Exposure to crime news also affects self-reported victimization rates and levels of support for a presidential candidate promoting iron fist policies. These findings not only give insight into the relationship between crime news and political attitudes but also have implications for the rule of law and the politics of crime in new or fragile democracies.

This article aims to assess how democracy affects social welfare by analyzing Uruguay and Paraguay, one country with a vibrant democratic history and a progressive political landscape, the other with a generally authoritarian past and a conservative dominant party. The article maintains that welfare systems in these countries have been critically shaped by the impact of democracy, or by its absence, and by the strategies adopted by major social and political actors, especially parties; these strategies have been determined, in turn, by parties' ideologies and by the workings of electoral competition. The article also emphasizes that the impact of democracy on social welfare is critically mediated by the role of previous welfare legacies, the presence of welfare constituencies defending acquired rights and privileges, and social and economic variables, such as overall wealth levels, the formal or informal nature of labor markets, and the political organization of domestic economies.

This article proposes a research agenda for the organization of the executive branch in Latin America by reviewing the literature on the U.S. and Latin American presidencies and outlining the research gap between them. The study finds that while strong, regionwide patterns have been established about cabinets in Latin America, research is lagging behind on the presidential center, presidential advisory networks, and their effects in policymaking. The article sets forth a series of research questions and suggests a combination of quantitative, social network, and case study strategies to address them.