Well-financed opposition parties can exert their organizational strength to undercut the territorial advantages of political machines and clientele networks. In the first decade of the twenty-first century, leftist parties in Brazil's Northeast region brought conservative dominance to an end. The Workers' Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores, PT) led this shift, not only garnering regional majorities in presidential elections but also winning multiple governorships and increasing its share of federal and state legislative seats in the region. In contrast to arguments attributing recent electoral shifts in the Northeast to civil society, aggregate growth, and conditional cash transfers, we argue that the territorial expansion of the PT organization played a central role. A spike in party finances between 2001 and 2003 enabled the PT, for the first time, to establish party offices in northeastern municipalities from the top down. Drawing from underutilized data and sources, we show that the PT leadership eroded conservatives' monopoly on rural territory in the Northeast by strategically targeting hundreds of conservative-dominated municipalities and investing resources to stimulate the formation of local offices. The study demonstrates that this top-down territorial targeting produced considerable electoral gains for PT candidates across federal and state races.

Numerous studies on the determinants of foreign direct investment flows in Latin America underscore the importance of risk- and cost-mitigating institutions that support good governance, political and economic freedom, and demonstrate a credible commitment to economic reform by regional governments. This study tests these variables against market size, macroeconomic policy, and factor controls to assess which combinations of variables explain the distribution of foreign inflows. Using a time-series cross-sectional data set of fifteen Latin American economies from 1985 to 2003, the study concludes that past performance on the current account provides sufficient commitment by regional governments and that regime, good governance, and reform variables are, by comparison, inconsistent predictors of foreign direct investment.

Comparative examples of “good government” at the subnational level may underanalyze the “public goods” problem facing politicians. Delegating authority and resources to policymaking agencies is possible when political conflict is low. The benefits can be maintained only if public agencies establish ties of “horizontal embeddedness” with industrial clients. This case study of innovative industrial policymaking in Minas Gerais, which is compared with one from Rio de Janeiro, finds that horizontal, interagency ties were critical to policy success. The contrast leads to an examination of the mineiro system's efficacy in promoting externalities, attracting foreign investment, and planning infrastructure in the state's automotive industry.

This study explains the erosion of conservative rule and the rise of leftist opposition at the subnational level in the Northeast of Brazil in recent electoral cycles. Compared with explanations based on economic modernization, social spending, and fiscal reform, the data best support the hypothesis that the organizational and spatial dimensions of leftist mobilization in these states have shifted to the detriment of conservative machines. Specifically, urban mobilization of leftist supporters has determined the electoral success of these oppositions. The study also explains where conservatives maintain a floor of support based on the continuation of clientele networks.

It is difficult to argue with success. Brazil’s public steel firms—once the crown jewels of a state-led model of development—were, by the late 1980s, heavily indebted, unproductive, and dependent on the financial support of a state in fiscal crisis. As if by a wave of the proverbial magic wand, their privatization in the period 1990–94 made them exponentially more productive, financially sound, and competitive. Of the eight major Brazilian steel enterprises, seven were returning profits by the end of 1994. One of the seven, Usiminas, became the most profitable private firm in Brazil in 1993, two years after it was privatized.