This essay reviews the following works:

Enhancing Democracy: Public Policies and Citizen Participation in Chile. By Gonzalo Delamaza. New York: Berghahn Books, 2015. Pp. vi + 296. $99.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9781782385462.

The Politics of Local Participatory Democracy in Latin America: Institutions, Actors, and Interactions. By Françoise Montambeault. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2016. Pp. ix + 265. $65.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9780804795166.

Participatory Democracy in Brazil: Socioeconomic and Political Origins. By J. Ricardo Tranjan. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2016. Pp. vii + 269. $30.69 paperback. ISBN: 9780268042400.

Activating Democracy in Brazil: Popular Participation, Social Justice, and Interlocking Institutions. By Brian Wampler. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame, 2015. Pp. xi + 297. $39.00 paperback. ISBN: 9780268044305.

Conditional cash transfer programs may boost the electoral fortunes of incumbents among beneficiary groups, but do they also influence recipient attitudes toward state legitimacy? This article examines the relationship between Brazil's Bolsa Família program and recipients’ sense of the Brazilian state's political legitimacy, from 2007 to 2014. Using AmericasBarometer data and propensity score matching, this study provides evidence that targeted cash benefits correlate with citizens’ views of the state, but that this relationship is limited to increasing trust in core state institutions, local government, and incumbent political actors. Diffuse dimensions of regime legitimacy, including recipients’ sense of political community, support for regime principles, and retrospective perceptions of national economic performance, are largely unaffected by the receipt of targeted benefits. Over time, the evidence also suggests that the impact of program receipt on these measures of support remains largely unchanged.

The experiences of communities in Rio de Janeiro under threat of removal through gentrification or mega-event construction present an opportunity to review the process and impact of urban community mobilization. This article assesses the determinants of community strategies, the challenges to implementation, and the impact of mobilization on outcomes for such communities. It reviews the case of Vila Autódromo, detailing the dynamic influence of both rational expectations and the “right to the city” ideology in developing resistance strategies and providing evidence to confirm the importance of social capital and civic capacity for community efficacy. The analysis updates theorizing beyond the politics of clientelism and contributes to understanding how the urban regime approach may apply to the Latin American context, while demonstrating the continued relevance of the political opportunity structure for determining policy outcomes.

Democracy affords citizens the ability to influence policy through participation in elections and through direct political action. Though previous scholarship evaluates the impact each strategy has on outcomes, little if any work exists that examines how one strategy, direct action, affects success in the other, elections. This study analyzes the relationship between land occupations and the electoral success of the Workers' Party in Brazil between 1996 and 2006. It finds that the relationship varies in presidential and mayoral elections depending on income inequality and incumbency. Once the PT captures the presidential office in 2002, these effects disappear, suggesting that the effect of political protest also depends on who is in office.