The Oxford Encyclopedia of Latin American Politics

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Social Movements ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
American Politics ◽  
Latin American Politics ◽  
Contemporary Politics ◽  
Broad Array ◽  
And Gender

94 entries This encyclopedia reviews and interprets a broad array of research on Latin American politics, including topics related to political institutions, processes, and parties; social movements; political economy; racial and gender politics; and Latin America’s international relations. Under the editorial directorship of Harry E. Vanden and Gary Prevost and associate editors Jennifer Cyr, Kwame Dixon, Mary K. Meyer McAleese, Gabriel Ondetti, and Richard Stahler-Sholk, this publication brings together peer-reviewed contributions by leading researchers and offers the definitive resource for understanding contemporary politics in the region. As a result, the Oxford Encyclopedia of Latin American Politics is a necessary resource for students and as well as both new and established scholars.

Surveys and the Study of Latin American Politics

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryan E. Carlin
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
American Politics ◽  
Voting Behavior ◽  
Political Support ◽  
Latin American Politics ◽  
Theoretical Understanding ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
Public Opinion Surveys

To understand Latin American politics, one must view it through the eyes and minds of Latin Americans. Since the middle of the 20th century, pollsters in academia, government, and industry have fielded public opinion surveys in an attempt to do just that. Although they are not typically considered political institutions, polls and surveys influence a variety of political processes directly and indirectly thanks to the legitimacy they enjoy among academics, policymakers, and publics. Large strides have been made toward making surveys more methodologically rigorous and toward improving the quality of survey data in the region. Scholars have leveraged the data to advance the theoretical understanding of a range of topics, especially political support, partisanship, and voting behavior. Despite these gains, public opinion surveys face clear challenges that threaten their hard-won legitimacy. To the extent that these challenges are met in the coming decades, public opinion polling’s role in shaping Latin American politics will remain, if not strengthen.

Special Section: Political Economy and the Future of Latin American Politics

2014 ◽  
Vol 56 (01) ◽  
pp. 1-2 ◽  
Author(s):  
William C. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Latin American ◽  
American Politics ◽  
Special Section ◽  
Structural Transformations ◽  
Latin American Politics ◽  
The Future ◽  
Market Restructuring

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.

An Introduction to Gender and Representation in Latin America

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leslie A. Schwindt-Bayer
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Gender Inequality ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
Latin American Politics ◽  
Gender And Politics ◽  
Women's Representation ◽  
Political Crises ◽  
Women’S Representation ◽  
And Gender

In this introductory chapter of Gender and Representation in Latin America, Leslie A. Schwindt-Bayer argues that gender inequality in political representation in Latin America is rooted in institutions and the democratic challenges and political crises facing Latin American countries. She situates the book in two important literatures—one on Latin American politics and democratic institutions, the other on gender and politics—and then explains how the book will explore the ways that institutions and democratic challenges and political crises moderate women’s representation and gender inequality. She introduces the book’s framework of analyzing the causes and consequences of women’s representation, overviews the organization of the volume, and summarizes the main arguments of the chapters.

Social Movements in Latin America: Mapping the Literature

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicolás M. Somma
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Social Movements ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Transnational Activism ◽  
Organizational Fields ◽  
Family Labor ◽  
American Sociology ◽  
Research Fields ◽  
Vast Literature ◽  
Active Research

The study of social movements is currently one of the most active research fields in Latin American sociology. This article maps the vast literature on Latin American social movements (LASMs) from the late 1980s to the present. After briefly discussing how scholars have conceptualized LASMs, it presents seven influential approaches: structuralism, political economy, political context, organizational fields, “new social movements,” frames and emotions, and transnational activism. Then it discusses some works that zero in on the specificity of LASMs. It closes with a brief summary of the five coming chapters, each of which is devoted to a specific social movement “family”: labor, women’s, student, indigenous, and anti-globalization.

Elites, Elite Settlements, and Revolutionary Movements in Latin America, 1950–1980: Introduction

1994 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 543-574
Author(s):  
Timothy P. Wickham-Crowley
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
American Politics ◽  
Social Revolution ◽  
Latin American Politics ◽  
Revolutionary Movements

Social revolutions as well as revolutionary movements have recently held great interest for both sociopolitical theorists and scholars of Latin American politics. Before we can proceed with any useful analysis, however, we must distinguish between these two related but not identical phenomena. Adapting Theda Skocpol’s approach, we can define social revolutions as “rapid, basic transformations of a society’s state and class structures; and they are accompanied and in part carried through by” mass-based revolts from below, sometimes in cross-class coalitions (Skocpol 1979: 4; Wickham-Crowley 1991:152). In the absence of such basic sociopolitical transformations, I will not speak of (social) revolution or of a revolutionary outcome, only about revolutionary movements, exertions, projects, and so forth. Studies of the failures and successes of twentieth-century Latin American revolutions have now joined the ongoing theoretical debate as to whether such outcomes occur due to society- or movement-centered processes or instead due to state- or regime-centered events (Wickham-Crowley 1992).

True Crimes: Rodolfo Walsh and the Role of the Intellectual in Latin American Politics

2002 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael McCaughan
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
American Politics ◽  
Open Letter ◽  
Latin American Politics ◽  
Dirty War ◽  
Death Squad ◽  
The Us ◽  
Own Name ◽  
The Military

Rodolfo Walsh was a writer of crime novels, a tireless investigative journalist who uncovered real political crimes, an instant historian of a turbulent and violent era in Argentinian and Latin American politics. He was in Cuba in 1960, participating in setting up the first revolutionary press service in Latin America, "Prensa Latina", when a coded telex arrived in their offices by mistake. After sleepless nights and with one cryptography manual, Walsh deciphered the plans for the US invasion of Cuba being planned in Guatemala by the CIA. Walsh was active in the Montonero guerrilla in Argentina, co-ordinating information and intelligence work. In that capacity he made public the existence of ESMA, the Naval Mechanics School which was the main military torture centre. In his own name he wrote an Open Letter to the Military Junta, a year from the coup and a day before his death, denouncing the dirty war. He was gunned down in the streets of Buenos Aires by a military death squad. This is an account of Rudolfo Walsh's life. It includes extended excerpts from his varied writings.

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