scholarly journals The Role of International Factors in Electoral Volatility in Latin America: An Examination of Structural Adjustment

SAGE Open ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 215824402110178
Author(s):  
Michelle Kuenzi ◽  
Hafthor Erlingsson ◽  
John P. Tuman

Does structural adjustment increase party system instability in Latin America? We employ the Latin American Presidential and Legislative Elections (LAPALE) database ( http://www.lapaledata.com ) and our own original data set for structural adjustment to assess the effects of structural adjustment and other economic, social, and political variables on legislative volatility in 18 Latin American countries during the period of 1982 to 2016. The results of our study indicate that structural adjustment results in higher levels of within-system electoral volatility and support a broad version of economic voting theory. Extra-system electoral volatility is driven primarily by institutional and demographic factors. Our findings also highlight the importance of disaggregating electoral volatility as within-system volatility and extra-system volatility appear to be largely driven by different factors, or in different ways by the same factors.

2005 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 161-179 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raúl L. Madrid

AbstractIn recent years, important indigenous parties have emerged for the first time in Latin American history. Although some analysts view this development with trepidation, this essay argues that the indigenous parties in Latin America are unlikely to exacerbate ethnic conflict or create the kinds of problems that have been associated with some ethnic parties in other regions. To the contrary, the emergence of major indigenous parties in Latin America may actually help deepen democracy in the region. These parties will certainly improve the representativeness of the party system in the countries where they arise. They should also increase political participation and reduce party system fragmentation and electoral volatility in indigenous areas. They may even increase the acceptance of democracy and reduce political violence in countries with large indigenous populations.


2018 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 308-326 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vincenzo Emanuele ◽  
Alessandro Chiaramonte ◽  
Sorina Soare

AbstractThe literature on party system change and electoral volatility in post-communist Europe tends to make a clear-cut distinction between Central and Eastern European (CEE) party systems and Western European (WE) ones. The former are unstable and unpredictable and electoral volatility is driven by the continuous emergence of new political parties. Conversely, electoral stability is the rule in the latter, and volatility is associated with electoral shifts among established parties. This conventional wisdom suffers from three potential sources of bias: case selection, time coverage and method. By correcting these biases, this article investigates whether the traditional division between CEE and WE party systems has been levelled as regards volatility. To do so, it presents evidence based on an original data set of electoral volatility and its internal components covering 31 WE and CEE party systems since 1990. It finds that a process of asymmetric convergence in the levels of electoral volatility is taking place between the two regions, with Western Europe approaching Central and Eastern Europe with increasing electoral instability.


Author(s):  
Marcelo Bergman

This chapter reviews the role of prisons in Latin America and the meager effects they have in containing crime and imposing deterrence, documenting the dramatic rise in incarceration in every Latin American country over the last two decades. Based on evidence from inmate surveys and from official records, it examines the failure of rehabilitation, incapacitation, and of deterrence, which backfires once released inmates get back to the streets and crime. It analyzes the “substitution” effect, whereby offenders locked up in prisons are replaced by others in the criminal networks of stolen goods and narcotics industries, so that incarceration barely has any impact on crime, particularly under HCE. Original data depicts the poor state of prisons in the region, the link between inmates and crimes committed outside the prisons, the high rates of recidivism, and many other indicators of poor prison policies.


1999 ◽  
Vol 93 (3) ◽  
pp. 575-590 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth M. Roberts ◽  
Erik Wibbels

Three different theoretical explanations are tested for the exceptionally high level of electoral volatility found in contemporary Latin America: economic voting, institutional characteristics of political regimes and party systems, and the structure and organization of class cleavages. A pooled cross-sectional time-series regression analysis is conducted on 58 congressional elections and 43 presidential elections in 16 Latin American countries during the 1980s and 1990s. Institutional variables have the most consistent effect on volatility, while the influence of economic performance is heavily contingent upon the type of election and whether the dependent variable is operationalized as incumbent vote change or aggregate electoral volatility. The results demonstrate that electoral volatility is a function of short-term economic perturbations, the institutional fragilities of both democratic regimes and party systems, and relatively fluid cleavage structures.


2021 ◽  
pp. 245513332110316
Author(s):  
Tiken Das ◽  
Pradyut Guha ◽  
Diganta Das

This study made an attempt to answer the question: Do the heterogeneous determinants of repayment affect the borrowers of diverse credit sources differently? The study is based on data collected from 240 households from three districts in the lower Brahmaputra valley of Assam through a carefully designed primary survey. Besides, the study uses the double hurdle approach and the instrumental variable probit model to reduce possible selection bias. It observes better repayment performance among formal borrowers, followed by semiformal borrowers, while occupation wise it is prominent among organised employees. It has been found that in general, the household characteristics, loan characteristics and location-specific characteristics significantly affect repayment performance of borrowers. However, the nature of impact of the factors influencing repayment performance is remarkably different across credit sources. It ignores the role of traditional community-based organisations in rural Assam while analysing the determinants of repayment performance. The study also recommends for ensuring productive opportunities and efficient market linkages in rural areas of Assam. The study is based on an original data set that has specially been collected to examine question that—do the heterogeneous determinants of repayment affect the borrowers of diverse credit sources differently in the lower Brahmaputra valley of Assam—which has not been studied before.


1993 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-17
Author(s):  
Alice B. Lentz

Alice Lentz offers a brief view of the role of the Americas Fund for Independent Universities (AFIU) in relation to significant initiatives in various Latin American countries. In a region where the function and development of private higher education institutions is especially important, the focus of the AFIU's activities is on private universities' ability to provide trained business leaders with the skills necessary to meet the challenges of enterprise growth in these developing economies. She mentions in particular the strengthening of financing capabilities within the university, and the evolution of three-way partnerships among business corporations, AFIU, and universities in Latin America.


2021 ◽  
pp. 83
Author(s):  
Yakov Shemyakin

The article substantiates the thesis that modern Native American cultures of Latin America reveal all the main features of "borderland" as a special state of the socio-cultural system (the dominant of diversity while preserving the unity sui generis, embodied in the very process of interaction of heterogeneous traditions, structuring linguistic reality in accordance with this dominant, the predominance of localism in the framework of the relationship between the universal and local dimensions of the life of Latin American societies, the key role of archaism in the system of interaction with the heritage of the 1st "axial time», first of all, with Christianity, and with the realities of the "second axial time" - the era of modernization. The author concludes that modern Indian cultures are isomorphic in their structure to the "borderline" Latin American civilization, considered as a "coalition of cultures" (K. Levi-Strauss), which differ significantly from each other, but are united at the deepest level by an extremely contradictory relationship of its participants.


Author(s):  
Rafael Martínez-Gallego ◽  
Juan Pedro Fuentes-García ◽  
Miguel Crespo

The prevention strategies used by tennis coaches when delivering tennis lessons during the COVID-19 pandemic were analyzed in this study. An ad hoc questionnaire collected data from 655 Spanish and Portuguese speaking tennis coaches working in Latin America and Europe. Differences in the prevention measures were analyzed according to the continent, the coaches’ experience, and the type of facility they worked in. Results showed that coaches used information provided from local and national organizations more than from international ones. Hand hygiene, communication of preventive strategies, and changes in the coaching methodology were the most used prevention measures. Latin American coaches and those working in public facilities implemented the measures more often than their European colleagues or those working in private venues. Finally, more experienced coaches showed a greater awareness of the adoption of the measures than their less experienced counterparts. The data provided by this research may assist in developing new specific guidelines, protocols, and interventions to help better understand the daily delivery of tennis coaching in this challenging context.


2018 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 289-305 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elisa Rebessi ◽  
Francesco Zucchini

AbstractIf we examine the current literature, no study on policy agenda has so far addressed the agenda of a Constitutional Court in a country that has recently experienced crucial changes in its political system. The present contribution on the Italian Constitutional Court seeks to bridge this gap. We aim at assessing the role the Italian Court plays in the policy process in both the First and the Second Republic by answering two research questions: (1) in its decisions does the Court accommodate themes that are neglected in the parliamentary legislative process? (2) Does the Court (and if so, how often) represent interests and values in opposition to the interests and values supporting the current legislative majorities? By employing an original data set that puts together all decisions of constitutional illegitimacy under incidental review between the years 1983 and 2013, we found that in both Republics Court’s agenda is significantly more concentrated than Parliament’s agenda, and it does not broadly offer an alternative access point to the policy-making for new or neglected issues. However, at the same time, the alternational system of the Second Republic seems to trigger more immediate and ‘salient’ reactions from the Constitutional Court, which in that period becomes more prone to sanction recent legislation.


Author(s):  
Angel Belzunegui Eraso ◽  
David Dueñas Cid

In this chapter we focus on the growth of “new religions” and new religious movements in Latin America and attempt to find explanations for this growth. Although other explanations for the increase in religious plurality exist, we focus on the role of women in this development. The expansion of movements such as Pentecostalism is challenging the centrality of Catholicism in many Latin American countries. Basically, we therefore aim to answer the following question: Why has Pentecostalism grown so much in some Latin American countries while Catholicism has experienced a certain decline? One possible explanation for this is the role of women in this expansion, which has fostered greater social cohesion within families and communities. Pentecostalism has led to a certain empowerment of the women living in precarious conditions, affording them greater visibility and importance within their communities and giving them a role in the re-education of behaviours that are rooted in male domination.


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