Search

Begin New Search Political Geography South America Publishing Institution Kellogg Institute for International Studies

1. Social Policy Expansion and Retrenchment After Latin America’s Commodity Boom

Author:
Sara Niedzwiecki and Jennifer Pribble
Publication Date:
05-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
The literature on social policy expansion and retrenchment in Latin America is vast, but scholars differ in how they explain the outcomes, arriving at different conclusions about the role of democracy, left parties, favorable economic conditions, and social movements in shaping reform. What can welfare state developments since the end of the commodity boom teach us about the theoretical power of these arguments? This paper engages this question, seeking to explain recent incidents of social policy reform in 10 presidential administrations in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay. Using a combination of crisp-set qualitative comparative analysis (csQCA) and case studies, we identify multiple paths toward social policy expansion and retrenchment that involve the absence and presence of electoral competition, economic resources, party ideology and linkage mechanism, social movement pressure, international pressure, and legacies. The results show that while both parties of the left and right expanded social programs, only the right engaged in retrenchment, yet partisanship alone is insufficient for explaining reform outcomes, as the variable must appear in combination with other factors depending on the party’s linkage mechanism. The results provide new insight into the politics of social policy reform in Latin America, showing the relevance of complex forms of causality.
Topic:
Health, Poverty, Social Movement, Democracy, Inequality, Public Policy, and Political Parties
Political Geography:
Brazil, Argentina, South America, Uruguay, Latin America, and Chile

2. Democracy and Urban Political Culture in Spanish South America, 1810-1860

Author:
Paula Alonso and Marcela Ternavasio
Publication Date:
07-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
“Democracy,” a word seldom used in public debate at the start of the nineteenth century and negatively associated with tumult, disorder, and direct rule, in a few decades became linked to representative government and increasingly employed with positive connotations. This paper argues that these conceptual changes should be explored in their political and social contexts, since the term “democracy” was invoked to (de)legitimate certain political practices and social sectors. Therefore, in exploring this non-linear process in Spanish America, these pages focus on the interactions between the emerging language of democracy and its varied meanings and uses in urban politics. These interactions were part of the factional disputes on how to implement the principle of popular sovereignty. Starting with an overview of selected emerging political practices during the Independence period, the paper then focuses on Lima and Buenos Aires, two regions with contrasting colonial pasts, responses to Spanish crises, and post-independence paths, showing how the concept of democracy could be put to varied uses according to different contexts and political objectives.
Topic:
Civil Society, Governance, Culture, Democracy, Citizenship, and Institutions
Political Geography:
Argentina, South America, Latin America, and Peru

3. Toxic Conflict: Understanding Venezuela's Economic Collapse

Author:
Juan Carlos Fernández-Rodríguez
Publication Date:
11-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
This paper discusses the causes of Venezuela’s recent economic collapse, the largest in modern Latin American economic history and one of the largest in modern world history outside of wartime. I argue that Venezuela’s economic implosion is a combination of two crises. The first one reflects the standard unraveling of a populist macroeconomic cycle fed by overspending during a resource boom, while the second one reflects the severing of the country’s trade and financial links with the global economy. This severing is the consequence of the decision by political actors to adopt “scorched earth” strategies with large negative aggregate economic spillovers in their fight for power. I argue that the inability of Venezuela’s high-stakes, winner-take-all political system to deal with the large negative 2014–16 trade shock precipitated the change in political strategies and the descent into economically destructive political conflict.
Topic:
Development, Political Economy, Democracy, Economic Growth, Conflict, Institutions, and Peacebuilding
Political Geography:
South America and Latin America

4. The Space of Utopia: Christians for Socialism in Chile

Author:
Denisa Jashari
Publication Date:
12-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
This paper examines the intellectual production of the Chilean clerical movement, Christians for Socialism (CpS). It does so by contextualizing the emergence of CpS within the Chilean Church’s own transformations in theological practices and in grassroots interactions with workers and the poor. The election of self-declared Marxist Salvador Allende in 1970 inspired a sector of the clergy to rethink both the role of the Church in society and the role of the poor in the nation. I draw on Ernst Bloch’s concept of concrete utopia to argue that in Chile Christians for Socialism not only creatively converged Marxist and religious thinking but contributed to altering conventional notions of the two. The notion of transcendence and the construction of a “New Man” appealed to the utopian aspects of both religious and Marxist thinking. Moreover, the Chilean CpS had a Latin American impact, as evidenced by the First Latin American Encounter of Christians for Socialism in Santiago, Chile, in 1972, and a world impact, seen in the formation of the Ecumenical Association of Third-World Theologians in 1976. While the legacy of CpS and liberation theology in Chile is far more visible in the grassroots work undertaken during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, an examination of this movement’s theological and ideological productions before the coup is critical to comprehending members’ subsequent material, on-the-ground actions.
Topic:
Civil Society, Human Rights, Religion, Social Movement, Violence, and Catholic Church
Political Geography:
South America, Latin America, and Chile

5. Shoutings, Scoldings, Talkings, and Whispers: Mothers’ Reponses to Armed Actors and Militarization in Two Caracas Barrios

Author:
Verónica Zubillaga and Rebecca Hanson
Publication Date:
12-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
How do mothers deal with chronic violence and the constant presence of guns in their neighborhoods? How do they relate to the armed actors who inhabit their neighborhoods? How do they build situated meaning and discursive practices out of their experiences and relationships with armed actors? We compare the experience of women in two poor and working-class neighborhoods in Caracas. La Caracola, with a long history of civic organizations and drug trafficking, suffers regular, extortionate actions by the police. La Piedad has been ravaged by militarized police operations, which have produced a "warfare mode" among the members of organized criminal groups. Through this comparative ethnographic project we aim to show how, in the midst of state-sponsored depredation and with an overwhelming presence of guns in their lives, women use their traditional cultural roles as mothers to perform everyday forms of resistance vis-à-vis the different armed actors that impose their presence in the barrios. We focus on how women make and communicate meanings; engage in social networks with other women; and employ different discursive strategies as they deal with the armed actors. We foreground women’s experiences in two barrios, asking what material and historical conditions make these different experiences possible. In the mothers’ daily struggles, dramatic discursive actions—from more openly oppositional, such as shouting, scolding, and talking, to more hidden ones, such as, both “circulating gossip” and “captive gossip” to more helpless ones, such as whispering—are their main resources in the micropolitics of their neighborhoods.
Topic:
Security, Civil Society, Gender Issues, Conflict, Violence, Peace, and Social Networks
Political Geography:
South America, Latin America, and Venezuela

6. The Emergence of Democracy in Colombia

Author:
Raúl L. Madrid
Publication Date:
12-2020
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
Although Colombia had many important democratic achievements in the 19th century, this paper argues that democracy first took root there at the outset of the 20th century. Several key developments enabled democratic practices and institutions to take hold. First, the savage Thousand Days War (1899–1902) and the ensuing professionalization of the Colombian military helped bring an end to the cycle of rebellion in Colombia. In their wake, the opposition abandoned the armed struggle and began to focus on the electoral path to power, thereby reducing the government’s inclination to engage in repression. Second, the rise of strong parties also contributed to the emergence of democracy in Colombia. Two powerful parties, the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party, arose in Colombia during the 19th century. From 1886 until 1930, the Liberal Party was in the opposition, and Liberals pushed for reforms to guarantee minority representation and reduce electoral fraud and intimidation. Third and finally, a split within the ruling Conservative Party made the enactment of these reforms feasible. The Liberals did not have sufficient strength or influence to pass the key democratic reforms, but in the early 1900s, some Conservative dissidents broke with their party and allied with Liberals to form the Republican Union party. The Republican Union pushed through the key constitutional reforms in 1910, and it, along with the Liberal Party, helped ensure their implementation in the years that followed.
Topic:
Politics, Democracy, Conflict, Peace, and Political Parties
Political Geography:
Colombia, South America, and Latin America

7. Shared Class as an Electoral Heuristic in Brazil’s Local Elections

Author:
Peter G. Johannessen
Publication Date:
12-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
Do voters use a candidate’s class as an electoral heuristic? And if so, how? Drawing on observational and experimental evidence from Brazil’s local elections (2004–2016), I provide evidence that voters use shared class to draw inferences about a candidate’s type: candidates from different classes receive similar overall levels of support, but receive disproportionate support from voters who share their class. The mechanisms driving this finding vary by a voter’s relative class position: upper-class voters use shared class to draw inferences about a candidate’s quality, trustworthiness, and distributive commitments, but lower-class voters only use shared class to draw inferences about a candidate’s trustworthiness and distributive commitments.
Topic:
Politics, Poverty, Democracy, Inequality, Citizenship, and Identities
Political Geography:
Brazil, South America, and Latin America

8. Who Protects Whom? Politicians, Police and the Regulation of Drug Trafficking in Argentina

Author:
Hernan Flom
Publication Date:
01-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
In many developing countries with weak formal institutions, sectors within the state protect organized criminal activities, allowing illicit markets to thrive. This article posits that how state actors regulate drug trafficking affects the levels of violence associated with such criminal activity. I argue that political competition influences coordination within the police and leads to different types of regulatory regimes. On the one hand, coordinated forces implement protection rackets that contain violence. On the other, uncoordinated police carry out particularistic negotiations with drug traffickers that exacerbate criminal violence. I illustrate this argument with a subnational comparison of two Argentine provinces, Buenos Aires and Santa Fe, during a period in which both witnessed a surge in drug trafficking but only one (Santa Fe) suffered a dramatic increase in criminal violence. These cases show how corrupt states can obtain relative order in highly fragmented drug markets, and how the police shape the evolution of drug dealing in metropolitan areas.
Topic:
Security, Corruption, Democracy, Social Justice, Violence, Public Policy, and Institutions
Political Geography:
Argentina and South America

9. Integral Human Development Through the Lens of Sen’s Capability Approach and the Life of a Faith Community at the Latin American Urban Margins

Author:
Séverine Deneulin
Publication Date:
04-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
The concept of integral human development is central to the Catholic social tradition. Yet, it remains under-explored with regard to its integrating components and their implications. What does taking an integral human development perspective mean for social analysis and action? The paper seeks to answer this question on the basis of the four encyclicals in which the idea of integral human development is treated, and in combination with two other sources: 1) the literature on “human development” in the multidisciplinary social science field of international development studies and its conceptual foundations in Amartya Sen’s capability approach; and 2) the life of a faith community in a marginalized Latin American urban neighborhood. Based on a combination of these sources, the paper concludes by proposing an understanding of “integral human development” that it calls a spirituality-extended capability approach to the progress of peoples.
Topic:
Civil Society, Development, Education, Poverty, Religion, Inequality, Youth, Violence, Christianity, and Catholic Church
Political Geography:
Argentina, South America, and Latin America

10. Dilemmas of an Expert Witness in the Amazon

Author:
Stuart Kirsch
Publication Date:
07-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
This article discusses two affidavits submitted to the Inter-American court system. The first is concerned with Suriname’s refusal to recognize indigenous land rights despite its international obligation to do so. The second addresses problems associated with indigenous land titles in Guyana. Comparing the two cases permits observations about ethnographic research conducted for expert witness reports, including the need to make affidavits legible to three different audiences, each with its own frame of reference: the legal system, communities seeking recognition of their rights, and anthropology (Paine 1996). I also consider the narrative choices in these affidavits, the political dilemmas of being an expert witness, and the compromises of short-term ethnography.
Topic:
Development, Culture, Economic Growth, Social Justice, and Public Policy
Political Geography:
South America, Amazon Basin, and Suriname

11. Can Conditional Cash Transfer Programs Improve Collective Action? Lab-in-the-Field Evidence on Coordination and Social Norms

Author:
Sandra Polanía-Reyes
Publication Date:
12-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
This study tests an unintended benefit of a conditional cash transfer program in Colombia: the ability to overcome coordination failures. Participants interact with fellow beneficiaries, which gives rise to a coordination device. Beneficiaries participate in a minimum effort coordination game. Those enrolled in the program for over a year are exerting the highest level of effort. The improvement in coordination is not due to potential confounds such as willingness to cooperate or connectivity. A structural choice model illustrates that when beliefs about other’s behavior are sufficiently high the Pareto- dominant equilibrium holds. The findings support nascent initiatives to influence beliefs through policy interventions.
Topic:
Civil Society, Development, Political Economy, Poverty, Communications, Governance, Inequality, Economic Growth, Public Policy, and Institutions
Political Geography:
Colombia, South America, and Latin America

12. Geographies of Violence: A Spatial Analysis of Five Types of Homicide in Brazil’s Municipalities

Author:
Matthew C. Ingram and Marcelo Marchesini da Costa
Publication Date:
05-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
Objectives: Examine the spatial distribution of five types of homicide across Brazil’s 5,562 municipalities and test the effects of family disruption, marginalization, poverty-reduction programs, environmental degradation, and the geographic diffusion of violence. Methods: Cluster analysis and spatial error, spatial lag, and geographically-weighted regressions. Results: Maps visualize clusters of high and low rates of different types of homicide. Core results from spatial regressions show that some predictors have uniform or stationary effects across all units, while other predictors have uneven, non-stationary effects. Among stationary effects, family disruption has a harmful effect across all types of homicide except femicide, and environmental degradation has a harmful effect, increasing the rates of femicide, gun-related, youth, and nonwhite homicides. Among non-stationary effects, marginalization has a harmful effect across all measures of homicide but poses the greatest danger to nonwhite populations in the northern part of Brazil; the poverty-reduction program Bolsa Família has a protective, negative effect for most types of homicides, especially for gun-related, youth, and nonwhite homicides. Lastly, homicide in nearby communities increases the likelihood of homicide in one’s home community, and this holds across all types of homicide. The diffusion effect also varies across geographic areas; the danger posed by nearby violence is strongest in the Amazon region and in a large section of the eastern coast. Conclusions: Findings help identify the content of violence-reduction policies, how to prioritize different components of these policies, and how to target these policies by type of homicide and geographic area for maximum effect.
Topic:
Political Violence, Crime, Environment, and Poverty
Political Geography:
Brazil and South America

13. The Enduring Presence of Religion in Chilean Ideological Positionings and Voter Options

Author:
Nicolás Somma, Timothy R. Scully, and J. Samuel Valenzuela
Publication Date:
03-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
Analysts of Chilean politics assert that the Pinochet dictatorship created a new political cleavage characterized as “authoritarianism versus democracy.” It fostered the formation of two party coalitions that took positions for and against Pinochet's continuation as head of state in the plebiscite that he lost in October 1988. As a result, they argue, while the religious and class cleavages had powerfully shaped voter options and the party system in the pre-dictatorship past, these fissures have lost their salience in the current context.
Topic:
Development, Politics, and Religion
Political Geography:
South America and Chile

14. Latin America and the Catholic Church: Points of Convergence and Divergence (encontros e desencontros) 1960–2005

Author:
Luiz Alberto Gómez de Souza
Publication Date:
02-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
The author aims at uncovering points of convergence and divergence in the relationship between the Catholic Church and society. He begins by analyzing the challenges facing the Church in modern times, using the case of the United States and the traditional political relationship between Church and State in Latin America until the rise of the social-Christian options in the 1960s. He then describes Vatican II, which opened the Church to the influences of modern times. Subsequently, the author explains what he calls the “glorious period” of the Latin American Church, from the conference of bishops in Medellin (1968) to the meeting in Puebla (1979), with the Church's critique of “social sin,” its option for the poor, and liberation theology. Concurrently, the author shows the contradictory effects of the military regimes in the region. Looking at the relationship between Christians and politics, he analyzes in particular the case of Brazil, later expanding his analysis to Latin America and the world. The author then addresses social participation and politics in ecclesiastical practices and the slow building of democracy in the region, offering methodological criticisms of some static and nonhistorical analyses. He delineates how democracy has challenged the Church and, looking ahead, explores the present dynamism of society, especially the virtuosity of social movements and ecclesiastical communities when facing future transformation. The author ends by describing the current situation in Latin America, highlighting the pressing need for the Church to face issues that are presently frozen (such as sexuality, celibacy, and women as priests), in the hopes of a possible Council process in the future.
Topic:
Civil Society, Government, and Religion
Political Geography:
United States, Brazil, South America, and Latin America

15. Digital Poverty: Concept and Measurement, with an Application to Peru

Author:
Roxana Barrantes Cáceres
Publication Date:
03-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
This paper discusses the notions of demand, poverty, information needs, and information and communication technologies (ICTs) to offer a concept of digital poverty, which may be useful to estimate the digital poverty level in Latin America and the Caribbean. The paper is composed of two sections. The first section contains a conceptual discussion of digital poverty, its types and possible levels, and the underlying economic foundations. ICTs are defined based on their use and the conditions for such use. Digital poverty is therefore defined as a lack of ICTs and might be a feature of any population segment, whether or not economically poor. The second section of this paper is an empirical attempt to validate the classification, using data from a household survey (ENAHO) carried out in Peru. The limitations in measuring digital poverty at the household level instead of at the individual level are acknowledged. Lastly, the conclusions reached, possible implications for public policy, and the avenues open for further research are presented.
Topic:
Development
Political Geography:
South America, Latin America, Caribbean, and Peru

16. Confronting Colonialism: Maryknoll Catholic Missionaries in Peru and Guatemala, 1943–968

Author:
Susan Fitzpatrick Behrens
Publication Date:
05-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
My goal in writing this paper was to try to explain how Catholicism became embedded in the social and political structures of Peru and Guatemala and how this affected Maryknoll proselytization in Puno and Huehuetenango in the twentieth century. I argue that during the colonial period Catholic clergy served as intermediaries between indigenous communities and Spanish officials. The character of their relationship depended on local demands for labor and was, as a result, distinct in Peru and Guatemala. Demand for labor was consistently high in Puno because it was near the site of the Potosí mines, recognized as the most important source of income for the Spanish crown during the colonial period. This relationship ensured that Catholic clergy acted as enforcers of Spanish efforts to dominate indigenous communities. For their part, Andean caciques charged with protecting community interests and mediating with Spanish officials sought to limit incursions by Spanish clergy, economic elites, and governing officials. By contrast, Guatemala was an economic backwater during the colonial period. Spanish clergy came to act as “defenders of the Indians” in opposition to the interests of Spanish economic elites and governing officials. Mayan people engaged with Catholicism to restructure their communities and to establish barriers to incursions by outsiders.
Topic:
Civil Society and Religion
Political Geography:
South America, Yugoslavia, Peru, and Guatemala

17. The Quality of Democracy in Small South American Countries: The Case of Paraguay

Author:
Diego Abente Brun
Publication Date:
11-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
This paper addresses the issue of the low quality of democracy in Paraguay. It defines the quality of democracy in terms of regime performance rather than regime nature, i.e. not in terms of how intense or weak its democratic characteristic are, but rather in terms of how legitimate, effective, and efficacious the regime is. The theoretical argument rests on the need to shift from the prevailing agency- paradigm to a structural paradigm. Thus, it focuses on the socio-economic matrix of an invertebrate society lacking vigorous collective actors as the cause of the persistence of widely clientelistic parties. In turn, it sees the hegemony of these parties as the cause of the prevalence of an extreme particularistic, pork-barrel, and volatile pattern of public policy which has produced since the beginning of the transition twenty years of stagnation, high levels of poverty and profound popular disenchantment. It ends with a brief examination of the emergence of Fernando Lugo as a chiliastic upsurge that could tatter the clientelistic structure and describes the current moment as kairotic.
Topic:
Democratization and Government
Political Geography:
South America and Paraguay

18. From Patronage to Program: The Emergence of Party-Oriented Legislators in Brazil

Author:
Frances Hagopian, Carlos Gervasoni, and Juan Andres Moraes
Publication Date:
12-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
This paper explains the unanticipated emergence of party - oriented legislators and rising party discipline in Brazil since the early 1990s. We contend that deputies in Brazil have become increasingly party - oriented because the utilities of party - programmatic and patronage - based electoral strategies shifted with market reforms, which created a programmatic cleavage in Brazilian politics and diminished the resource base for state patronage. Based on an original survey of the Brazilian Congress, we introduce new measures of partisan campaigns, party polarization, and the values legislators attach to party program and voter loyalty. Regression analysis confirms that deputies who believe voters value party program run partisan, programmatic campaigns, and those in polarized parties and those who believe voters are loyal to the party are willing to delegate authority to party leaders and do not switch parties. Party polarization and the proximity of deputies' policy preferences to their party's mean explain discipline on 236 roll - call votes in the 51st legislature (1999 – 2001).
Topic:
Government and Politics
Political Geography:
Brazil and South America

19. Radical Democracy in the Andes: Indigenous Parties and the Quality of Democracy in Latin America

Author:
Donna Lee Van Cott
Publication Date:
12-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
I explore whether recently formed indigenous political parties in Ecuador and Bolivia are fulfilling their promise to improve the quality of local government by establishing institutions that promote intercultural cooperation and the participation of individuals and civil society groups. To the extent that such improvements have occurred, I seek to identify the conditions under which they succeed. I argue that under certain conditions even "least-likely cases" for the establishment of radical democratic models can produce positive changes in relations among hostile ethnic groups, shift resources toward underserved populations, and create spaces for citizens and civil society groups to deliberate public spending priorities. Such models are most likely to work when indigenous parties and their social movement sponsors are able to (1) maintain internal unity and solidarity; (2) develop distinct, complementary roles; (3) attract charismatic, talented mayors who are willing and able to work across ethnic lines; (4) reelect successful mayors; and (5) attract resources and technical support from external donors.
Topic:
Civil Society, Democratization, and Development
Political Geography:
South America, Latin America, Ecuador, and Bolivia

20. Latin American Catholicism in an Age of Religious and Political Pluralism: A Framework for Analysis

Author:
Frances Hagopian
Publication Date:
12-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
This article identifies and proposes a framework to explain the responses of Latin America's Roman Catholic churches to a new strategic dilemma posed by religious and political pluralism. Because the church's goals of defending institutional interests, evangelizing, promoting public morality, and grounding public policy in Catholic social teaching cut across existing political cleavages, Church leaders must make strategic choices about which to emphasize in their messages to the faithful, investment of pastoral resources, and alliances. I develop a typology of Episcopal responses based on the cases of Argentina, Chile, Brazil, and Mexico, and explain strategic choices by the church's capacity to mobilize civil society, its degree of religious hegemony, and the ideological orientations of Catholics. The analysis draws from 620 Episcopal documents issued since 2000.
Topic:
Development, Government, and Religion
Political Geography:
Brazil, Argentina, South America, Latin America, Mexico, and Chile