{"title":"Radical, Nativist, Authoritarian—Or All of These? Assessing Recent Cases of Right-Wing Populism in Latin America","authors":"T. Kestler","doi":"10.1177/1866802X221117565","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/1866802X221117565","url":null,"abstract":"In the light of a series of right-wing populist successes, some observers concluded that there is a kind of populist contagion going on and that the global wave of radical right populism (RRP) has finally reached Latin America. Yet, a premature categorization based on outward similarities eventually leads to omitting important differences. The aim of this article is a typological assessment of four recent cases of right-wing populism in Latin America—Jair Bolsonaro (Brazil), José António Kast (Chile), Guido Manini Ríos (Uruguay), and Javier Milei (Argentina)—to clarify their correspondence with Cas Mudde’s concept of RRP. The questions to be addressed are the following: Are these four leaders and their parties radically right? Are they right-wing in cultural terms (nativist and authoritarian)? Are they populist? And do they have sufficient features in common to speak of a right-wing populist wave?","PeriodicalId":44885,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Politics in Latin America","volume":"14 1","pages":"289 - 310"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2022-08-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48502373","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Limits of Neoliberal Policy Feedback: Private Pension Fund Reforms in Peru (2014–2021)","authors":"Eduardo Dargent Bocanegra","doi":"10.1177/1866802X221107147","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/1866802X221107147","url":null,"abstract":"A growing literature in comparative Latin American Politics highlights how policy feedback effects help explain the resilience of neoliberal reforms in the region. These works emphasize private actors/interest groups to explain neoliberal policy continuity. Nonetheless, given their focus on continuity, these works do little to explore other instances in which neoliberal feedback cannot preclude change. This paper presents an instance in which powerful private actors favored by neoliberal reforms were incapable of resisting change. An Act of the Peruvian Congress adopted in 2016 opened the door for individual pensioners to withdraw up to 95.5 percent of all their accumulated savings at the point of retirement. Ensuing reforms approved by Congress during the COVID-19 emergency (2020–2021) further weakened private administrators of these pension funds (AFPs). The case shows how the conflicting interests between private service providers and future pensioners make the service providers vulnerable; a divide also found in other neoliberal reforms.","PeriodicalId":44885,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Politics in Latin America","volume":"14 1","pages":"190 - 210"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2022-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49491404","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Malu A. C. Gatto, Pedro A. G. dos Santos, Kristin Wylie
{"title":"Gendering Coalitional Presidentialism in Brazil","authors":"Malu A. C. Gatto, Pedro A. G. dos Santos, Kristin Wylie","doi":"10.1177/1866802X221114473","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/1866802X221114473","url":null,"abstract":"Coalitional presidentialism is a power-sharing strategy deployed in multiparty presidentialist democracies that entails the distribution of cabinet positions to coalition partners to facilitate governability. This model of governance is increasingly common worldwide, gaining growing scholarly interest. The consequences of coalitional presidentialism for women’s cabinet representation, however, have received scant attention. In this article, we provide a gendered analysis of the Brazilian experience with coalitional presidentialism. Through the quantitative analysis of an original dataset of all ministerial appointments (N = 597) under eight Brazilian presidents (1985–2019) and a descriptive assessment of the coalitional dynamics during that period, we evaluate the Brazilian experience with coalitional presidentialism through the lens of Feminist Institutionalism. We show that coalitional presidentialism restricts women's access to cabinet seats, with the demands of multiparty coalition formation and management often overriding presidential considerations about descriptive representation, and coalition parties rarely advancing women to fill portfolios allocated to them by the president.","PeriodicalId":44885,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Politics in Latin America","volume":"14 1","pages":"311 - 337"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2022-07-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48637691","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Democratic Principles and Performance: What do the Experts Think?","authors":"Guilherme A. Russo, G. Avelino, F. Guarnieri","doi":"10.1177/1866802X221107032","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/1866802X221107032","url":null,"abstract":"Recently, many political scientists have argued that democracy may be threatened more by the erosion of its principles, embodied in the democratic institutions, than by traditional breakdowns. This debate led to a series of initiatives that sought to identify and evaluate this process of institutional erosion. This research note contributes to these efforts by assessing the importance and current performance of a set of formal and informal democratic institutions. We present results from a survey, conducted in 2020 with 419 Brazilian political scientists, which sought their opinions on the importance of a series of democratic principles and the status of Brazilian democracy. This survey is part of the Bright Line Watch project that brings together a group of political scientists to monitor democratic practices, their resilience, and potential threats.","PeriodicalId":44885,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Politics in Latin America","volume":"14 1","pages":"224 - 236"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2022-06-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48991984","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Legalising Abortion in Argentina: Social Movements and Multi-Party Coalitions","authors":"Cora Fernández Anderson","doi":"10.1177/1866802X221100274","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/1866802X221100274","url":null,"abstract":"On 30 December 2020, the Argentine Senate legalised abortion on demand until 14 weeks of pregnancy. How was this legal change possible in a region characterised by strong restrictions on reproductive rights? Based on in-depth interviews and participant observation, this article shows how the emergence of a strong social movement around abortion reform was able to shift the negative perceptions associated with this medical practice and build a multi-party coalition to advance the legalisation of abortion in Congress. The secularism espoused by all political parties across the ideological spectrum allowed for the presence of feminist politicians within them, most of whom would become key interlocutors of the movement jointly working towards legalisation. A supportive executive, while helpful, could not ensure the passage of legal abortion alone, making the creation of a multi-party coalition a requirement for success.","PeriodicalId":44885,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Politics in Latin America","volume":"14 1","pages":"143 - 165"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2022-05-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43824225","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Unstable Identities: The Decline of Partisanship in Contemporary Chile","authors":"Nicolás de la Cerda","doi":"10.1177/1866802X211069378","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/1866802X211069378","url":null,"abstract":"Between 1990 and 2018 Chile experienced one of Latin America’s most dramatic declines in party identification, from 80% in the early 1990s to under 20% in 2016. This decline seems puzzling given a highly institutionalized and programmatic party system, and low levels of ideological convergence. This paper argues that, to a large extent, the decrease in partisanship can be understood as a consequence of the erosion of the main political cleavage that articulated the political landscape throughout this period: the dissolution of the conflict between the supporters of the previous military regime (1973–1990) and the advocates of democracy. Because this conflict was the key driver of political identities following the dictatorship, as it faded overtime, particularly after conservative parties distanced themselves from the military regime for electoral reasons, partisans lost an important reason to feel attached to political parties. More broadly, the paper argues that unless political identities are continually reinforced by political actors, they are unlikely to remain stable sources of identification.","PeriodicalId":44885,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Politics in Latin America","volume":"14 1","pages":"3 - 30"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2022-02-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42020786","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Yucatán as an Exception to Rising Criminal Violence in México","authors":"S. Mattiace, S. Ley","doi":"10.1177/1866802X221079636","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/1866802X221079636","url":null,"abstract":"Yucatán state’s homicide level has remained low and steady for decades and criminal violence activity is low, even while crime rates in much of the rest of the country have increased since 2006. In this research note, we examine five main theoretical explanations for Yucatán's relative containment of violence: criminal competition, protection networks and party alternation, vertical partisan fragmentation, interagency coordination, and social cohesion among the Indigenous population. We find that in Yucatán, interagency coordination is a key explanatory variable, along with cooperation around security between Partido Revolucionario Institucional and Partido Acción Nacional governments and among federal and state authorities.","PeriodicalId":44885,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Politics in Latin America","volume":"14 1","pages":"103 - 119"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2022-02-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48982305","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Social Inequalities in Argentina and Chile: A Comparative Analysis of Welfare Models, Labour Policies, and Occupational Trajectories from a Biographical Perspective","authors":"Leticia Muñiz Terra, Gabriela Rubilar","doi":"10.1177/1866802X211073914","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/1866802X211073914","url":null,"abstract":"The article analyses the configurations of social inequality in Argentina and Chile between 2000 and 2019 through a comparative biographical approach that combines three dimensions: macro-social (welfare models), meso-social (labour policies), and micro-social (occupational trajectories). In Argentina, welfare schemes oscillated between moderate protectionism and a liberal approach; in Chile, a movement was observed between revised neoliberalism and a protectionist liberal welfare approach. Regarding labour policies, a transition from employment regulation to self-management was observed in the Argentine job market; in Chile, a meritocratic discourse remains that advocates for worker self-management, regardless of changes in welfare schemes. These differences have no appreciable impact on the configuration of class trajectories, which are similar in both countries. While the service classes generally construct advantageous trajectories, the intermediate classes are ambivalently affected by crises and insufficient protection and the working classes accumulate disadvantages since they are conditioned by welfare schemes and social-labour policies.","PeriodicalId":44885,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Politics in Latin America","volume":"14 1","pages":"166 - 189"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2022-02-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45015953","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"State-level Citizen Response to COVID-19 Containment Measures in Brazil and Mexico","authors":"Claire Dunn, Isabel G. Laterzo","doi":"10.1177/1866802X211057135","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/1866802X211057135","url":null,"abstract":"In Brazil and Mexico, presidents failed to take swift, national action to stop the spread of COVID-19. Instead, the burden of imposing and enforcing public health measures has largely fallen to subnational leaders, resulting in varied approaches within each country and conflicting messaging from elites. We likewise see variation in compliance with social distancing across subnational units. To explain this variation, we contend that citizen responses are driven both by the comprehensiveness of state policies and whether they take cues from national or subnational elites. We hypothesize that support for national and subnational elites, and the nature of the state-level policy response, affect citizen compliance with public health guidelines. In both countries, we find that support for the governor has an interactive relationship with policy response. In Brazil, support for the president is associated with lower compliance. In Mexico, this effect is not present. We argue that these distinct relationships are due to the different cues emerging from each leader.","PeriodicalId":44885,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Politics in Latin America","volume":"13 1","pages":"328 - 357"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44376716","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Sources of Government Approval During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Threat or Electoral Predispositions?","authors":"Adrián Pignataro","doi":"10.1177/1866802X211059184","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/1866802X211059184","url":null,"abstract":"Rally-round-the-flag events are short-term boosts of government approval during crises, and the COVID-19 pandemic produced such an effect in many countries. But why did some people join the rally while others didn’t? Using public opinion data from Costa Rica, this paper tests two hypotheses: first, that threat increases government approval at the outbreak of the pandemic; second, that electoral predispositions shape approval. Results indicate that COVID-19 contagions, as a measure of the threat, are not associated with approval, while past voting patterns are. Positive assessments of the economy and the relief measures also predict higher support for the government. In brief, Costa Rica's rally-round-the-flag event did not overcome the partisan divisions or the ordinary drivers of approval.","PeriodicalId":44885,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Politics in Latin America","volume":"13 1","pages":"400 - 418"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41676965","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}