Search

The restrictive legal framework of abortion in Latin America has started to change during the past decade, as legislative reforms and high court decisions have liberalized, to different extents, the abortion laws in Colombia, Mexico City, Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay. Feminist mobilization has been the crucial factor of change in this area of rights, and conservative religious actors have been the main opponents of reform. On its part, political and legal factors contribute to understand the timing and outcomes of legal changes, as well as the capacity of movement and counter-movement to influence reform processes. Based on field work carried out in Mexico, this paper analyzes the main components of the legal and political opportunities that have been relevant in abortion legal reform in that country, which offer important points of reference for other Latin American cases. Drawing on social movement theory and legal studies literature, this paper highlights the importance of relatively stable components of political opportunities such as the type of institutional organization of federalism, which determines the location of abortion policy- and the possibilities of social movements to influence it-, as well as of institutional arrangements and cultural understandings regarding the relationship between State and Church. Regarding more contingent political factors, the analysis of this case confirms that divisions among elites, and in particular post-electoral conflict, may create conditions for rights advocacy actors, whereas politicians' search for legitimacy and short-term electoral incentives may favor counter-reformers, especially at the local level -where there may be greater Church's influence and less accountability mechanisms. With regards to the legal opportunity, the paper highlights the role of the rules of access to courts and legal standing in constitutional review proceedings, as determinants of the types of actors and claims that reach the courts. The analysis of the Mexican case shows how constitutional courts, in their quest for institutional legitimacy, may expand the legal opportunity for the participation of social actors at judicial proceedings, when facing decisions that involve highly controversial issues and social conflicts. Finally, the paper shows how rules of opinion formation at courts may affect final judicial outcomes and the influence of social actors in them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impact of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) on the poor and marginalized has been a matter of debate since the beginnings of the information revolution. Whether or not ICT penetration is causing increased inequality and poverty remains an unresolved puzzle (ICTs, defined broadly in this paper, include TV, radio, Internet and mobile phones). The puzzle stems from small-n studies tending to find that the impact of new ICTs has been positive for the poor, while large-n studies purport the opposite (Forestier, Grace and Kenny 2001). Recent empirical studies suggest the impact of ICT is 'Janus faced'-in some cases emergent ICTs create new opportunities for the poor, while in others they seem to exacerbate the challenges the poor face (Kenny 2006; Huerta, Esperanza and Rodrigo Sandoval-Almazan 2007; Hanson 2008). I argue that the socioeconomic context, and governance, shapes the impact of these emerging technologies. I posit that there is an interaction effect between governance and ICT which is the 'missing link' that plays a central, yet often overlooked, role in determining the impact of ICT on the poor. There are three primary mechanisms influencing how ICT and governance interact: First, ICT affects governance by enhancing opportunities for information sharing through increasing speed of communication, increasing penetration rates, and deepening of technology (Web 2.0); Secondly, ICT affects governance by generating social capital and enhancing civil society; Third, ICT affects governance by improving efficiency. Finally, I make the theoretical leap, digressing from the established literature, that this produces an interaction effect between ICT and governance leading, in general, to better outcomes for the poor. To empirically test these claims, this paper takes a mixed methods approach. First, I conduct a large-n study comparing Mexico to other similar developing countries. Yet to investigate the puzzle in greater depth, I also employ a small-n analysis focusing on the poor in rural and urban Mexico. I compare case studies of ICT access and use by the poor in two urban areas, Guadalajara, Mexico's so-called 'Silicone Vally', and Puebla. Comparative analysis between two rural towns in Oaxaca, confirm the findings of the urban case studies: ICT access and use among the poor can be enhanced through an interaction with governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the exclusion of women from political offices in Mexico and Latin America's customary law communities, more broadly, is much more than a problem of the purported patriarchal cultures of indigenous and rural communities. We claim, based on a comprehensive survey of 466 mayors in the indigenous state of Oaxaca, that the underrepresentation of women is a function of institutions limiting female candidates. We test this "candidate pipeline" hypothesis, adapted from U.S.-based studies, against the hypothesis that culture--as measured by indigenous ethnicity--has an independent effect on women's representation. The paper disconfirms that patriarchal, traditionalist cultures of indigenous communities cause underrepresentation in the election of women and instead finds that a particular set of local institutions, which are more prevalent in indigenous municipalities, blocks the pipeline of potential women candidates. We conclude by considering the normative implications for customary law representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do political parties engage in religious mobilization in some environments but not in others? This paper develops a cross-national comparison of patterns of religious mobilization in Sunni- and Catholic-majority countries, with an emphasis on the cases of Turkey and Mexico. In many Sunni-majority contexts, political parties maintain strong and explicit ties to religious communities, relying on their mobilization to compete in what are often hostile political environments. In Catholic environments, political parties generally avoid making claims about religious doctrine or forming entangling alliances with sectarian movements, with candidates seeking to court religious voters doing so primarily through generic appeals to religious values and identities. What explains these differences in religious mobilization in the political arena? I argue that the crucial factors that explain this historically contingent divergence are pattern of secular regulations, electoral laws, and religious communities. The paper uses both quantitative and qualitative research methods to explore and evaluate this argument. First, relying on an original dataset covering 198 elections in 65 countries from 1990-2002, I examine the current distribution of different forms of religious mobilization across Sunni-majority and Catholic-majority countries. Then, I compare the evolution of religious parties in two critical, most-similar cases: Turkey and Mexico. Despite their analogous patterns of religious mobilization early in the 20th century and their comparable socio-economic and geopolitical situations, crucial differences in the evolution of their religious communities and secularist institutions expanded sectarian mobilization in Turkey while depressing it in Mexico. By exploring the patterns of religious mobilization across two world religions and critical country-cases, this paper highlights the contingent quality of religions impact on politics in general and electoral competition in particular [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Threats to the integrity of electoral democracy are manifold. The democratic quality of electoral contests can suffer damage from self-serving manipulation by central or subnational governments, foul play by contending parties and candidates, or the administrative incapacity or incompetence of election authorities. This paper focuses on a distinct form of threat that has received scant attention in the comparative literature: the societal subversion of democratic elections by criminal violence. Conceptually, the paper presents criminal violence as a form of horizontal threat against the integrity of liberal democratic elections. Empirically, it analyzes the ongoing civil war in Mexico (the so-called drug war) to illustrate the chilling effects criminal violence has on electoral d democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper starts from the assumption that OC is a specific type of system oriented towards an authoritative allocation of resources and that, as such, cannot survive without a territory where its power can be exerted through a mechanism of extortion and protection. The introduction states firstly that the cradle of OC is in the city, where it embodies the most unconventional and violent face of the capitalist accumulation of resources. Secondly, it asserts that it is necessary to take a closer look at the relationship between the city and the state in the nation-building process. The OC is, in fact, a direct consequence of the attempt, on the part of the central government, to reduce the cost of the process of the monopolization of force by co-opting local potentates instead of defeating them. The paper then compares Palermo and Ciudad Juárez, by looking at the two different paradigmatic models of OC that originated in these two cities: the Sicilian Cosa Nostra and the maras. Besides, Italy and Mexico share many political and social variables in their historical evolution: the late formation of a unified state in the second half of the 1850s; the strategic even if peripheral role in the international politics, thanks to their peculiar relationships with the US; but also the Spanish legacy (in Italy, mainly in Southern regions), which probably helps us to explain other cultural similarities (e.g. family and religion). The first paragraph shortly reconstructs the history of Cosa nostra, emphasizing how its process of institutionalization and entrenchment in the Palermitan society results in one of the most striking example of political Mafia. The second paragraph analyzes the role of OC after the end of Cold War, when old hierarchies of scale, based on nation-states, became destabilized, and when the historic dependence on the center of so many peripheries in the international system was replaced by the center's growing subjugation to the peripheries. The third paragraph analyzes Ciudad Juárez both comparing it with other Latin American cities that gave birth to some of the most famous cartels of narco-trafficking, and stressing its peculiarities that concur to define the assembled crime paradigm. The conclusion, finally, challenges the widely accepted assumption that state violence - i.e. war on drugs - can be the right strategy to combat OC. On the contrary, social scientists should revisit and develop Tilly's idea of trust networks to find at least a theoretically plausible answer to OC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the origins of the organized criminal violence that once gripped Colombia and now grips Mexico and particularly the highly controversial counterinsurgency strategy used in Colombia that forms the basis for the strategy in Mexico. It argues that ideology is a reason why the military aspect of these problems was neglected for so long and the reason its detractors see it as a strategy that reduces national sovereignty and endangers democracy when statistics on control of territory, reduction of violence and democratic progress demonstrate the opposite to be true. The paper uses the term "colombianization" to emphasize Colombia's dramatic shift from almost ungovernable to one of the most successful countries in the region. Colombianization is defined not as a counterdrug strategy as are both the Colombian and Mexican U.S. assistance strategies but as an integrated, law-based, counterinsurgency strategy implemented from the bottom up that facilitates the establishment of elite consensus and puts the country on a path toward rule of law. Ironically, it was democratic and free market reforms that strengthened the forces of instability in both Colombia and Mexico and the militarization of security that appears to facilitate democratic stability. This study uses local level assessments of Plan Colombia and local interviews conducted in Chihuahua and Michoacán to evaluate the prospects of colombianization in urban and rural Mexico. Colombia's experience suggests that colombianization can stabilize the country and help reactivate the economy but it has little impact on the drug industry and the corruption associated with it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A conference paper about gender equality and democratization in the Mexican states is presented which is prepared for presentation at the American Political Science Association Conference, in Toronto, Ontario, on September 2-6, 2009. The paper discusses topics including democracy and women's participation in politics, the status of women across the states of Mexico, and the rates of female illiteracy.

A conference paper about political participation in Mexico is presented which is prepared for presentation at the American Political Science Association Conference, in Toronto, Ontario, on September 2-6, 2009. The paper discusses topics including the transformation of Mexico from a one-party authoritarian regime to a multiparty competitive democracy, and the influence of political opportunities and constraints on political participation.

A conference paper about food security and environmental change is presented which is prepared for presentation at the Annual Meetings of the American Political Science Association, in Toronto, Ontario, from September 3-6, 2009. The paper discusses topics including changing consumption behaviors, unrest in countries such as Egypt, Mexico and Haiti, and rising food prices.

How does vote intention in presidential elections vary according to the economic conditions of a country, especially indicators of the financial market? Does the state of the economy, both its fundamentals as well as capital market, affect variation in candidates' percentage of vote intention in national polls? This paper tests how economic indicators influence vote intention in presidential elections in two emerging markets: Brazil and Mexico. The presidential elections of 1994, 1998, 2002, and 2006 in Brazil and 2000 and 2006 in Mexico are analyzed using all poll returns for each electoral period and corresponding economic data. The paper finds that no theory is capable of explaining results throughout the dataset but partisan explanations and Stokes' (2001) categories of alternatives to retrospective voting help elucidate vote intention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shows that social network effects were significant in voting decisions during the 2006 Mexican presidential election. Political information was transmitted by means of local networks, mainly through personal intercommunication among voters and conformity effects. These conformity effects were geographically constrained to the perception of the local majority in the neighborhood where voters inhabit. The local network effects operated principally for the two leading candidates (Manuel Lopez Obrador, the leftist candidate and Felipe Calderon, the rightist candidate). We find that the local majority (i.e. the candidate who was perceived as the winner in the neighborhood) had a compensatory effect that served to overcome political disagreements among voters when they talked about candidates. In particular, the paper shows that the candidature of Lopez Obrador developed more dependence on the political information transmitted by local networks. This finding is reflected in the proposition that Lopez Obrador sympathizers tended to substitute "formal information" (mass media) by the "informal information" that their local network provided. This argument runs in accordance with the main strategic campaign of the PRD (the leftist party which postulated Obrador), which at the beginning of the campaign focused in a territorial strategy concentrated in those neighborhoods with greater support. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the effects of the exchange of particularistic benefits for political support in Mexico during the presidential elections in 2000, more specifically, it looks at the competition of the three larger parties to gain votes through the distribution of gifts and services. Competition though gift-giving sheds light not only on the strategies parties follow to buy votes but also on the ways in which such an incentive interacts with other dispositions. Therefore, three major questions drive this inquiry: what strategies did parties follow in distributing particularistic benefits? What electoral effects do these have? What role do voter attitudes, like partisanship, play in voting choices in the face of particularistic benefits? Through the use of post-electoral survey data, I provide evidence that parties in Mexico engaged in vote-buying effectively during the 2000 presidential elections, they successfully bid and bought votes. While these results are not surprising, this paper also presents evidence that PAN, the eventual winner, managed to successfully demobilize PRI voters, while PRI did the same but to a lesser extent. In this election major parties in Mexico competed with one another to hold old wards, to win back lost ones, and to reduce the share of voters for their competition. Although the electoral effects are small due to the relatively small number of recipients of gifts, they are statistically robust. Furthermore, evidence suggests the development of long-term relationships between parties and recipients of benefits that affect their partisanship. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a theoretical argument that explains the patterns of change in bothsocial insurance and social assistance in Mexico over the last two decades and explains some ofthe apparent contradictions in the existing literature on globalization, democratic institutions, andwelfare in Latin America. By comparing multiple social insurance and social assistance policyoutcomes during the Salinas (1988-1994), Zedillo (1994-2000), and Fox (2000-2006)administrations, the paper demonstrates that though globalization may constrain welfare policyoptions, its impact is often indirect, through its effect on the relative political capacity ofdomestic actors. Furthermore, political liberalization changes the incentives for politicians tosupply welfare. In addition, existing welfare institutions create powerful policy legacies thatinfluence the interests of some domestic political actors. The overall pattern that emerges inMexico is one of partial retrenchment of social insurance and the expansion of targeted socialassistance, a pattern that can be explained in light of economic liberalization, democratization,and policy legacies. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the politics of banking reform in developing countries during the 1990s. Electoral competition helps to explain whether countries were likely to implement regulatory reforms after banking crises. The potential for wide swings in electoral support in highly competitive democracies should favor consumers, who benefit from reforms, and harm vested producer groups that prefer forbearance. Where electoral competition is muted, producer groups - such as a bankers' coalition - should benefit more than consumers given their economic and political power. To evaluate these arguments, this paper examines patterns of post-crisis regulatory reform implementation in Mexico, Venezuela, and South Korea during the 1990s. Within and cross-country evidence is consistent with the arguments. Surprisingly, it indicates that in countries with low levels of intra-party electoral competition, i.e. those with disciplined political parties, governments engaged in regulatory forbearance even with fierce inter-party competition. Crony financial capitalism seems less likely in multiparty settings with undisciplined parties. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Admiration and resentment of America are deeply rooted in the political traditions of the United States' nearest neighbors. As in other parts of the world, resentment has been on the rise in recent years. This paper distinguishes in its first part between critical opinion, skepticism, and prejudice on the one hand, and different types of anti-Americanism on the other. In the paper's next two parts, these general categories are confronted with data from Canada and Mexico and the dramatically different historical trajectories in the evolution of anti-Americanism in these two countries. In the fourth and final section, the paper seeks to identify commonalities, if any, in these radically different political settings. The expected finding is that even in close proximity to the United States, we find a plurality of different types of anti-Americanisms, a condition that characterizes world politics more generally. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates how variation in subnational ethnic group presence and electoral rules vary, and whether they lead to differences in subnational ethnic political behavior that can affect local and even national elections, even in a case where national electoral laws prevent the formation of ethnic-based parties. To this end, the paper focuses on the political behavior of indigenous groups at municipal levels in Mexico. Certain institutional and demographic features of Mexico allow us to investigate how different local electoral laws interact with ethnicity to shape local and national party politics. It finds that, local electoral institutions appear to affect national voting behavior, as well as finds some preliminary evidence that ethnicity exaggerates the expected effects of said institutions. Simple statistical studies and data tables are used to support the investigation. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What determines how judicial institutions perform? Prominent theoretical approaches such as international political economy, institutional rational choice, social capital, and structural theories suggest that international economic actors, political competition, political participation, and poverty may all be important forces driving institutional behavior. This paper analyzes these various theoretical approaches and uses qualitative and statistical analysis to compare judicial performance in the Mexican states. The paper provides evidence to support the institutional rational choice hypothesis that political competition generates judicial independence. Poverty, political participation, and an export-oriented economy seem to influence judicial access and effectiveness. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the 1980s and 1990s, Mexico, was able to institute a stabilization and adjustment program in the form of a series of tripartite agreement known as the Pactos. The pacts managed to set the context for the reform of the Mexican economy. The central objectives of this paper are to understand, first, how tripartite agreements between 1987 and 1997 came about and helped reform the economy, and second, put forward some of the factors that are impeding mechanisms of social partnership in the context of democratic politics in 2000. This paper argues that the Pactos were the result of a free trade governing coalition interests for economic reform, and a set of institutional factors (State capacities (ideas, knowledge and expertise), corporatism, and the Pacto institutions) that helped create a policy mechanism that minimized uncertainty and free-riding through an system of rules that monitored, coordinated, and sanctioned political actors. This study suggests that social partnership mechanisms can help reduce uncertainty and foster cooperation in the context of economic reform and increasing competition, yet, that the institutional arrangements of Mexican presidential regime can be an obstacle for the development of tripartite accords in todays Mexican democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores Mexican fiscal federalism from the point of view of legislative coalition building. In federal regimes legislators are constrained by their state affiliations. In order to evaluate the coalition formation strategies available to states, the paper analyzes minimal winning coalitions (MWC) of state delegations in the Mexican Chamber of Deputies. Banzhaf indexes of political power are calculated for each state. Players in this cooperative game are connected through their partisanship at the state level and the structural differences characterizing the states they belong to. Hence, the paper calculates connected minimal winning coalitions (CMWC) of state-party groups ranked according to their substantive disagreements on the reform of intergovernmental relations. The analysis of CMWC suggests that although coalition formation will be difficult, given the high degree of party discipline in the legislature, a reform of fiscal federalism in Mexico is possible. However, such reform can lead either to a highly redistributive system, which would further reinforce the vertical imbalances of the current arrangement; or a greater devolution of tax authority benefiting rich states, which would further enhance regional inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper comes out of a broader project entitled ?Two-Level Games and International Narcotics Control: Cooperation Between the United States and Mexico and Colombia, 1989-2000.? In the broader project, I examine how the United States handles narcotics control in its bilateral relationships with Mexico and Colombia during the presidential administration of George H.W. Bush and both William Clinton administrations. Working out of the ?two-level games? tradition associated with Robert Putnam, I seek to explain differences in cooperation across countries and across time by examining the interaction of domestic and international political processes. In so doing, I hope to contribute to the growing literature on this interaction as well as add theoretical and empirical rigor to the narcotics policy literature. In this paper I focus on the second Clinton administration and assess the degree of cooperation between the countries. I test three hypotheses consistent with the two-level games approach: strength of the president, timing of elections, and executive-legislative relations. I also address two alternative hypotheses: the ?interdependent? U.S.-Mexican relationship and the reputation of the Colombian president and probe their impact on narcotics control cooperation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many mixed electoral systems voters cast two ballots, one for a party list and a second for a candidate in a single member district. In the Mexican mixed electoral system, since 1988 when the ballot structure was changed, voters cast a single vote to select both types of representatives. The single votes for district candidates are then aggregated for distribution of the party list seats in large M (40 seats) districts. In this paper, we examine the extent to which the Mexican one-vote ballot type affects strategic voting. We complement the Mexican data with district level data from Italy and Senegal. Through the SF Ratio and effective number of electoral parties comparisons, our findings indicate that strategic voting decreased from one comparable election to the next, although in modified form in concurrent (presidential and legislative together) elections. This, we argue, is at least partially an effect of the ballot structure. Check author’s web site for an updated version of the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines the "moral economy" of electoral clientelism - the exchange of votes for goods - on the basis of qualitative interviews conducted in late 2000 in rural Mexico. Contrary to common assumptions about physical needs forcing the "poor and powerless" to trade their political rights for material favors, it finds that respondents reject clientelist practices, defend their individual autonomy, and demand universalistic policies. In democratic Mexico, the paper concludes tentatively, attempted vote trading may be a widespread practice; yet an illegitimate one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the 1990s the average PAN voter had a centrist position on most relevant dimensions of political conflict in Mexico, and the PAN electorate as a whole has resembled a catch-all party that draws support from left to center-right. In this paper I demonstrate that the electoral coalition that supported the PAN and its presidential candidate in 2000 had grown even wider and more ideologically heterogeneous by the time the historical election took place. This phenomenon is explained by the shifts in the ideological distribution of the Mexican electorate, and, even more importantly, by the shifts in the average party placements on the relevant axes of political conflict. Vicente Fox benefited from a liberal electorate that had voted for the left in the past and even in the 2000 congressional races. Similarly, Fox received significant support from the right, still an electoral niche for PRI. Support for Fox was more likely among a younger, more educated, and urban electorate across the country, but especially in the most industrialized northern region. Vicente Fox not only benefited from the PAN’s pivotal position in the ideological distribution of the Mexican electorate, but also from the greater likelihood of voluntary participation inherent among PAN supporters. Typical explanatory variables of voting behavior, such as party identification and candidate image, account significantly for the vote choice, and the magnitude and significance of ideological orientations as well as the explicit desire for change account for both the election outcome and the coalition phenomenon before and, perhaps, after 2000. This paper relies on a collection of national surveys conducted between 1996 and 2000 among the general population and actual voters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Not surprisingly, a vast amount of research has focused on the psychological and economic factors that influence attitudes toward immigration. These studies, primarily done in the United States and Western Europe, have found that strong national identities, more so than economic concerns, are associated with more negative attitudes toward immigrants and immigration. Our paper takes a novel approach by examining attitudes about migration in a country known for emigration rather than immigration. Using Mexico as our case, we examine the impact of Mexican identity and economic considerations on attitudes about immigration and emigration and on the likelihood of emigrating to the United States. Mexico provides a unique setting as a sizeable proportion of the population has friends or relatives who have migrated to another country yet it also experiences in-migration and transmigration. How do national identity and economic considerations, found to be key factors explaining immigration attitudes in "receiving" countries, affect attitudes on immigration in this "sending" country? We find that migration attitudes in Mexico are better explained by national identity than by economic considerations and that national identity is a strong predictor of both anti-immigration attitudes and the belief that emigration is a major problem in Mexico. We also find, however, that national identity does not predict the intention to emigrate. We conclude by arguing that more work needs to be done on migration attitudes in "sending" countries to get a more complete understanding of the factors that influence migration attitudes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a response to international pressure along with massive indigenous mobilization across Latin American countries over the last two decades, most of the governments in the region have undertaken the implementation of innovative laws to address indigenous demands regarding cultural and territorial rights. Thus, multicultural laws such as Usos y Costumbres, Rondas Campesinas and more recently the Consulta previa law, stand as the mainstream legal instruments created to redress centuries of exclusion. Framed within international standards established by ILO 169, these laws attempt to fill the gap between representative democracies and indigenous collective claims for autonomy and self-determination. However, their implementation by national governments has been uneven and conflicts between the states and indigenous communities persist across the region. By comparing two cases from Peru and Mexico, this paper aims to explore under which conditions multicultural laws can foster the realization of indigenous people's territorial rights while at the same time contravening the capacity of the states to affirm their authority over the entirety of their national territories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A conference paper prepared for presentation at the 2014 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association (APSA), Washington, D.C., on August 28-31, 2014 is presented. It examines law with Inter-American human rights law in Mexico. It also discusses conventionality control in the Americas and Mexico, and compliance with international judicial rulings, and human rights.

A conference paper prepared for presentation at the 2014 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association (APSA), Washington, D.C., on August 28-31, 2014 is presented. It examines the impact of customary law on trust and reciprocity in southern Mexico. It also discusses several aspects of formal institutionalization of usos y costumbres.

This paper explains the high levels of violence on the Mexican side of the Texas-Tamaulipas border. In general, this part of the U.S.-Mexico border has been overlooked by scholars, political analysts, and the media until recently when violence in the Mexican border state of Tamaulipas reached unprecedented levels. The study finds that the recent increase in violence in the so-called "forgotten" border has to do mainly with the following factors: deteriorated socioeconomic conditions, endemic corruption, the introduction of federal forces into the fight against drug trafficking groups, the new shape of the Mexican political system, the division between the Gulf Cartel and the Zetas, and the paramilitarization of those organizations. This last phenomenon is crucial to explain the situation of extreme violence in Tamaulipas, where the State seems to have lost the "monopoly" of the legitimate use of violence. In other words, the violence levels that are currently afflicting the territory of Tamaulipas are indicative of the degree of control and coercion that organized crime groups exert over this region of Mexico, at times even substituting the State as the legitimate purveyor of control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reforms oriented towards enhancing the rule of law in emerging democracies in Latin America were first aimed at courts. More recently, increasing reform efforts have also been directed at public prosecution services, with specific attention to reducing the political use of criminal prosecution. The Public Prosecutor's Office (PPO) is a crucial institution within the justice system; without its effective participation, justice cannot be served because the institution is the one in charge of advancing criminal actions. Drawing on archival analysis of the legislative debates at the time PPO reforms were approved, this paper compares national-level reforms to the PPO in Brazil, Chile and Mexico along two main dimensions: (1) criminal procedure; and (2) political autonomy. In doing so, I explain why formal reform outcomes varied in the three countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Efforts to operationalize democracy at the national level have occupied a central place in the discipline since the 1960s, and have resulted in a cumulative body of literature and in a variety of datasets of increasing rigor and geographic and temporal coverage. Attempts to measure democracy at the subnational level are much more recent and inchoate, cover only a few countries and periods, and, critically, are not comparable across nations. After reviewing the state of the subject at the national level and the existing (objective) national subnational indices, this paper proposes six versions of an objective Subnational Democracy Index that can be calculated on the basis of (typically available) electoral and institutional data. Because of their modest data demands, the proposed indices can easily be applied to very different national and temporal contexts, thus permitting comparisons of subnational regimes across countries. The measures are pilot-tested on the first-level subnational units of five federations (Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, and the United States) and of one unitary country (Uruguay). The ultimate goal of this line of research is to produce cross-sectional--time-series datasets of subnational democracy with broad geographic and temporal coverage similar to those existing for national regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While governmental and organized crime elements have traditionally held sway over media coverage in Mexico, the current shift in relations between actors involved in the country's so-called 'drug war' as well as the evolution in the organizational structure of Mexico's drug trafficking organizations have effectively silenced traditional news outlets -such as newspapers, printed dailies, radios and TV shows at all coverage levels, and public statements by municipal and state representatives. This situation has created an informational 'black hole' regarding the state of affairs in some of the more active drug zones of the country -particularly located in Mexico's northern region. Despite the press control exerted over news media by both governmental and non-governmental elements, current technological advances have allowed for the use of the Internet as a safe haven to broadcast news related to drug trafficking activities from various regions of the country in an uncensored, unrestricted manner through the use of social networks -such as Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, as well as many blogs, forums, and podcasts. The present paper addresses the issue of limited press freedom in northern Mexico during 'drug war' times. It focuses on the rise of informal media as the freedom of press's lifeline in an environment where the monopoly of violence by the state has been lost in some regions of the country, and taken over by criminal non-governmental agents. The present study analyzes in depth the case of Tamaulipas, Mexico. This case had been overlooked by scholars, political analysts, and the media in general until nowadays, when violence in this state has reached unprecedented levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a research paper which focuses on association among free trade, agricultural change, and immigration. It focuses on the impact of multilateral trade agreements such as North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and austerity measures on agricultural production including corn and soybean production, in Mexico. It also focuses on the declining agricultural productivity on rural poverty, employment and out-migration.

The article presents a research paper which focuses on the consistency and changes in the labor laws and related politics in Mexico and Brazil. It discusses on the labor law reforms and the evolution of labor practices in both the countries, and the efforts of Brazilian labor actors to circumvent legal challenges. It also focuses on the labor relations model of intense state involvement and a prevalence of labor unions in Mexico.

This paper seeks to understand how political ambition plays out in a federal system in which incumbency does not exist because of the constitutional prohibition against consecutive reelection. Using a unique dataset of the career paths of over 1,400 federal deputies, both before and after reaching the Chamber of Deputies, we estimate the impact of personal attributes, institutional and partisan constraints on their career choices. Our evidence indicates that Mexico's federal system leads many professional politicians to begin their political careers in the local and state political arenas before becoming federal deputies, and eventually return to their states when the single three-year legislative term expires. Comparatively, Mexican political careers (constrained by the nation's formal rules and informal relations) look much more like those of Argentina and Brazil, and less like those of the United States. This finding has important implications for Mexico's consolidating democracy, in that powerful governors control many of the resources that matter to ambitious politicians from all political parties. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the positions of South Africa and Mexico concerning the incorporation of labour standards to the multilateral trade regime. Even though both countries have opposed the trade-labour linkage, a favourable position would be justified since 2001, due to the growing Chinese commercial pressure and the poor compliance of China with labour standards.The findings suggest that, in spite of the economic justification, a change in the case countries' policy has not occurred. This is due in the first place to the fact that both governments are institutionally insulated from societal pressures and therefore from linkage demands from some constituencies. In the second place, the international perception of the linkage as "kidnapped" by the US labour movement has entailed North South polarization. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I discuss the findings in this paper of an experiment developed in Mexico City. In the experiment I manipulate the phenotypic appearance of an electoral candidate. The purpose is to analyze the effect of both voters and electoral candidates' racial characteristics or phenotypes on the voter's evaluation of the candidates among members of what is considered a single "racial group." All candidates and subjects belong to the same racial group: the Mestizo group, but their appearance is phenotypically diverse. I compare the behavior of subjects who look at different candidates: there is a White, a Mestizo and an Indigenous-looking candidate. I look at the effect of prejudice on the way subjects evaluate, ideologically position, and tend to vote for a candidate. I find an overall positive effect for the white candidate that is driven by non-white subjects. There is a small negative effect on the evaluation of the indigenous-looking candidate when compared to the subjects in the control group. I discuss the consequences of these findings and future research in this area. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Variations in economic voting are commonly linked to the ability of voters to hold politicians accountable. In contrast, we argue that they may also stem from the incentives that voters have to cast an economic vote or not. In this paper, we follow Pacek and Radcliff (1995) and argue that voters who receive welfare benefits from anti-poverty programs should be insulated from swings in the national economy and thus have fewer incentives to cast a sociotropic vote. Evidence from the Mexican public opinion surveys conducted over the 1991-2004 period offers support this proposition. The findings suggest the rewards for investing in anti-poverty welfare programs may increase with program efficiency rather than politicization and that effective social safety nets are political ones as well. It also suggests that variations in economic voting might not reflect the weakness of accountability but its strength: voters are getting what they ask for. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the process of judicial independence building in democratizing nations from a political science perspective. It addresses the theoretical and empirical paradox: why does a ruling party agree to cede the control over a branch that could limit its future power? Using the cases of Argentina (2003-2006) and Mexico (1994-2004) we argue against two recent theoretical approaches developed to explain the structure of incentives leading governing elites to promote such institutional changes. Both explanations conceive reforms as rational strategies of actors to limit the power of opponents, the future government -according to the electoral incentives approach, and the party in power -according to the divided government approach. We challenge the notions of both approaches for the analysis or our cases and argue that both processes show a strong explanatory power of legitimacy and power building needs as incentives for self-limitation. We also argue that implementation of reforms occurred in these two cases in contexts both framed by a political institutional crisis in conjunction with a crisis of credibility of the courts. The results of this study suggest the existence of perhaps too many domestic contextual factors shaping incentives and strategies of reforming elites regarding judicial independence as to construct a single explanation behind judicial reform in democratizing nations. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After experiencing seventy-one years of one-party rule, Mexico witnessed its first political power turnover in 2000. However, because no single party took more than half of the legislative seats at the national level, opposition parties controlled the Congress, and Mexico evolved into a period of divided government. That dynamic shift incited a contest for power between President Vicente Fox and the Mexican Congress that exerted a great challenge to Fox's legislative power. Several of Fox's most significant legislative proposals (a tax-reform bill, an electrical-energy privatization bill, and an indigenous rights bill) met with strong legislative resistance, and the approval ratings for his proposals greatly diminished, in comparison to the legislative record during the PRI's decades-long unitary governance. This paper describes the exacerbated relations between the executive and the legislative branches as well as the emergence of political gridlock and stalemate on selected issues between President Fox and the Congress after 2000. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper outlines the contours of an ongoing research project on the politics of banking-sector opening in Mexico, Brazil, and Indonesia. The project tries to understand why these three countries opened their domestic banking sectors to foreign participation in the 1990s and early 2000s after decades of financial protectionism, and why their governments countries exercised different degrees of control over the opening process. I find that international pressure by itself did not generate significant opening; only when external pressure converged with banking shocks, and sometimes also with domestically-driven ideational change, did significant opening follow. I also find that although the shocks forced major de jure opening in all three countries, in practice, policymakers gradually reasserted control over the opening process and were able to harness foreign capital to advance domestic political priorities. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shows that despite intensely polarized political elites in Mexico and highly polarized campaigns based to a signigicant extent on distinct economic policy proposals by the leading candidayes, issue differences were small across party identifiers and played a very minor role in vote intention. Instead, the vote was most strongly affected by candidate traits, retrospective evaluations of the incumbent's performance in office, and partisan identification. These findings imply that Mexico is not undergoing a partisan realignment, that the virtual tie between the leftwing and rightwing frontrunners does not imply deep divisions in the electorate, and that office-holders have little clear mandate. Data include the Mexico 2006 Candidate and Party Elite Survey and the Mexico 2006 Voter Panel Study. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been argued that direct public funding of political parties is a catalyst of democratization and consolidation processes, both by leveling the playing field among competitors, and contributing to limit the abuse of state resources by the incumbent(s). However, in older democracies it has been criticized for the rent-seeking incentives it generates, as well as for its potential for decreasing political competitiveness. This paper integrates these perspectives into a dynamic theory of public funding of political parties, stressing the diverse effects it may have on party system development, and the role played by partisan incentives and opportunities in the implementation of this regulatory instrument. It tests some of the hypotheses derived from the theory using a database from sub-national politics in Mexico, and illustrates the theoretical insights through a narrative of the Mexican federal party finance enforcement system-itself a showcase of how both these allegedly "new" and "old" incentives may coexist. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1994 the then Mexican president Ernesto Zedillo launched a judicial reform aimed at increasing the independence and relative power of the judicial branch. The Mexican reform is framed within the 1990´s process of democratization in Latin America, in which thirteen nations engaged in similar projects, which promised to put an end to the historical dependence and fragility of the region's judicial branches. A decade after the initiation of judicial reforms in the region, the fate and survival of the projects variegates. Some, the Mexican among them, have so far survived, been fully implemented and used, but in other countries some parts of the reforms were delayed, as was the case in Argentina, and in other nations the projects were reversed and failed as was the case in Peru and Ecuador. As delayed and failed experiences with judicial reform demonstrate, executive powers have a natural incentive to reduce judicial independence, regardless of their political ideology and party affiliation. When granted the opportunity to change institutions, they will do so in a strategy to maximize its present and future power. What political factors account for immediate and delayed implementation, reform survival, reversal or failure? This paper revises the Argentinean, Peruvian, Ecuadorian and Mexican experiences with judicial reform. Its explores the extent to which electoral incentives and divided governments explain executive power and incentives and capabilities for and against judicial independence at the initiation and implementation stages of reform. Its aim is to gauge the relative fragility/strength of judicial independence in Mexico and to further our understanding of the process of democratic institution building and democratic consolidation in the region. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper argues that a multilevel field of contentious collective action has emerged around trade agreement negotiations in the Americas. Building on empirical evidence from field research in Brazil, Chile, Mexico and the United States, it focuses on the challenges of coordinating such a field. More especifically, it presents the cases of cross-sectoral coalitions created in Mexico and in Chile to act as brokers in trade-related mobilizations. Coordination problems are put in the context of power relations among civil society organizations, of broader dilemmas of connecting the local and the global, and in the context of the negotiation of a new generation of trade agreements. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars have shown that the ways in which beneficiaries of policies are portrayed by elites have an important impact on the preferences of the public regarding these policies. This paper builds upon these theoretical insights, but unlike the existing literature, which focuses mainly on domestic policies and relies on experimental settings, we analyze foreign policy issues from a comparative perspective. More specifically, we examine the respective attitudes of the American and Mexican public toward political and economic ramifications of NAFTA ten years after the agreement was signed using data from national samples from both countries. This comparative framework allows us to examine two different elite frames of similar issues in both countries, thus significantly improving the external validity of the study. Using the data from 2004 Chicago Council of Foreign Relations, CIDE, and COMEXI public opinion surveys conducted in Mexico and the U.S we analyze the impact of affective attitudes toward both domestic and international groups benefiting from the economic changes caused by NAFTA interacted with elite political framing. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current migration theories do not pay significant attention to the role that migrant-sending states play in initiating, sustaining, and reproducing migration through state public policies. In this paper I will focus on the role that the Mexican state plays in initiating and sustaining migration through social assistance policies. Using the state as an explanatory variable would allow us to complement international migration literature by showing that social assistance policies are indeed correlated with out-migration flows in Mexico. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The health care reform of 2003 in Mexico does not conform to the expectations of influential theories of social welfare reform, such as power resources or veto players theory. In this paper, the origins and nature of the Seguro Popular reform are analyzed, as well as the political process culminating in legislative approval by the Mexican Congress. I argue that the reform is more consistent with modified versions of both the Heclo-Hall approach to policy change, and David Rueda's theory of "insider-outsider politics." ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the richness of extant studies on the use of party cues as information short-cuts, there is a significant limitation: since most studies focus predominantly on the two main parties in the United States, we do not know whether and to what extent other party labels are used as heuristic devices. This paper seeks to address this limitation by expanding the geographical span of our understanding of the effect of party cues. Our principal focus is the degree to which different party labels, across different institutional contexts, influence how individuals form and express opinions on a range of political issues. We also investigate the moderating influence of partisanship and issue complexity. We present a set of results from an experimental study conducted in three countries: the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Our findings show that the influence of party cues on the expression of opinions varies greatly when one moves beyond the two major parties in the United States. The results vary by party and country, there is some evidence that partisanship influences whether or not cues are used, and there is mixed evidence about the role of issue complexity in the usefulness of party cues. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to shed light on the relationship between democratic accountability and local public good provision in Mexico. I assess the way in which the system of intergovernmental finances has allowed municipal governments to remain rather unaccountable to citizens in the provision of public goods and services at the local level. By looking at the determinants of the reelection rates of the parties that control the municipal government, I explore the extent to which the process of decentralization and the way in which local governments use decentralized fiscal transfers is linked to the retention of municipal governments in the hands of the same party. Though this does not provide a direct test of the accountability of politicians to citizens, it suggests that the punishment of incumbents who fail to deliver in certain aspects of public policy is a critical tool that may allow Mexicans to align their interests with those of their representative governments. The findings, however, suggest a rather strong entrenchment of incumbents from all parties, based on the construction of clientelism and patronage networks, rather than the provision of public goods. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]