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This paper seeks to explain a fascinating puzzle: why have many of Latin America's chief executives maintained macroeconomic discipline in the lead-up to elections? Political-economic theory uniformly assumes that Latin American politicians are opportunistic and institutionally weakly constrained, and will use whatever means necessary to secure an electoral victory. Given weak legislatures, less than fully autonomous central banks, and a constrained media, the prediction is that leaders will employ macroeconomic policy as a electoral weapon. They are expected to hit the economy's gas pedal before elections, calculating that an accelerated economy-even at the cost of higher price instability- will yield more votes. But Latin American economies do not shift into a high-growth, high-inflation phase before elections. In fact, I show that politicians take the opposite actions from the ones this theory would predict: in recent decades, before elections they hit the brakes. My large-N test of 17 Latin American countries (observed between 1961 and 2006) finds that after the 1980s Latin American economies did not undergo political business cycles. What explains this surprising fact? I argue that two key structural shocks--the region's 1990 debt restructurings and its past struggles with hyperinflation--account for this unexpected change in political behavior. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the transition of democracy in Latin American countries which reached to the stage of consolidation process despite corruption, clientelism and populism. It notes the inability of governments in promoting growth, reduce poverty and inequality, and control inflation and crime. It mentions the region's rise in political satisfaction which is expected to follow democratic consolidation over two decades after the beginning of the political trust and high dissatisfaction level.

What factors explain the third wave of democratization in Latin America? We argue that the normative preferences of political elites, radicalization in the policy process, and the transformations of the international context seem to offer better explanations for Latin American democratization than theories emphasizing structural conditions such as economic modernization, class, and natural resource dependence. Our analysis covers 20 countries between 1945 and 2005. We employ random-effects logistic regression models to assess the risk of democratic transitions and breakdowns in different national contexts. The results indicate that international forces and--to the extent that they can be measured--elite attitudes and policy preferences are better predictors of regime change than structural preconditions. A simulation based on our empirical results shows the dynamic impact of diffusion processes on waves of democratization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Legal reforms throughout Latin America and Chile specifically have increased the transparency of the criminal justice process and provided a range of new rights to defendants. Some scholars assert that criminal justice reforms such as these have a larger impact on economic development as they signal to foreign investors the ability to respect and enforce rights in the economic arena as well. The actual effect of legal reforms, such as those undertaken in Chile, is rarely tested although there are many conjectures about the impact of these types of reforms on both rights and economic development. Despite the breadth of the reforms and the Chilean government's investment in them, they have to date had only some effect on rights, defined as number incarcerated, but no effect on economic development. To investigate these claims, an event study is used. The effectiveness of the reforms on regional incarceration numbers and foreign direct investment is first tested using a fixed effects model. Second, the Clemente-Montañés-Reyes structural break analysis is used to test the effect of the reforms at the regional level. Using these empirical approaches, I find that Chile's criminal law reform has reduced the percent of individuals incarcerated in two out of three categories of detainees. The reform, however, has had no effect on regional foreign direct investment. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

State courts play a vital role in political and economic development in Latin America, yet they are neglected subjects of comparative judicial scholarship. A subnational level of analysis enhances the comparative leverage of judicial scholarship, and is substantively important since the majority of litigation originates in state courts. This study analyzes the efficiency of the criminal justice sector in 17 Mexican states. Greater judicial efficiency reduces congestion and delay - two harms identified with weak judiciaries - and also increases access to the courts by reducing the amount of time that any one case remains in court. This quantitative study of judicial efficiency tests social, political, economic, and institutional explanations of variation in efficiency across states and changes in efficiency over time. The results indicate that social, economic, and institutional pressures shape judicial efficiency in important ways. Additionally, the results suggest a counterintuitive negative relationship between competitive politics and efficiency. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why have most of the governments in Latin America increased social spending in the 1990s despite a weakening of organized labor under globalization? I argue that the increase in social spending in Latin American countries is explained by policy makers? desire to achieve the simultaneous goals of economic growth and social equity under globalization. The current dominant literature on comparative political economy in the OECD countries claims that leftist governments linked to a strong labor power are more likely to expand social spending in order to compensate the ?new political constituencies,? who are supposed to be adversely affected by globalization. Unlike in the advanced industrial economies, however, such leftist power does not seem to explain the change in social spending in Latin America. More specifically, globalization contributes to an expansion of the informal sector and the consequent de-alignment of traditional left-labor alliance. In this context, a more plausible explanation is that the policy makers, regardless of partisanship, are more inclined to increase social spending, particularly human capital expenditures, to improve the skill level of labor force aiming at enhancing economic efficiency. Using a time-series cross-sectional panel data set for 13 Latin American countries from 1980 to 1997, this study presents the following findings. First, globalization measured as trade openness and capital account liberalization does affect the change in social spending. Second, the spending increase attributable to enhancing human capital expenditures is not aimed at compensating the expanding informal sector, which is supposed to exert electoral pressure as the ?new political constituencies.? Instead, it reflects the policy makers? economic concern for achieving both economic growth and social equity, which have been considered an unsolvable trade-off in the region. Third, partisan politics matters less than in the advanced industrial countries. Taken together, these findings demonstrate that economic rather than political logic works behind the increase in social spending in Latin American countries under globalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]