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This special issue examines environmental governance, conceptualized as environmental protections, support for sustainable development, and the regulation of large-scale development projects. Through analysis of dynamics during the commodities super-cycle of the 2000s–2010s, contributors explore the multifaceted ways that societal actors interact with the state to support, oppose, or modify environmental governance, with a focus on communities impacted by export activities and economic elites who favor their expansion. Several papers seek to understand the governance of sectors—mining, oil, and soy. Others begin with natural areas threatened by development—urban wetlands and forests. As a collection, the papers reveal three commonalities that affect the extent to which environmental governance institutions address demands of impacted communities: (1) the question of whether a policymaking process takes place in reaction to mobilizing, or whether it proactively engages environmental questions as they pertain to local populations; (2) strategies by civil society, and above all impacted residents, to ensure the implementation of environmental policies; and (3) debates over knowledge, including community efforts to harness expertise and information to counter paradigms advanced by business actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Development economics has long focused on growth patterns to explain countries' ability to catch up and forge ahead. We argue, however, that resilience to economic shrinking matters more. Using the examples of Brazil and Indonesia, we propose that a framework consisting of social capabilities—namely structural transformation, autonomy, and inclusion—can explain why Indonesia is more resilient to economic shrinking than Brazil and why the country is more likely to be successful in its catching-up process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that political brokers pay particular attention to household size, and the age distribution of its members, when allocating scarce indivisible social benefits. Because people usually share their income with other household members, allocating a social benefit to an individual member of a household with n voters is likely to bring more political support than allocating the same benefit to an individual member of a household with n-1 voters. Based on the main Argentine household survey and on personal interviews with 120 brokers, this paper shows that brokers effectively collect information on family size and age composition and allocate scarce temporary public works programs to families with more voters, unintentionally discriminating against families with children not old enough to vote. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past decade, Chinese involvement in Latin American infrastructure development has increased dramatically. The influx of Chinese investment along with Chinese construction workers, engineers, and equipment has led scholars and observers to question whether there a distinct model of Chinese infrastructure development. Does China take an integrated approach in Latin America — financing, designing, and executing projects — or does it operate as any other foreign country or company? We develop the concept of infrastructure dominance to answer these questions. Using data on over 400 of the most important public infrastructure projects, we find that China's involvement in projects varies based on the existing institutional constraints of the host country. Where countries have strong institutions, Chinese companies play a role similar to that of other foreign entities involved in infrastructure development. In Latin American countries with weak infrastructure institutions, however, China plays a very different role — it tends to dominate projects. Thus, this paper highlights the adaptability of the Chinese approach and the importance of domestic institutions for shaping the nature of infrastructure development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers a novel conceptualization and dataset of post-neoliberal populism in contemporary Latin America and Eastern Europe. By drawing insights from structuralist theories, which understood populism as historically grounded in political economy developments, I critique dominant minimal definitions and propose a synthetic conceptual alternative for the analysis of multidimensional and dynamic challengers of the watershed neoliberal revolutions that both regions have undergone since the late twentieth century. To this end, I disaggregate populism's key dimensions of anti-establishment discourse, illiberal ideology, and strategic organization into functionally interactive attributes; justify post-neoliberal populism as a family resemblance category; and develop a roadmap for case selection and measurement. I then illustrate the empirical validity and theoretical relevance of my approach by assessing the magnitude of post-neoliberal populism in 198 national-level elections in 33 Latin American and Eastern European democracies and by identifying the decline of the traditional Left as its correlate in both regions. By focusing on conceptual unity and cross-regional parallels, the article demonstrates that, contrary to conventional misconceptions, a family resemblance categorization of contemporary populism not only facilitates empirically rigorous research, but also stimulates mid-range theorizing at the intersection of intra-regional specificity and more general historicity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wetlands provide ecosystem services such as flood protection, improved water quality, and wildlife habitat, but are under attack in urban land-use conflicts in the Global South. This article presents two cases of local wetlands governance conflicts in Colombia (Humedal la Conejera, Bogotá, Cundinamarca) and Argentina (Laguna de Rocha, Esteban Echeverría, Gran Buenos Aires) to illustrate divergent pathways toward improved environmental governance via citizen pressures: the collaborative method (Bogotá) and the adversarial method (Buenos Aires). While existing scholarship on citizen-led regulation stresses the importance of collaboration between community organizations and the state, this article argues that adversarial tactics are also a key component of environmental governance. In both cases, citizen-led pressures led to increased enforcement of regulatory measures to restore wetlands and gain protected-area status. Citizen-led governance involved adversarial strategies such as marches, litigation, and shaming and blaming in the media, as well as collaborative strategies such as creating broad-based educational forums, working inside city government, and partnering directly with public institutions to set new policies. Against the backdrop of extensive collusion between elected officials and land developers, citizen-led subnational environmental governance has become the regulatory regime of last resort in urban Latin America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Standard economic theories of wage inequality focus on the factor-biased nature of technological change and globalization. This paper examines the long-run development of industrial wage inequality in Latin America from a global comparative perspective. We find that wage inequality was comparatively modest during the first half of the twentieth century, but rising much faster during the post-war era than in other industrial countries. In-depth analyses of wage inequality trends in Argentina, Brazil, and Chile confirm this pattern, but also reveal notable country peculiarities. In Argentina and Chile, trend breaks coincided with large political-institutional shocks while in Brazil, wage inequality increased unabated under the wage regulation policies of successive post-war administrations. We argue that without taking national policies with respect to education and the labor market into account, economic theory cannot explain 'Latin American' patterns of wage inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impact of countervailing external pressures on labor rights in 17 Latin American countries. On the one hand, these countries have been urged to reform their labor laws and practices to comply with international labor standards, including protections for the collective rights of workers. On the other hand, they have been pressured to adopt more flexible labor markets, which often undermine collective labor organization. After dividing the countries by the type of political regime that prevailed when the pattern of relations between labor and the state was being established, the paper presents and explains the results of indices created to measure two outcomes: labor standards and labor market flexibility. It then analyzes the impact of four types of external actors (the ILO, national governments pursuing trade agreements, multinational corporations, and international financial institutions) on these outcomes, both de jure and de facto. The paper's main finding is that these actors have had an impact on labor outcomes in the region, but that their influence is heavily mediated by domestic factors, particularly historical legacies of state-labor relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes concept formation and its empirical and theoretical implications for the study of subnational undemocratic regimes. The paper argues that extant conceptualizations of subnational political regimes, which generally draw on a strategy of 'conceptual expansion' have important drawbacks for the study of subnational undemocratic regimes (SURs). To overcome these shortcomings, the article claims for a strategy of 'conceptual separation' that disaggregates political regimes into two orthogonal dimensions, i.e., the access to and the exercise of state power. Drawing on original evidence from Argentina and Mexico, the article demonstrates that the strategy of conceptual separation helps researchers to (1) avoid truncation of the universe of cases for analysis, (2) obtain new and more precise information about the actual magnitude of the uneven territorialization of democracy, (3) recognize the existence of two ideal type domains of SURs: patrimonial and bureaucratic, and (4) gain more analytic leverage to identify the causal mechanisms that explain regime continuity within and across SUR types. In-depth case studies of the state of Puebla (Mexico) and the province of San Luis (Argentina) demonstrate empirically the workings of the mechanisms that account for regime continuity in bureaucratic-like SURs. The article also demonstrates the potential of distinguishing between SUR types for the study of SUR origins and SUR change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While some governments use natural resources for immediate political gain, others create transparent institutions that promote sustainable development. What explains this variation? Using novel data for Latin America between 1990 and 2019, I show that executive incumbents are more likely to restrict their discretion over natural resource revenue when public approval is high and legislative opposition is strong. When rulers are safe in their seats, they can use public funds for long-run developmental strategies, rather than short-term political survival. When there is a strong legislative opposition, rulers can signal a desire to compromise by relinquishing control over resource revenue. These findings, illustrated by the case of Mexico, suggest that a combination of high support and strong opposition provides space to create long-term fiscal policy frameworks while generating short-term incentives to do so. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International private transfers from immigrant workers to families and friends have surged in Latin America. These transfers, also known as remittances, grew from a mere US$5 billion in 1990 to US$74.3 billion in 2016, supplementing the income of millions of families in the region. Particularly, remittances can contribute to human development by lifting large populations out of extreme poverty and by enabling better housing, education, and health. However, corruption and weak institutional environments can severely reduce the effectiveness of remittances on the path of development. For instance, remittance recipient households could be discouraged to use these foreign funds to acquire assets due to the cumbersome and corrupt process to legalize property. Using a panel of 26 Latin American and the Caribbean countries over the period of 1985–2016, this study investigates the effects of remittances and corruption on five development indicators. We find that remittances do significantly affect human capital indicators, and more so among countries fighting corruption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many scholars of democratization have identified citizen support for democracy as an important determinant of democratic consolidation and deepening. Fewer have explored in depth what everyday citizens actually understand democracy to mean. If mass values shape democratic prospects, what specific notion of “democracy” are the masses inclined to support? This study addresses this question through focus groups conducted with 186 young people in Ecuador, a country that has epitomized challenges of democratic discontent and instability in Latin America. As compared to the dominant survey-based literature, interactive focus group conversations offer a more complex and complete picture of youth democratic perspectives, thus sharpening our analysis of the link between citizen attitudes and democratic performance. Findings have relevance for contemporary debates about “authoritarian drift” in the region, showing youth as strongly invested in democratic freedoms, though highly skeptical of the institutions that allegedly guarantee them. More broadly, the analysis provides a window into how youth conceive of and practice democracy in contexts of unstable democratization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Governments across the developing world in general, and Latin America in particular, tend to have difficulty in raising taxes among elites. Beginning in 2002, however, the Colombian government adopted a series of wealth taxes among the wealthiest taxpayers. Revenue from the tax was earmarked for security expenditures and represented about 1 % of GDP. Drawing on elite interviews, surveys, government documents, and media sources, this article studies the factors behind the adoption of the tax. It finds that three main factors make the elite tax possible, namely the combination of fiscal and security crises, cohesion among business and government elites, and improving perceptions of the government's provision of public safety. The findings should inform efforts in the developing world, where low levels of fiscal extraction, deteriorating security conditions, and mounting public safety expenditures are common. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the political determinants of foreign direct investment (FDI) across 15 Latin American countries from 1986 to 2006. In contrast to existing scholarship, we focus on the causes of investment by economic sector-primary resources, manufacturing, and services. Additionally, a regional focus on Latin America helps to control for omitted variables by comparing relatively similar countries. We find substantial variation in the causes and characteristics of FDI across sector. Specifically, manufacturing investment is volatile and attracted to less democratic regimes. In contrast, investment in primary resources privileges greater democracy and property rights protection, while FDI in services is associated with public fiscal responsibility. These results yield important theoretical and practical implications for scholars and policymakers throughout the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is now clear that the global shift toward democracy in recent decades has resulted in a highly uneven democratic landscape in which the quality and performance of democracies around the world vary greatly. In an era characterized by increasingly open borders to goods, services, information, and, at times, labor, we argue that poorly performing, uneven democracies have become an important, yet underexplored, component in one's emigration calculus. We test this argument through analysis of survey data across 22 Latin American countries and find strong and consistent evidence that both the quality of a democratic system and its ability to fulfill basic governance responsibilities influence the degree to which an individual considers emigration as a viable life strategy. These findings in turn have implications for the subsequent impact emigration may have on the democratic development of high migration communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Military coups d'état have become dramatically less frequent in Latin America over the past 20 years, leading many analysts to conclude that the risk of coups in the region today is negligible. Yet we observe that a particular subset of presidents in the region—namely, those commonly associated with the radical left—pursue a wide range of “coup-proofing” behaviors, primarily in the way that they manage relations with their militaries, but also in their political rhetoric. Our goal in this article is to explain why some Latin American presidents spend precious resources on coup-proofing. First, even as we demonstrate that coup activity is significantly diminished across the region as a whole, we offer evidence to suggest that coup risk is quite real in countries with radical left presidents. Second, we identify several specific strategies that these presidents have pursued to minimize coup risk. We explain the coup-proofing rationale behind each of these strategies and document their use in Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador. Third, we show that no similar set of strategies or policies has been pursued by moderate leftist or more conservative presidents in the region. We infer from these empirical patterns that radical left presidents have undertaken substantial efforts to maintain military allegiance and to mitigate coup risk precisely because they recognize the possibility of military intervention. In our conclusion, we suggest that these strategies may confer a short-term benefit for the presidents who implement them, but they are likely to have negative consequences for the long-term stability of democratic institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Collective remittances are the money flows sent by hometown associations (HTAs) of migrants from the USA to their communities of origin. In Mexico, the 3 × 1 Program for Migrants matches by three the amounts that HTAs send back to their localities to invest in public projects. In previous research, we found that municipalities ruled by the party of the federal government were more likely to participate in the Program. The political bias in participation and fund allocation may stem from two possible mechanisms: HTAs' decisions to invest in some municipalities but not in others may reflect migrants' political preferences (a demand-driven bias). Alternatively, government officials may use the Program to finance their own political objectives (a supply-driven bias). To determine which of these two mechanisms is at work, we studied a 2 × 2 matrix of statistically selected cases of high-migration municipalities in the Mexican state of Guanajuato. We carried out over 60 semistructured interviews with state and municipal Program administrators, local politicians, and migrant leaders from these municipalities. Our qualitative study indicates that migrant leaders are clearly pragmatic and that the political bias found is driven by elected officials strategically using the Program. The bias in favor of political strongholds is reinforced by the Program's requirements for cooperation among different levels of government. This study casts doubt about the effectiveness of public-private partnerships as valid formulas to reduce political manipulation. It also questions the ability of matching grant programs to reach the areas where public resources are most needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers widely recognize that economic crises have important political consequences, yet there is little systematic research on the political factors that make nations more or less susceptible to economic crisis. Scholars have long debated the economic consequences of party systems, executive powers, and societal interest groups, but their relationships to crisis proclivity are poorly understood. We assess the political correlates of economic crisis using a cross-sectional time-series analysis of 17 Latin American countries over nearly three decades. Crises are measured along two dimensions-depth and duration-and disaggregated into three types: inflationary, GDP, and fiscal crises. Statistical results suggest that political institutions have a modest, and often unexpected, correlation with crises. More important than institutional attributes are social organization and the nature of party-society linkages, particularly the existence of a densely-organized trade union movement and/or a powerful leftist party. Strong unions and powerful parties of the left are associated with more severe economic crises, though there is some evidence that the combination of left-labor strength can alleviate inflationary crises. The results demonstrate the need to disaggregate the concept of economic crisis and incorporate the societal dimension when studying the political economy of crisis and reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The choice among paths that countries should follow has been a staple of political debates in Latin America and, over the past 40 years, Fernando Cardoso has brought his analysis to bear on these debates. This article summarizes and then assesses Cardoso’s argument about the choice of paths faced by Latin American countries, the consequences for democracy and development of following different paths, and the political position that is supported by this analysis of choices and their consequences. Though Cardoso explicitly supports the path of globalized social democracy over an anti-globalization option in the current period, I suggest that the current state of knowledge does not offer unequivocal support for the argument that choosing to follow the path of globalized social democracy—or that of anti-globalization—is the best political option for all countries in Latin America. Different countries might very well be doing what is best for them, given their circumstances, by following different paths. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been increased emphasis in the last three decades on the decentralization of natural resource governance decisions to local government in developing countries as a means of improving environmental quality, public service delivery, and the accountability of local officials. We examine the performance of decentralization of natural resource management services in a large sample of municipal governments in four Latin American countries. Our analysis includes a variety of factors discussed in the literature as important in influencing the responsiveness of government officials to local needs. We provide a nested institutional model in which local officials respond to incentives created by the structure of formal political institutions at both the local and national level. The results provide support for the importance of considering local and national institutional arrangements as these co-determine the political incentives within decentralized systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We review the theoretical literature on the concept of institutions and its relationship to national development, propose a definition of the concept, and advance six hypotheses about institutional adequacy and contributions to national development. We then present results of a comparative empirical study of existing institutions in three Latin American countries and examine their organizational similarities and differences. Employing the qualitative comparative method (QCA) proposed by Ragin, we then test the six hypotheses. Results converge in showing the importance of meritocracy, immunity to corruption, absence of “islands of power,” and proactivity in producing effective institutions. Findings strongly support Peter Evans’ theory of developmental apparatuses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]