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Why do some movements in Latin America succeed in rolling back neoliberalism or more specifically privatization while others fail? Recently, voters have elected leaders who challenge economic orthodoxy, but previous resistance was largely channeled outside of formal political institutions. We argue that protest against privatizations tend to be successful under two conditions. First, protests are much more likely to succeed when the privatization's opponents form linkages (or "brokerage") across multiple sectors of society. Broad coalitions are much more likely to achieve their goals, while groups acting alone, such as labor unions, are much more easily isolated and defeated or ignored by governments. Second, protests against privatization are more successful in achieving their goals in cases where civil rights are protected, but political representation is weak. In those cases, opponents have the legal rights to protest, but are unlikely to have opportunities for communicating their concerns through formal institutions, prompting them to channel their demands outside of existing political institutions. Using both case examples and a logistic regression our arguments are confirmed and the implications for democracy in the region are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A recent explosion of work has occurred seeking to understand under what conditions groups use terror to pursue their goals. Regime type is one condition that is prominently discussed. Democratic regimes have been linked to terrorism for contending reasons with some scholars claiming that constraints on the executive and free civil rights increase the likelihood of these regimes experiencing terror while other scholars claim that democracy promotes nonviolent political participation thus reducing the likelihood of terror.Corroborating evidence has been used for both relationships leading to the following puzzle: why do some democratic regimes seem to foster terrorism while others do not? We offer three contributions to this debate. Beginning with the assumption that terror groups want to change government policy, we argue that the more veto players present in a political system, the more likely the system is to experience deadlock. Given the inability of societal actors to change policies through nonviolent and institutional participation, these regimes will have a greater likelihood of experiencing terror events. Second, we argue that the terrorism data generating process has been misidentified. In short, two types of zeros exist in terrorism data that are different but have been treated the same in previous models.Some states across the entire period of most samples never experience terror while other states only experience terror in a few years and thus have some probability of experiencing terror in the future. We use zero-inflated count models to model this process. Third, we use new data from the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) that was previously unavailable. Unlike previous terrorism databases, this new data incorporates both domestic and international incidents of terrorism while spanning from 1970 to 1997. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a computer simulation of a common collective action problem, this paper investigates whether the structure of decision-making affects the propensity to cooperate. Democratic and authoritarian decision-making units are placed in a prisoner?s dilemma to determine whether a significant difference exists in their level of cooperation. Part of the purpose of the study is to discern whether regime type affects cooperation levels. Based on the outcome of the study, several conclusions are applied to the possible behavior of states including evidence that suggests significant differences exist between democracies and authoritarian regimes in their patterns of cooperation vis-à-vis their opponent and the context of cooperation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]