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El presente artículo hace un balance de la respuesta de las organizaciones regionales latinoamericanas y caribeñas al covid-19. En especial, se pregunta si éstas han contribuido a hacer frente a la pandemia y se busca encontrar explicaciones para la considerable divergencia entre las respuestas de nueve organizaciones regionales. En ese orden de ideas, en primer lugar, se señala que el regionalismo latinoamericano ya se encontraba en crisis antes de la llegada del covid-19. Algunas de las características de esta crisis eran: una decreciente regionalización económica, una creciente polarización política regional, y la parálisis y la desintegración de algunas organizaciones regionales como la UNASUR. Es por eso que se argumenta que las expectativas con respecto al desempeño de las organizaciones regionales eran bastante bajas. Posteriormente, combinando fuentes académicas y primarias, se hace una valoración de las acciones desplegadas por cada organización frente a la pandemia del covid-19. Estas acciones se dividen en tres para su evaluación: el compartir información, la coordinación interestatal y la acción colectiva (interna y externa). En esa valoración se obtuvieron resultados mixtos: hubo algunas organizaciones que tuvieron un buen desempeño y otras que tuvieron un bajo rendimiento, en especial si se tienen en cuenta sus mandatos fundacionales y la totalidad de sus capacidades institucionales. En segundo lugar, con base en la literatura sobre organizaciones internacionales y regionales se propone que son cuatro las variables que tienen mayor poder explicativo para dar cuenta de la divergencia de esas respuestas de las instituciones regionales a la pandemia: la diferenciación funcional, la autonomía de las organizaciones, el liderazgo y el conocimiento (know-how) acumulado. En tercer lugar, el artículo deriva unas lecciones más generales para el regionalismo latinoamericano de estas respuestas regionales al covid-19 (y de la ausencia de éstas en algunos casos). Se defiende la idea de que un regionalismo más técnico, diferenciado funcionalmente y segmentado puede resistir mejor los embates de la polarización ideológica y los inevitables cambios de ciclo político en América Latina. Especialmente, si se compara con los riesgos de parálisis y crisis de organizaciones “sombrilla” que abarcan una gran multiplicidad de temas a través de numerosos consejos u otro tipo de subunidades.

For decades autonomy has been utilised as a concept in various social sciences, like sociology, political science, law and philosophy. Certain concepts of autonomy have always reflected the needs of the respective disciplines that made use of the term, but also ever infringed on the interpretation of autonomy in other disciplines. Most notably, conceptualisations of international and constitutional law have found their way into bordering sciences, like political science. The result: a legal positivist view prevailing in the conceptualisations of autonomy within political and administrative sciences. As this working paper points out, this perspective does not do justice to the complex phenomenon autonomy is or may be in social and political reality. Hence, the paper argues for a differentiated concept of autonomy, splitting it into autonomy claims, actors, process, rights and powers, regimes, and their institutions. The empirical world suggests a salience of formally and informally lived types of autonomy, especially in Latin America, due to the region’s indigenous population often living outside of, or within the limited reach of the state. Therefore, the paper aims to incorporate the dimension of informality – lacking in previous legal positivist approaches. Autonomy regimes could be entrenched in international, constitutional, or secondary law, or they could be tolerated by the state or seized by autonomy claimants by force. From a theoretical or conceptual perspective, the dimension of (in)formality facilitates the incorporation of autonomy into the discussion on governance and government, mostly on the local or regional level. Thus, the paper establishes autonomy regimes as a concept located at the verges of (self-)government and (self-)governance., Seit Jahrzehnten wird der Begriff Autonomie in verschiedenen Sozialwissenschaften, wie Soziologie, Politikwissenschaft, Recht und Philosophie verwendet. Die jeweiligen Verständnisse von Autonomie spiegelten stets die Bedürfnisse dieser Disziplinen wider. Dabei beeinflussen etablierte Konzepte zu Autonomie häufig angrenzende Disziplinen. Vor allem Autonomieverständnisse aus dem Völker- und Verfassungsrecht haben ihren Weg in andere Wissenschaften gefunden. Dementsprechend herrschen auch in der Politik- und Verwaltungswissenschaft rechtspositivistische Sichtweisen zu Autonomie vor. Wie dieses Working Paper zeigt, wird diese Perspektive dem komplexen Phänomen, das Autonomie in der sozialen und politischen Realität ist oder sein kann, nicht gerecht. Das Paper plädiert daher für einen differenzierten Autonomiebegriff, der Autonomieansprüche, -akteure, -prozesse, -rechte und -befugnisse, -regime und -institutionen unterscheidet. Die Empirie zeigt, dass formell und informell gelebte Formen der Autonomie von Bedeutung sind – vor allem in Lateinamerika, da Autonomiebestrebungen der indigenen Bevölkerung der Region häufig außerhalb staatlicher Reichweite oder im Kontext schwacher Staatlichkeit gestellt werden. Daher zielt das Paper darauf ab, die Dimension der (In)Formalität in das Konzept von Autonomie zu integrieren, die in früheren positivistischen Ansätzen fehlte. Autonomieregime können im internationalen Recht, in der Verfassung oder im Sekundärrecht verankert sein. Darüber hinaus können sie vom Staat geduldet oder von Akteuren, die Autonomie für sich beanspruchen, mit Gewalt durchgesetzt werden. Aus theoretischer oder konzeptioneller Sicht ermöglicht der Rückbezug auf die Informalität es, Autonomie in die Diskussion über Governance und Government einzubetten, vorwiegend auf lokaler oder regionaler Ebene. Autonomieregime werden hier deshalb als ein Konzept definiert, das an der Grenze zwischen (Selbst-)Regierung und (Selbst-) Regelung angesiedelt ist.

Recent democratic regressions and crises suggest democracy is at risk across East and Southeast Asia. One of the factors that can determine democratic stability are citizens’ attitudes. While previous research has concentrated on support for democracy-in-principle, this contribution argues that it is political trust, i.e. support for democracy-in-practice, which is crucial for democratic stability. For democracies to be stable, political trust should be high as well as rooted in long-term factors like liberal democratic value orientations or social trust to protect it from short-term fluctuations following economic crises or political scandals. This contribution therefore examines not only the current levels and development of political trust but also whether it is influenced more by long-term factors (liberal democratic value orientations, social trust) or short-term factors (economic performance evaluations, incumbent support). The empirical analysis shows political trust in five East and Southeast Asian democracies (Indonesia, Japan, Mongolia, South Korea, Taiwan) to be mostly mediocre and primarily dependent on economic performance evaluations and incumbent support. Among the five democracies, citizens in Japan appear most resilient to democratic regressions; on the other hand, Taiwanese democracy seems least equipped to master future crises.

European democracies have experienced drastic changes in electoral competition. Voter support for insider parties that have traditionally governed has declined while support for radical and populist parties has increased. Simultaneously, citizens’ declining political trust has become a concern, as confidence in political institutions and actors is low across numerous countries. Interestingly, the linkage between political trust and support for insider parties has not been empirically established but deduced from the fact that outsider parties are often supported by dissatisfied citizens. We address this gap adopting both an institutional- and an actor-centered approach by investigating whether trust in parliaments and in parties is associated with the electoral performance of insider parties on the aggregate level. Combining different data sources in a novel way, we apply time-series cross-section models to a dataset containing 30 countries and 137 elections from 1998 to 2018. Our results show that when political trust is low, particularly institutional trust, insider parties receive less electoral support. Hence, we provide empirical evidence that decreasing levels of political trust are the downfall of insider parties, thereby opening a window of opportunity for challenging outsider parties.

We test the importance of responsiveness, performance and corruption to explain the evolution of political trust in Spain between 1997 and 2019. To this end, the study analyses two longitudinal datasets, namely, a repeated cross-sectional dataset from the Spanish samples of Eurobarometer and an individual-level panel survey conducted during a period of economic recovery in 2015. The study finds that perceptions about political corruption and responsiveness matter greatly in shaping political trust and to a lesser extent economic performance. Although the Great Recession is likely responsible for the sharp decline in trust towards political parties and the parliament between 2008 and 2012, the analysis suggests that trust in representative institutions remains low even after the Recession because of a series of devastating corruption incidents and a perceived lack of responsiveness of the political system. On the other hand, the study finds indications that trust in the judicial system might have been mainly affected by perceptions of corruption. The research study was supported by the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad, Programa Estatal de Fomento de la Investigación Científica y Técnica de Excelencia—Subprograma Estatal de Generación de Conocimiento, under grant number CSO 2016-79772-P (2016–2020) and by the ICREA-ACADEMIA Intense Research Award.

How does emigrating affect one's political trust for their native country's political and state institutions? This question is increasingly relevant as a result of growing migration in the wake of globalization and the willingness to widen electoral laws and channels for participation to also include emigrated citizens in homeland politics. Despite the research conducted on homeland politics and voting from abroad in political science, the question of homeland political trust among emigrants has not been given sufficient attention. This could be seen as surprising from the perspective of trust research, which has exhaustively analyzed political and social trust. This paper seeks to map the effect of migration on political trust by comparing the trust in Finnish political and state institutions of emigrated Swedish-speaking Finns, also known as Finland-Swedes, and Finland-Swedes living in Finland. The Finland-Swedes are a resourceful minority with a sizeable diaspora, which in relative terms is comparable to nations with a renowned diaspora. The paper analyzes the political trust of migrants and residents with two high quality random surveys and using two methods, linear regression and propensity score matching, with analysis of average treatment effects to counter potential endogeneity of political trust and migrating citizens. The analyses show emigrants have on average significantly higher homeland political trust. Comparing the linear regression analysis and the average treatment effects after matching we get similar results, although the linear regression analysis that controls for potentially endogenous factors seems to somewhat exaggerate the effect of migration.

The article mainly seeks to explain the legislature's preferences in social welfare before and after democratization using South Korea as a case study. Based on an original dataset that consists of all executive and of legislative branch-submitted bills between 1948 and 2016 - roughly 60,000- legislative priority on social welfare is compared over time, and tested using logistic regressions. The key focus of analysis is whether and how the level of democracy affected the degree and universality of social welfare priority. The findings show that the promotion of social welfare is positively related to higher levels of democracy in a continuous fashion, which clearly points to the need to avoid applying a simple regime dichotomy - authoritarian or democratic - when seeking to understand social welfare development. Going further, the article examines the legislature's priority in welfare issues within a presidential structure and under majoritarian electoral rule, at different levels of democracy. The result shows that the higher levels of democracy are, the more the legislative branch contributes to the overall salience of social welfare legislative initiatives as compared to the executive branch. Moreover, the legislative branch itself prioritizes a social welfare agenda - alongside democratic deepening - over other issues.

Las investigaciones sobre el impacto de las instituciones participativas en América Latina aún no han estudiado cómo funcionan dichas instituciones en entornos autoritarios. Los autócratas nacionales en México llevaron a cabo reformas participativas cuando estaba vigente el régimen electoral autoritario de dicho país. Con base en investigación existente sobre descentralización política en regímenes autoritarios, argumento que las instituciones participativas pueden ser utilizadas para canalizar las demandas de los ciudadanos incorporando a la ciudadanía dentro de los sistemas autoritarios y reforzando de esta manera dicho gobierno. Sin embargo, siguiendo investigaciones sobre gobernabilidad democrática participativa también considero que las instituciones de participación política funcionan mejor cuando se diseñan de "abajo hacia arriba" y no de "arriba hacia abajo". El análisis estadístico de los patrones de apoyo electoral autoritario a nivel municipal en México muestra que las instituciones participativas construidas de "abajo hacia arriba" e implementadas durante el régimen electoral autoritario reforzaron el control político local en mayor medida que los sistemas políticos diseñado de "arriba hacia abajo". Este estudio apoya las investigaciones que revelan los efectos antidemocráticos de participación de las instituciones participativas en los países democráticos latinoamericanos., Research on the impact of participatory institutions in Latin America has not yet examined how they work in authoritarian settings. National autocrats in Mexico implemented participatory reforms during that country's national electoral authoritarian regime. Building on research on political decentralization in authoritarian regimes, I argue that participatory institutions can be used to channel citizen demands and to incorporate citizens into authoritarian systems, thereby strengthening authoritarian rule. However, following research on democratic participatory governance, I also argue that participatory institutions will work better in this regard when designed from the bottom up rather than from the top down. Statistical analysis of patterns of municipal-level electoral authoritarian support in Mexico shows that bottom-up-designed participatory institutions implemented during electoral authoritarian rule strengthened local political control to a greater extent than top-down-designed political systems. The study supports research revealing the anti-democratic effects of participatory institutions in democratic Latin American nations.

This contribution argues that although the latest EU treaties formalized the Commission presidency to substantial degree, it remains a constitutionally weak office for the provision of political leadership. The capacity to lead thus still strongly depends on the individual incumbent. As a first step, the article examines the legal-procedural structure of the office before and after the Lisbon Treaty came into force. Secondly, it analyzes the political leadership performance of the Commission president José Barroso in comparison with his predecessor Jacques Delors. In bridging formal institutional rules with concrete performances this article contributes to the understanding of the relationship between structure and agency in international institutions as well as to the growing literature on political leadership in the European Union. (author's abstract)

Introduction to Journal of Current Chinese Affairs 1/2016: Policy Implementation in the New Socialist Countryside

Following international trends to reform school management, the Chinese government has proposed school-based decision-making as a measure to raise the “quality” of education, but at the same time it has imposed new institutions of accountability for teachers and school administrators. In order to understand how this inter-play between accountability and discretion affects Chinese educational reforms, this paper analyses policy implementation through the lens of decision-making by principals and teachers as street-level bureaucrats. In the case of minority-language education in Xishuangbanna, a subject where institutions provide comparatively large spaces for discretionary decisions, I argue that the current institutions on accountability in minority-language education in China trigger processes by which implementers must interpret vague institutions in order to make decisions for their classroom. These purposefully wide spaces of “interpretational discretion” enable the party-state to make good on its promise to support local diversity, without threatening its own authority to prescribe educational goals. (author's abstract)

Das Beispiel Aserbaidschans belegt die starke Beständigkeit eines Willkürregimes - insbesondere, wenn es von Wirtschaftswachstum und Wohlstandssteigerung in Verbindung mit überraschenden Erdöleinnahmen geprägt ist. Rail Safiyevs Studie zeigt einen Staat mit ausgeprägter Steuerungsfunktion, der auf fester Eigenlogik, Organisationsstärke und höchster Loyalität zur Herrschaft basiert, dessen Machtstrukturen aber von informalen Mitteln durchdrungen sind. Diese Herrschaft der Informalität gewinnt nicht allein auf der Ebene der politischen Institutionen an Durchsetzungskraft, sondern wird in alltäglichen Machtkämpfen ausgetragen und verhandelt.

Peru's new president, Martín Vizcarra, hardly signals a fresh start for the country. The crisis of the past two years, which brought Vizcarra into office in March this year, is the consequence of long-standing structural problems. Democratic institutions have been eroded and trust in political institutions has reached a new low. The legacy of Alberto Fujimori's authoritarian government (1990-2000) still weighs heavily on Peruvian politics. It includes a fragmented party system, weak institutions, and deeply engrained corruption. Fujimori's daughter Keiko is the head of the opposition party, Fuerza Popular, which controls Congress. Pervasive corruption is a central problem at all levels of Peruvian politics. Moreover, criminal structures, often related to drug trafficking, have increasingly infiltrated the political system. There is also a widespread perception of insecurity, even though the level of fatal violence is relatively low in regional comparison. Polls show low levels of support for democratic structures and a continuous decline in public confidence in the country's political institutions. The new president, Martín Vizcarra, is no exception. His approval rating fell from 52 per cent in May to 37 per cent in June. The Vizcarra government will find it difficult to pursue a coherent reform agenda. In June, only three months after taking office, its minister of economics and finance had to resign over mass protests against a tax increase on fuels. Increased accountability and the professionalisation of institutions will be essential to investigating and prosecuting corruption cases and to reducing the political influence of criminal structures. These are preconditions for rebuilding trust in the state. International commitments such as those made within the OECD framework are important guidelines. However, Peru's deep political and social divisions and its weak government make a quick fix unlikely.

This article investigates whether the overlapping of intergovernmental regional organizations in Latin America with regard to membership and mandate is harmful or beneficial to regional cooperation (with a special focus on mediation in domestic and international conflicts). The article begins by systematizing the discussion about the possible risks and potential benefits of overlapping regional organizations, and then outlines hypotheses that can be tested in concrete episodes of overlap of action. The article then analyzes nine episodes in which an overlap of action has occurred between two Latin American organizations, the Organization of American States (OAS) and the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR). The results of the study are mixed. However, the effects of overlapping seem to be much less problematic than a large body of literature generally assumes.

A strong link between citizen preferences and public policy is one of the key goals and criteria of democratic governance. Yet, our knowledge about the extent to which public policies on specific issues are in line with citizen preferences in Europe is limited. This article reports on the first study of the link between public opinion and public policy that covers a large and diverse sample of concrete public policy issues in 31 European democracies. The findings demonstrate a strong positive relationship and a substantial degree of congruence between public opinion and the state of public policy. Also examined is whether political institutions, including electoral systems and the horizontal and vertical division of powers, influence the opinion‐policy link. The evidence for such effects is very limited, which suggests that the same institutions might affect policy representation in countervailing ways through different mechanisms.

© 2015 GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies. All Rights Reserved. Institutional trust is often measured by several items that are analyzed individually or as sum-scores. However, it is difficult to summarize the results of individual-items analyses, whereas sum-scores may be meaningless if the dimensions that the items are assumed to measure are not verified. Although these limitations are circumvented by using factor analysis, response styles may still bias research results. We use data from Guyana to show that a second-order factor model is appropriate for measuring institutional trust. We also demonstrate that response styles can inflate item and factor convergent validity and may either distort regression effects or create completely spurious ones. We therefore recommend using factor models with corrections for response styles in institutional trust research instead of sum-scores and individual-items analyses. ispartof: Journal of Politics in Latin America vol:7 issue:3 pages:85-115 status: published

"Why has protest participation seemingly exploded across much of Latin America in recent years? How do individual- and countrylevel characteristics interact to explain the rise of contentious politics in countries like Argentina, Brazil, and Venezuela? I contend that the recent wave of protests in Latin America is the result of trends in community engagement and institutional development across the region's young democracies. Specifically, I argue that low-quality institutions in democratic regimes push an increasingly large number of civically active Latin Americans toward more radical modes of political participation, as governments' abilities to deliver on citizens' expectations fail to match the capacity for mobilization of active democrats. Drawing on cross-national surveys of Latin America, I test this argument, finding that an interactive relationship between community engagement and ineffective political institutions helps explain the recent spike in protest activity in certain cases and the vast differences in protest participation observed throughout the region." (author's abstract)

This article considers the legitimacy of political regimes in the Baltic States by analysing three major parameters: confidence in political institutions, level of corruption, and the development of their party systems. The author identifies the major crisis trends in the legitimacy of the political regimes of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. The article stresses the problem of legitimacy reproduction resulting from the limited representation of the national party systems. Special attention is paid to compensatory mechanisms used by political elites to ‘artificially’ reproduce legitimacy. It makes sense to analyse the deficit of legitimacy in the Baltic States not only in the context of threats to democratic institutions but also considering weaknesses of public institutions and insufficient resources to ensure stateness. This requires developing a hypothesis about smaller states ‘importing’ legitimacy from larger states and intergovernmental organisations, in whose zone of influence they are included. In other words, the EU and NATO can provide smaller states not only with economic and military resources but also legitimation ‘resources’ using their prestige to support the belief of local residents that there is no alternative to the current political system of social organisation. Legitimacy deficit increases the risks of a rift between political elites in the Baltic States, which can become a prologue to a deep political crisis. In these conditions, compensatory mechanisms cannot be considered as targeted exclusively at broad social strata. They are also aimed at political elites, whose consolidation or ‘encapsulation’ is achieved by exaggerating external threats and resorting to repressive measures in an attempt to develop an ethnonational consensus. These methods are used to ensure self-preservation of the Baltic States political regimes within the current ideological and institutional configuration.

The article analyzes the development of EU — Russia energy relations through the lens of the evolution of three parameters: the political agenda (the Energy Dialogue), the institutional structure, and the legal modalities. The identification of these three aspects for assessing the evolution of EU — Russia energy relations is the novelty in the author’s approach. This study aims to identify the previous stages and assess the current state of EU — Russia energy dialogue, since they set out conditions for energy cooperation in the Baltic Sea region. This research is based on a political and legal analysis of various documents and employs various international relations theories (including integration theories). The article demonstrates that the EU nd Russia have made a transition to the integration agenda manifested in the Energy Dialogue (its current goal is the creation of a common European energy market). The author describes the process of gradual consolidation of transgovernmental and transnational institutions, which leads to depoliticization of cooperation and mutual socialization of the partners. Finally, legal discussions on the development of common rules have become more constructive. In sum, the current situation in EU — Russia energy relations is favourable and positively affects cooperation in the Baltic Sea region.

How can we explain the emergence and evolvement of the overlaps between the Colombian Water and Sanitation Regulatory Commission (CRA) and the Constitutional Court? This paper shows the dominant literature's limitations in explaining these overlaps. By contrast, I argue that the "regulatory enterprise" approach developed by Tony Prosser (2010) and the theory of "institutional isomorphism" explained by DiMaggio and Powell (1991) are better equipped to offer plausible explanations. Moreover, I hypothesize that the lack of understanding regarding the differences between the role of a regulatory agency in developed countries and the role of a regulatory agency in Colombia is critical in these overlaps. The specific conditions that determine these differences are a precarious legislature, a "thick" constitution that includes several social rights, and an activist judicial enforcement of these rights. This qualitative research does not allow for generalizable conclusions. However, the intention of this study is to provide insights into the role and specific challenges for a regulatory agency in developing countries. Furthermore, this case study seeks to demonstrate that regulation researchers must focus on the political context to develop tools appropriate for evaluating regulatory agencies outside the developed world. (author's abstract)

In this paper, I use a slightly modified version of the Becker–Stigler model of corrupt behavior to explain bureaucratic political involvement. Since bureaucrats prefer higher rewards and not to support losing candidates, we expect them to become politically involved near elections – when rewards are expected to be higher, and information more abundant. Taking advantage of a natural experiment, I employ differences-in-means and differences-in-differences techniques to estimate the effect of electoral proximity on the political involvement of justices of the peace in the city of Buenos Aires in 1904. I find a large, positive, and highly local effect of electoral proximity on their political involvement, with no appreciable impact in the months before or after elections. (author's abstract)

This article examines social media as a relatively new tool of electoral and political activity aimed at creating a positive image of political parties and candidates to the European Parliament. In the modern world of politics it is becoming increasingly important due to such factors as the growing number of World Wide Web users, the decline in the traditional media popularity and the rapid spread of new media, as well as the transformation of the Internet space into the platform for active political interactions. The key role in realizing the task of forming political image belongs to political institutions (parties, state bodies), politicians and social activists, as well as population representatives. The analysis of the efforts of various political subjects in the social media roughly demonstrates three functions of this new phenomenon: social media as a turnout increase tool, as a tool of increasing the recognition of candidates and parties by population; as a tool of informing the population about political and electoral processes in society. Currently, the main obstacle for the strategic research in this area is the fact that social networking technologies are rapidly developing, that embarrasses in making long-term prediction on its use. In spite of the absence of recognized criteria giving the opportunity to evaluate political activity in social media, the key efficiency criteria and success factor is so called "permanent presence" of electoral activity subjects in the Internet. (author's abstract)

This paper examines the legitimacy conditions of constitutionalism by examining one particular type of constitutional provision: provisions aimed at advancing future generations’ interests. After covering the main forms that such provisions can adopt, it first considers three legitimacy gains of constitutionalising them. It then explores two legitimacy concerns that so doing raises. Given that constitutions are difficult to amend, constitutionalisation may threaten future generations’ sovereignty. And it may also make the constitution’s content impossible to adapt to changing circumstances and interests. Finally, the paper examines the ways in which such concerns may be addressed at the adoption, formulation, and amendment stages. In particular, it discusses if the use of sunset clauses and regular constitutional conventions may, and under what conditions, successfully address such concerns., Intergenerational Justice Review, Vol 9, No 2 (2016): Constitutions as Intergenerational Contracts: Flexible or fixed?