The Imprisonment Crisis in America: Introduction

This article provides an overview of recent trends in imprisonment rates in America and introduces the articles in this issue of The Review of Policy Research. Incarceration rates have increased by more than 500 percent since the early 1970s and have now reached a rate of almost 700, higher than anywhere else in the world. The impact has been particularly hard on racial minorities, especially women (whose incarceration rate went from around 8 in 1975 to 59 in 2001). The “war on drugs” has been one of the main reasons behind the increases in imprisonment, along with the more general “get tough on crime” movement that began in the late 1970s. The articles in this issue center around how this recent trend in incarceration impacts the entire society, but especially poor communities. Several of the articles focus on race, age and gender as important variables, in addition to the tendency of the parole system to sort of “recycle” released prisoners back into the prison system.     

The Origins of Institutional Crises in Latin America

Institutional instability and interbranch crises pose a fundamental challenge to democracies in Latin America and the developing world more generally. Combining a standard game theoretic model of crisis bargaining with a unique dataset on courts, executives, and legislatures for 18 Latin American countries between 1985 and 2008, the article develops a strategic account of how interbranch crises emerge and evolve. In addition to providing the first systematic picture of the frequency, type, and location of interbranch crises for the region, the article demonstrates that the decision to initiate an interbranch crisis is influenced by the allocation of institutional powers, public support for the targeted branch, and the expectations of success based on recent experiences. Building on these results, the article identifies several novel directions for future research on institutional instability.     

The politics of vice-presidential selection in Latin America

It has become common for presidential candidates in Latin America to pick running-mates from outside of their own political parties in the form of political independents or politicians from other parties. As witnessed in several recent cases, this has added a new dynamic to Latin American presidentialism, not least in situations of political crisis. Drawing on a new database, the present paper enquires into the factors that may lead prospective presidents to select such “external vice-presidents”. The findings show that the logics behind selecting either a politician from another party or a political independent as running-mate differ. While the size of the presidential candidate's own party explains the decision to select vice-presidential candidate from another party, the choice of an independent is determined by the fragmentation of the party system. Furthermore, there is evidence that previous experiences of vicepresidential succession makes the selection of an independent running-mate more likely, possibly as a attempt to guard against challenges to the future presidency. Generally, presidential hopefuls tend to pick external running-mates who lack a strong political following, which also indicates that electoral logic is often mitigated by concern for the stability of the eventual presidency.     

Introduction: The State of State Employment

Public sector industrial relations is a somewhat neglected field of investigation. The relative neglect by industrial relations scholars is surprising given that public sector employees in Australia are much more likely to be unionised and work within larger organisations with formalised industrial. Moreover, it has been within public sector environments where the efficacy of public policy directions in industrial relations have been tested. Public sector environments are more likely to be characterised by structured bargaining and policy testing than much of the private sector. One of the purposes of this symposium, then, is to remedy this relative neglect of public sector industrial relations.     

The demographic consequences of austerity in Latin America: methodological aspects

This work reviews evidence in the literature of possible demographic effects of the austerity programs imposed on Latin American countries in the 1980s. The work focuses on methodological problems involved in assessing demographic changes and ascertaining that they were indeed attributable to the economic crisis. An introductory section describes the recession of the 1980s in Latin America, the declines in employment and living standards, and the health and social consequences of the deepening poverty. But the author argues that evaluation of health conditions, levels of nutrition, and especially factors such as infant mortality, fertility, marriage patterns, and migration as indicators of the impact of the economic depression is full of pitfalls that are not always obvious. Few Latin American countries have civil registration systems capable of providing accurate and up-to-date mortality and fertility data. Indirect methods currently in use were intended to analyze longterm levels and trends and are of little use for short-term fluctuations. Data on internal migration are scarce even in developed countries. Even when recent data are available it is often difficult or impossible to obtain data for comparison. Infant mortality and malnutrition levels, for example, are serious problems in many parts of Latin America, but series of data capable of demonstrating that they are truly consequences of the economic crisis are lacking. Another challenge is to separate the demographic effects of the debt crisis from longterm structural processes. The possibility of time lags and of different time frames may increase confusion. Almost a year must pass before effects on birth rates can be expected, for example. Neutralizing mechanisms may obscure the effects sought. Thus, the most impoverished urban sectors may return to the countryside to seek refuge in subsistence agriculture; their departure would in some measure diminish the consequences of recession in the urban economy. The type of cross-sectional analysis of differential fertility and mortality that is currently stressed in demographic studies is of limited utility for understanding the demographic impact of economic oscillations, for which a longitudinal approach is required. The next section of the article compares evidence of the effects of the recession of the 1980s with the Great Depression of the 1930s and with historical crises, suggesting that contemporary economic recessions have little in common in terms of causes or demographic consequences with historic crises. Specific studies and available data are then examined in the areas of fertility and mortality, longterm consequences of the economic recession, and migration.     

Economic Voting in Latin America: Rules and Responsibility

The impact of institutions on the economic vote stands as a well‐established proposition for the advanced democracies of Europe. We know less, however, regarding the institutional effects on the economic vote in the developing democracies of Latin America. Carrying out an analysis of presidential elections in 18 Latin American countries, we offer evidence that the usual Eurocentric conceptualization of the clarity of responsibility is not ideal for understanding the economic vote in this region. There does exist a powerful effect of institutions on the economic vote within Latin American democracies, but one uniquely associated with its presidential regimes and dynamic party systems. Rules for these elections—such as concurrence, term limits, and second‐round voting—suggest that we should reconceptualize the notion of the clarity of responsibility in Latin America, focusing more on individuals in power and their constraints, and less on the political parties from which they hail.     

The Bush Administration Record in Latin America: Sins of Omission and Commission

The conventional wisdom among analysts and scholars is that at least since September 11, 2001, the United States has tended to neglect its relations with Latin America. As a result of that inattention, other countries from outside the region have been able to make inroads, and there has generally been a regional drift in the direction of election and policy outcomes that do not favor US interests. While this article assumes that conventional understanding of the outcomes in the region, the central argument here is that it is not neglect (or “sins of omission”) that best explains those developments. Rather, it is the actual US policies that have been pursued (“sins of commission”), as well as the effective strategies pursued by Latin American leaders and organizations, which are largely responsible for the situation that confronts President Obama in Latin America. The article focuses on Venezuela, Cuba, and Bolivia, the three countries that have sometimes been described as the Latin American “axis of evil.”     

Professionalised Campaigning in Latin America

Abstract

This paper analyses the process of democratisation within Latin American by focusing on the nature of election campaigning in the region. Particular attention is paid to developments in three former military dictatorships, which now regularly hold elections. The states are Argentina, Chile and Uruguay, and consideration is given to the insights and limitations of applying the “Americanisation” or modernisation thesis in studying their distinctive media and political cultures. The elections held in each state during 1999 are used as case studies. What emerges is a complex pattern in which candidates and parties have simultaneously adopted some of the professional forms of electioneering whilst retaining and valuing the more traditional and interpersonal electioneering techniques. Furthermore, it was pointed out that there were marked differences in politicians' approaches to campaigning both between as well as within the three different political systems.     

Niche parties in Latin America

Niche parties, which have been defined as focusing on a narrow range of issues their competitors neglect, are a phenomenon that has so far been described and analysed primarily in Western Europe. In this paper, we extend existing work by examining the presence and nature of niche parties in Latin America. Using the expert survey data collected by [Wiesehomeier, N., and K. Benoit. 2009. “President, Parties, and Policy Competition.” The Journal of Politics 71: 1435–1447], we show that there are niche parties in most Latin American party systems. Two kinds of niche party, traditionalist and postmaterialist, predominate. We also show that niche parties, despite being defined based on issue-based characteristics, are in fact less programmatic in their linkage strategies than mainstream competitors. Instead, niche parties are slightly more likely to draw on charismatic strategies and tend to establish strong organizational links to ethnic and religious organizations. Niche parties in Latin America are primarily vehicles for the mobilization of group interests. These findings have implications for our understanding of political representation in new democracies and niche party strategies more generally.     

Tax morale in Latin America

In the tax compliance literature, there is a lack of empirical evidence on the degree of tax morale in developing countries. As a novelty, this paper focuses thus on Latin America, analysing tax morale as a dependent variable and searching for factors that systematically affect tax morale, working with the two data sets Latinobarómetro and World Values Survey. Our findings indicate that there is a significant correlation between tax morale and the size of shadow economy. Furthermore, people who said they knew/have heard about practised tax avoidance have a significantly lower tax morale than others. Looking at individuals’ perception of reasons for tax evasion we found that the tax burden, lacking honesty, and corruption are seen as the main factors. We observed a significantly lower tax morale in South America/ Mexico than in the Central American/Caribbean area. Furthermore, trust in the president and the officials, the belief that other individuals obey the law and a pro democratic attitude have a significant positive effect on tax morale.     

Latin America: Popular Movements in Neoliberal Modernity

The aims of this article are first to examine some common characteristics of Latin American social movements in general and the influence on them of the systemic parameters in the era of neoliberal modernity and, second, to discuss five major Latin American movements in particular, in order to draw some conclusions on the way out of the present multi-dimensional crisis.