Statecraft, Social Policy, and Governance in Latin America

This article develops an analytical framework designed to examine social policy as a strategic approach to issues of state-society relations and the problem of governance in Latin America. It argues that in Latin America and particularly Brazil social protection policy flowed from initiating capacity concentrated originally in the state, and specifically in a techno-bureaucratic elite connected to a strong executive. The policy, however, produced structures wherein initiative capacity was dispersed into a multiple of intermediate points at the nexus between the state and civil society. This in turn led to an immobilized dissipation of initiative cizpacity in this specific policy area which was symptomatic of, and reinforcing to, a generalized immobilism or power implosion that periodically has gripped these sociopolitical formations, producing shifts from formally democratic to authoritarian regimes and vice versa.     

Social Security privatization in Latin America

The new, partially privatized social security system adopted by Chile in 1981 has attracted attention in many parts of the world. Since then, a number of Latin American countries have implemented the Chilean model, with some variations: either with a single- or multi-tier system, or with a period of transition to take care of those in the labor force at the time of the change. The single-tier version consists of a privatized program with individual accounts in pension fund management companies. Multi-tier systems have a privatized component and retain some form of public program. This article describes each of the new programs in Latin America, their background, and similarities and differences among them. Much more information is available for Chile than for the other countries (in part because Chile has the oldest system), enough to be able to evaluate what, in most cases, is the most accurate information. That is often not the case for the other countries, especially when dealing with subjects such as transition costs and net rates of return (rates of return minus administrative fees). No country has copied the Chilean system exactly. Bolivia, El Salvador, and Mexico have closed their public systems and set up mandatory individual accounts. Argentina has a mixed public/private system with three tiers. In Colombia and Peru, workers have a choice between the public and private programs. Uruguay created a two-tier mixed system. Costa Rica has a voluntary program for individual accounts as a supplement to the pay-as-you-go program and has just passed a law setting up mandatory accounts containing employer contributions for severance pay. All of the countries continue to face unresolved issues, including: High rates of noncompliance--the percentage of enrollees who do not actively and regularly contribute to their accounts--which could lead to low benefits and greater costs to the governments that offer a guaranteed minimum benefit; Proportionately lower benefits for women and lower earners than for men and higher earners; A minimum required rate of return among the pension fund management companies (in most of these countries) that has resulted in similarity among the companies and the consequent lack of meaningful choice; and High administrative fees in most of these countries, which reduce the individual's effective rate of return. To what extent these issues can be mitigated or resolved in the future is not yet clear. In general, a definitive assessment of the Chilean model and its Latin American variations will not be possible until a cohort of retirees has spent most of its career under the new system.     

Jurisdiction Size,Political Participation,and the Allocation of Resources

This paper analyzes the effect of population size on politicalparticipation and allocative efficiency. Increasing populationis generally found to reduce political participation. However,since participation is not evenly spread throughout thepopulation, this will have consequences for allocation.Namely, we argue that increasing population size shifts powerto the rich. We discuss the consequences for the optimal sizeof jurisdictions, the size of government, and the measurementof publicness.     

The Effects of Capital Mobility, Trade Openness, and Democracy on Social Spending in Latin America, 1980–1999

Empirical studies measuring the impact of globalization on social spending have appeared recently in leading journals. This study seeks to improve upon previous work by (1) employing a more sophisticated and comprehensive measure of financial openness; (2) using a more accurate measure of trade openness based on purchasing power parities; and (3) relying on social spending data that are more complete than those used by previous studies on Latin America. Our estimates suggest that several empirical patterns reported in previous work deserve a second look. We find that trade openness has a positive association with education and social security expenditures, that financial openness does not constrain government outlays for social programs, and that democracy has a strong positive association with social spending, particularly on items that bolster human capital formation.     

Japanese Network Capital: The Impact of Social Networks on Japanese Political Participation

Recent scholarship shows that social capital has a large influence on political behavior. Social capital’s definition includes trust, norms of reciprocity, and social networks. Most studies, however, ignore the networking component. Here, we test the influence of social networks on political participation using new Japanese survey data. We separately test the effects of involvement in formally organized voluntary associations and informal social networks. We also examine whether hierarchical networks have a different impact on participation than equal relationships. To determine if networks with bridging or bonding social capital affect participation differently, we also measure the openness to outsiders of these networks. Negative binomial regression models indicate a strong positive relationship between formal and informal social networking—including network hierarchy and some forms of openness—and political participation.     

Linking Social Capital to Political Participation: Voluntary Associations and Networks of Recruitment in Sweden1

That organizational involvement has a positive impact on political action is a well‐established finding in empirical research around the world. To account for this, theorists since Tocqueville have pointed to the returns in human capital, in particular ‘civic skills’, yielded by associations. This article, by contrast, is a study of whether social capital theory can help explain the same effect. According to the logic of ‘weak ties’, organizational involvement provides bridging social capital by connecting the individual to a wider range of people. As a result, the input of requests for participation increases and this ultimately leads to more activity. Unspecified in this argument, however, is what aspect of associational memberships is most conducive to such weak ties: the sheer number of memberships, or the extent to which one's memberships provide links to people of dissimilar social origin. In an unprecedented empirical test based on survey data from Sweden in 1997, it is shown that being connected to multiple voluntary associations is what matters for political activity, not the extent to which one's memberships cut across social cleavages. Moreover, the social capital mechanism of recruitment is more important in explaining this effect than the human capital mechanism of civic skills, since the former can account for why even passive members, not just organizational activists, may become more prone to take political action.     

Intellectuals, Political Culture and the Roots of the Authoritarian Presidency in Latin America

Curiously, few studies of the Latin American chief executive lend shape to the corpus of scholarly journals. What does exist concerning the presidency in Latin America consists largely of chapters in country studies covering formal-legal aspects of presidential power. Missing are examinations of the philosophical, intellectual, cultural and historical bases of presidential power. The paucity of research concerning the executive as it relates to the intellectual history and cultural milieu of Latin America is more confounding when it is readily apparent that Latin American pensadores have thought and written extensively about the presidency. Intellectual elites have played a major role as the vanguard of political and social movements in Latin America. This survey explicates and analyzes the intellectual and cultural roots of presidential power in Latin America in order to understand the institution's authoritarian propensities.     

Political Support: Social Capital, Civil Society and Political and Economic Performance

This article assesses two main theories of the decline of political support that is found in many western democracies. The first is society centred and built on the concepts of social capital, trust and civil society. The second is politics centred and focuses on the performance of government and the economy. The two theories are not necessarily incompatible, but they are usually treated in a mutually exclusive way. In this article they are tested against a combination of aggregate cross-national comparative data and detailed case studies of four countries that have suffered exceptional decline of political support for politicians, political institutions and the systems of government. The puzzle is that cross-national comparative evidence about a large and diverse number of nations supports social capital theory, whereas in-depth study of four countries that have experienced substantial decline of political support does not. The erosion of support coincides in all four with poor economic and/or political performance. A way of reconciling the two theories and their supporting evidence is suggested, arguing that while social capital is a necessary foundation for democratic support, it is not a sufficient cause.     

村民自治:中国农民政治参与与基层政治稳定

一、问题的提出村民自治是改革开放以来中国社会结构转型过程中的一种制度创新 ,是中国农村基层经济、政治体制变革的逻辑产物。中共十一届三中全会后 ,中国基层原有的以高度集权为特征的人民公社体制逐渐解体 ,旧有的基层社会的控制机制失效 ,基层政治权力几近于一种真空状态 ,乡村社会的治安、公益事业、公共服务等无人问津。时代的发展召唤着一种新的乡村社会控制机制。村民自治正是在这一深刻的社会政治背景下出现的。在其初始阶段 ,村民自治仅仅以村民委员会的换届选举为主要内容 ,其后经过十多年发展 ,村民代表会议制度、村务公开制度…     

Social Development and Political Participation: Class, Organizations and Sex

The relationship between social development and political participation has been described by Nie, Powell, and Prewitt in terms of two major contentions: (1) social development leads to increases in both the relative size of the middle class and the scope of the organizational infrastructure; (2) both factors lead in turn to higher rates of political participation, but the one - socioeconomic status - is mediated by civic attitudes, while the other - organizational involvement - is not. In trying to assess these contentions in relation to Norway, the present study arrives at several interesting, but disparate, conclusions: (a) existing findings with relevance for the problem (Martinussen's Distant Democracy ) are open to reinterpretation; (b) in a highly developed corporate-pluralist state such as Norway, organizational involvement must be distinguished as to its dependent-variable and independent-variable characteristics; (c) occupational status must be problematized as a sexist indicator; (d) class characteristics are not important determinants of participation in Norway, but sex is; (e) in relation to involvement in the electoral channel, civic attitudes do not mediate class position as much as they mediate sex; and (f) in relation to involvement in the corporate (interest-group) channel, neither sex nor class are significantly mediated by attitudes. Finally, it is pointed out that the relevance of these findings for the Nie-Powell-Prewitt position is uncertain, due to the problematic operationalization of both sex and organizational involvement in the original study*.     

War, Rivalry, and State Building in Latin America

Scholars of Latin America have recently begun to apply the bellicist approach to state building to the region, the central claim of which is that wars are a great stimulus to centralizing state power and building institutional capacity. This article argues that current applications of these models of state building are too narrowly specified to be of much use in Latin America or elsewhere in the developing world. Replacing the focus on interstate war with the more general phenomenon of interstate rivalry, alongside the consideration of intrastate rivals, allows us to account for the impact of both external and internal forces on the development of the state. I demonstrate the utility of this approach through several cross-sectional time-series analyses that provide evidence that external and internal rivals affect the Latin American state in a manner consistent with the general nature of bellicist theory.     

Participation and Social Capital Formation: Norway in a Comparative Perspective1

Voluntary associations are often ascribed a fundamental role in the formation of social capital. However, scholars disagree on the extent to which face‐to‐face contact, i.e. active participation, is necessary to create this resource. The impact of participation in associations on social capital is examined using three dimensions: intensity (active vs. passive participation), scope (many vs. few affiliations) and type (non‐political vs. political purpose). While those affiliated display higher levels of social capital than outsiders, the difference between active and passive members is absent or negligible. The only cumulative effect of participation occurs when the member belongs to several associations simultaneously, preferably ones with different purposes.     

Development Context and the Political Behavior of Remittance Recipients in Latin America and the Caribbean

Political Behavior - Remittances have become a chief source of family income in developing countries. As such, these revenue streams have the potential to impact recipients’ political...     

Social Capital and Political Trust in Finland: An Individual-level Assessment

Political trust has in previous studies mainly been associated, either positively or negatively with a set of political variables, such as subjective knowledge of and interest in political issues, political efficacy, national pride, post-materialist values and corruption permissiveness. More recently, it has been debated whether or not indicators of social capital also have an impact on political trust. It has been argued that social capital helps to sustain civic virtues and that lack of it will create democratic problems like political dissatisfaction and declining political participation. While trends in social capital seem stable and high at the aggregate level in Finland, the level of political trust has varied to a much larger degree. In this article, indicators of social capital, political variables and social background variables are set against the Finns' trust in politicians and the parliament as well as their satisfaction with democracy. The analysis shows that social capital, as defined by a set of variables comprised of interpersonal trust and voluntary organisational activism, does not, en bloc, prove to be a powerful predictor of political trust. However, when the social capital items are examined as single factors, interpersonal trust seems to have strong impact on all levels of political trust, while the influence of voluntary organisational activity is less evident.     

Conversation,Disagreement and Political Participation

One of the more striking findings in recent work on political discussion among citizens has been that exposure to disagreement in discussion networks demobilises people, making political participation less likely. This runs counter to the expectations of theories of social capital and deliberative democracy, and also to the finding that exposure to cross-cutting views leads to greater tolerance of the opinions of others. This result is of great significance if it proves to be a general finding, holding in a variety of contexts and for a range of forms of political activism. This paper therefore provides a test, analysing a wide range of forms of political activism. The results suggest that it is premature to blame disagreement for demobilisation: in some circumstances, and for some forms of activism, exposure to countervailing views may actually motivate participation.