Crime,Irregular Warfare,and Institutional Failure in Latin America: Guatemala as a Case Study

This article examines the current crisis in Guatemala as a case study in the phenomenon of “criminal insurgency” in Latin America. Since the close of Guatemala's civil war in 1996, crime—especially violent crime—has increased dramatically, to the point that drug traffickers, organized crime syndicates, and youth gangs are effectively waging a form of irregular warfare against the state. The police, the judiciary, and entire local and departmental governments are rife with criminal infiltrators; murder statistics have surpassed civil-war levels in recent years; criminal operatives assassinate government officials and troublesome members of the political class; and chunks of territory are now effectively under the control of criminal groups. All this has led to growing civic disillusion and eroded the authority and legitimacy of the government. Rampant crime is causing a crisis of the democratic state.     

Corruption in the Courts: the Achilles' heel of Nigeria's regulatory framework?

Abstract

The exponential growth in the size of the private security sector (PSS) in Africa has helped give the issue of its regulation new importance. Yet the ongoing debates over what laws should be passed and by whom tend to ignore the more basic and arguably urgent question of whether African states' justice systems are sufficiently robust to give this legislation meaning. The aim of this paper is to cast some much needed light on this topic by drawing lessons from Nigeria's current experiences. By tracing the development of its PSS code and examining instances of malpractice in its justice system, the article argues that its regulatory framework is fundamentally compromised by corruption.     

Do Perceptions of Ballot Secrecy Influence Turnout? Results from a Field Experiment

Although the secret ballot has been secured as a legal matter in the United States, formal secrecy protections are not equivalent to convincing citizens that they may vote privately and without fear of reprisal. We present survey evidence that those who have not previously voted are particularly likely to voice doubts about the secrecy of the voting process. We then report results from a field experiment where we mailed information about protections of ballot secrecy to registered voters prior to the 2010 general election. Consistent with our survey data, we find that these letters increased turnout for registered citizens without records of previous turnout, but they did not appear to influence the behavior of citizens who had previously voted. The increase in turnout of more than three percentage points (20%) for those without previous records of voting is notably larger than the effect of a standard get‐out‐the‐vote mailing for this group. Overall, these results suggest that although the secret ballot is a long‐standing institution in the United States, beliefs about this institution may not match the legal reality.     

The ‘private plot’ in Soviet agriculture

The paper examines the main components of Mexican agrarian populism, and the attractions of the populist position in the light of the current crisis within the Mexican agricultural sector. It is suggested that the ‘campesinistas’ (agrarian populists) have incorporated various aspects of marxist analysis, but have nevertheless emphasised ways in which their approach pans company with that of most marxists in Latin America. According to writers like Gustavo Esteva, perhaps the leading ‘campesinista’, the peasant economy in the process of developing can co‐exist with capitalism for a protracted period, and considerable doubt exists as to whether the peasant economy is ‘ultimately’ inconsistent with capitalist development. The agrarian populists look to the peasantry in Mexico as a vehicle for rural development, believing that a better understanding of the internal logic of peasant production might facilitate an alternative series of policy measures. The weaknesses of the ‘campesinista’ position are explored, and doubts expressed about the viability of the populist stance as long as Mexico has the option of importing basic foodcrops.     

A two-step approach to assessing composition effects of the National Voter Registration Act

Using aggregate level data from 1996 and 1998 this paper employs a two-step strategy to explore the impact of implementing the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) on the education, income, age, and racial/ethnic composition of state electorates. The results of the project suggest that implementation of the reform had a moderate effect on reducing the tendency of state registered electorates to be skewed toward higher education, income, and age groups. The implementation of NVRA procedures was also associated with reductions in the tendency of the voting electorate to be skewed toward higher socioeconomic groups and older Americans. The impact was indirect, however, in that changes in the voting electorate were a result of changes in the registered population, which were, in part, due to the implementation of the reform.