Obstacles to citizen participation by direct democracy in Latin America: a comparative regional analysis of legal frameworks and evidence from the Costa Rican case

Starting from the 1980s, institutions of direct democracy were introduced into most Latin American constitutions. To date, the practical application of these institutions remains almost exclusively restricted to the subtype of government plebiscites while the use of citizen initiated instruments remains scarce. To explain the region's low frequency of use of citizen initiated instruments of direct democracy this explorative study proceeds in three sections. The first recapitulates regulatory legislation on, and practical experience with direct democracy in Latin America. The second proposes and applies an index for the comparative measurement of legal obstacles provided by institutional frameworks and goes on to discuss further explanatory propositions on factors that may interact with these legal obstacles to obstruct direct democratic citizen participation. Finally, these hypotheses are tested through an interview-based study with actors involved in the recent practical experience with direct democracy in Costa Rica. The study concludes that the institutional design of citizen initiated instruments of direct democracy alone does not suffice to explain the frequency of their practical application. Rather than this, application frequency appears to be a function of the combined interactive effects of legal institutional factors with sociological and political party factors such as strategic action preferences and party elites' attitudes.     

Going beyond the Roman dictator: a comprehensive approach to emergency rule,with evidence from Latin America

The aim of this article is to contribute to the debate on emergency rule, a practice that democratic theory has struggled to conceptualize. Accordingly, this article differs from existing approaches, which mainly focus on the constitutional design of regimes of exception and tend to identify the institution of the Roman dictator as their source. In contrast, we offer a comprehensive approach, considering other historical sources of emergency rule, going beyond the dichotomy of constitutional and de facto emergency, and focusing specifically on the types of emergency powers involved: executive, legislative and judicial. We propose a different way of conceptualizing emergency rule, following a political rather than a constitutional logic, and we illustrate this different conceptualization by offering evidence from Bolivia, Chile and Guatemala to demonstrate how this comprehensive approach works in practice.     

Institutions of Direct Democracy and Accountability in Latin America's Presidential Democracies

The crisis of representative democracy in Latin America became apparent in a wave of constitutional reforms during the 1990s. A striking feature of these reforms was the incorporation of institutions of direct democracy (IDD) into most post-transitional Latin American constitutions. Despite the shortage of efficient mechanisms of accountability and its concomitant weakening of democratic consolidation in the region, the potential of IDD to bolster accountability in the representative structures of presidential democracies has not yet received systematic scholarly attention. To fill this theoretical gap, the article presents a typology designed to assess the accountability potential of IDD, which is used to classify the constitutional provisions for direct democracy in Latin America's 18 presidential democracies. After juxtaposing the findings of constitutional analysis to the actual record of direct democracy in the region, the article concludes that there is a considerable discrepancy between constitutional accountability potential and the empirical evidence. Whereas the adoption of IDD has hardly affected the vertical dimension of accountability, the practice whereby presidents use referendums to bypass legislative opposition has worked to the detriment of the horizontal dimension of accountability.     

Presidential hegemony and democratic backsliding in Latin America, 1925–2016

ABSTRACT

Does the executive's institutional hegemony represent a risk to the survival of democracy? By hegemony, we refer to the president's ability to control other institutions, particularly the legislature and judiciary. To answer this question, we develop two indices of presidential hegemony and analyze the duration of democratic regimes in 18 Latin American countries between 1925 and 2016. The results show that executive hegemony is a major driver of democratic instability. This finding is robust to non-linear effects and to potential endogeneity in the relationship between presidential power and democratic backsliding. Our findings challenge traditional concerns about executive-legislative deadlock, and have significant implications for the nascent literature on democratic backsliding, which highlights executive aggrandizement as a risk factor.     

The rise of the penal state in Latin America

The recent work of Loïc Wacquant identified the emergence of the penal state as a core feature of the global expansion of neoliberalism and the neoliberal government urban marginality. Drawing on Wacquant’s theoretical and conceptual reflections, this article analyses the emergence of a Latin American form of penal statecraft. By taking an in-depth look at the increasing criminalization of urban marginality in contemporary Latin America as well as the related developments in the local prison system, the single most important institutional expression of the Latin American penal state, important commonalities and differences between the penal statecraft experiments throughout Latin America and the countries of the ‘developed world’ are highlighted.     

20世纪90年代以来南海争端中的美国因素

20世纪90年代中期以来,美国以保护自由通航为由逐步介入南海的争端,并将此作为实现其亚太战略的一种手段。美国的介入对中国南海主权权益的维护产生的负面影响是：危及中国战略安全利益,增加中国收回南海主权的难度,加剧了地区紧张局势。中国政府坚定地表达了维护国家领土主权的决心和意志,并采取了切实措施维护中国的领海主权;坚持“以邻为善,以邻为伴”的周边外交政策,加强与东盟的战略沟通和战略互信：有针对性地应对美国在南海地区的利益需求。     

美国人力资源战略的实施策略及对我国的启示

美国人力资源战略的成功实施使其在世界人才竞争中一直保持竞争优势,这与其选择合理的实施策略是分不开的。本文通过梳理美国国家层面人力资源战略的相关政策和措施,归纳了美国实施人力资源战略的主要策略选择,提出对我国实施人力资源战略实施的一些启示。     

美国与多边安全合作

多边安全合作今天是国际关系中使用最多的词汇之一,但概念界定不清,本文对多边安全合作概念进行了界定并将多边安全合作与多边主义和多边外交做出了区分。全文重点是美国与多边安全合作的关系。研究发现,美国在多边安全合作中的行为是互相矛盾的。其主要原因在于,在集体主义和单边主义之间美国本质上更相信单边主义。     

美国两大犯罪统计项目之比较

文章对"统一犯罪报告"项目、"全国犯罪被害调查"项目进行了比较研究,研究结果表明这两个项目既有广泛联系,又存在重大区别,是一个矛盾的统一体。只有综合地使用,才能较为全面地了解美国犯罪趋势。     

美国两次德育改革的方法论启示

20世纪初和70年代美国相继进行了两次全局性的大规模德育改革。两次改革发展的主线和焦点是直接法和间接法的争论与反复。美国德育方法改革的历史为我们探索道德教育方法提供了诸多有益的启示。