During the last quarter of the twentieth century, Latin America was at the forefront of the capitalist world-economy’s shift toward greater liberalization of trade and capital. By 2009, critics of this neoliberal variant of globalization governed much of Latin America. The rise of these leftists is all the more surprising given that the region’s left was largely reduced to guerilla insurgencies during the grim 1970s, when U.S.-allied authoritarian regimes reigned over much of the region. Popular interpretations of the left’s recent rise often echo Polanyi’s view that market societies have the unintended consequence of eliciting a societal backlash (or a double movement) against the harsher social effects of markets. Although Rosario Queirolo does not explicitly engage Polanyi, she joins leading political scientists in rejecting such an interpretation. Instead, she argues that Latin Americans sought to elect ‘‘untainted parties,’’ regardless of how anti-neoliberal they were. While Queirolo submits the anti-neoliberal backlash thesis to both an individual and an aggregate-level test, her dismissal of the antineoliberal backlash interpretation is not likely to be the last word on the issue. Queirolo does find that more aggressive reformers were not more likely to produce stronger support for the left, at least not during the 1985–1999 period covered by her aggregatelevel analyses. But then, as she herself acknowledges, ‘‘individuals do not always behave by taking into account objective conditions’’ (p. 148), and therefore we would not necessarily expect them to calibrate their responses to the objective intensity of reforms. To her credit, she complements her aggregate study of electoral outcomes with an intensive analysis of left vote intention in three cases (Brazil, Uruguay, and Mexico). She looks at left voting in each of the twelve presidential elections that occurred between 1984 and 2004 across these three countries. She then uses a most different systems comparative logic to identify the commonalities across these institutionally distinct societies. But she is able to assess the direct effect of perceptions of market reforms in five of these elections in only two countries. Moreover, while most of her measures of policy orientation fail to indicate a left vote preference effect, including in some elections where the left won (such as Brazil’s in 2002), she also finds they were significant in two of these five elections. Queirolo reveals an overlooked condition conducive to electoral gains for leftist parties: unemployment. In doing so, she rightly acknowledges that her findings show the indirect effect of neoliberal reforms, given the overwhelming evidence that neoliberalism increased unemployment. Nevertheless Queirolo labors to reframe this finding as support for the argument that leftist supporters were ‘‘outcome oriented’’ despite the fact that neither economic growth nor inflation, in fact, affected the left’s degree of electoral power in her analysis. Queirolo accumulates impressive evidence that Latin Americans sought ‘‘untainted parties’’ when they elected leftists, but she is less clear on why untainted parties of the left, as opposed to the right, so often prevailed. She supports her contention that voters sought merely economic improvements with evidence that those concerned with their own or their nation’s economic circumstances were indeed more likely to favor the left. This was true across eight of the ten elections for which she could directly assess such claims. She bolsters this in the final chapter with evidence that most of the recent left presidents were untainted by an association with a party which had previously governed. But her analysis of Mexico introduces another factor that seems to diminish the left’s chances: the availability of untainted parties to the right. In Mexico, the left lost presidencies despite having a strong untainted party, because they could not, in her view, persuade the electorate that they were more competent than right-wing parties. This would suggest that the left won elsewhere because they did not face 694 Reviews

The Success of the Left in Latin America: Untainted Parties, Market Reforms, and Voting Behavior

After the Flood: Disasters, Ideological Voting and Electoral Choices in Chile

What explains political polarization across developing democracies? In contrast to extant studies, this article develops a novel argument that links electoral (in)stability at the party system level with varying levels of polarization. Specifically, we claim that increasing levels of electoral volatility generate high levels of uncertainty among partisan elites, which respond by setting clear policy positions that are frequently far away from the center in the ideological spectrum. As such, higher levels of volatility engender higher levels of polarization. Further, because the majority of party system change in developing democracies comes mainly from the emergence of new parties, we decompose the effects of stable party system volatility (for established parties) and replacement party system volatility (for newly competing parties) and hypothesize that higher levels of replacement volatility—as opposed to stable volatility—generate higher levels of polarization. Our main theoretical claims find strong qualitative and quantitative support.

Electoral volatility and political polarization in developing democracies: Evidence from Latin America, 1993–2016

/pdf/volatilidad-electoral-y-alternancia-politica-a-nivel-2abqdr2hlj.pdf

Volatilidad electoral y alternancia política a nivel subnacional en Uruguay, 2000-2015

Objetivo/contexto: este articulo estima el efecto de la diferenciacion ideologica sobre el nivel de coordinacion electoral en elecciones presidenciales en America Latina. La fragmentacion de los si...

Diferenciación ideológica y coordinación estratégica en elecciones presidenciales en América Latina

ABSTRACT Since 2005, the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) has become a predominant party in the Bolivian party system. Despite its origin as a small, indigenous, and peasant-based party, the MAS has achieved an electoral performance unprecedented in Bolivian political history. What accounts for its electoral rise? Unlike available explanations based on sociostructural, institutional, or contextual factors, this article argues that ideological location decisions served as a signaling device that allowed the MAS to differentiate itself from its competitors. In so doing, the party managed to transcend the border of ethnic and regional cleavages, appealing to a broader electorate, which contributed decisively to its electoral success. Using data from public opinion surveys and based on statistical models, this article shows that ideology was pivotal in Bolivians’ decisions to vote for the MAS, particularly during the early period of its electoral takeoff.

Ideological Vote and Electoral Performance of the Bolivian MAS, 2002–2014

The number of candidates competing in elections may have significant political consequences. In Latin America, presidential contests in many countries yield a large number of candidates, which contradicts theoretical expectations based on the fact that this is effectively a single-member competition. I provide an explanation based on coordination cost incurred by candidatess in unstable and low-programmatic electoral markets. Given this cost, we should expect entry decisions to exceed the theoretical upper limit. At the empirical level, the explanation is tested using statistical models of presidential election data in 18 Latin American countries between 1993 and 2010. I find evidence in support of the hypothesis that unstable and low-programmatic electoral markets are associated with a larger than expected number of presidential candidates.

/pdf/el-costo-de-coordinar-numero-de-candidatos-presidenciales-en-39323dq63z.pdf

El costo de coordinar: número de candidatos presidenciales en américa latina 1993-2010

/pdf/el-costo-de-coordinar-numero-de-candidatos-presidenciales-en-1av73vn1av.pdf

El costo de coordinar: número de candidatos presidenciales en américa latina

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