Eaton and Dickovick 2004

Eaton, Kent, and Tyler Dickovick. 2004. "The politics of re-centralization in Argentina and Brazil." Latin American Research Review 39(1): 90-122.

• about the recentlralization moves after the 1990s decentralization
• decentralization often involved giving subnational governments the power to control spending, which took a lot of power away from national-level politicians, who now want it back (91)
• this has also made it more difficult for national governments to insure macroeconomic stability (91)
• this article focuses on uncovering teh factors that influence the ways politicians pursue re-centralization, and their relative success or failure (92)
• must remember that Brazil and Argentina are still really decentralized countries, despite this article's talk of re-centralization
• four possible recentralizing factors:
• economic crisis (93)
•  division of powers between branches
• presidential partisan power
• conflict within the bureaucracy
• three measures of decentralization, changes in (94):
• revenue autonomy
• expenditure autonomy
• borrowing autonomy
• presidents have heightened their control over healthcare and schools even as they haven't rolled back rearlier decentralization measures (95)
• stylized review of de- and re-centralization in Arg (97) and Brazil (98)
• economic crises only indirectly led to recentralization, despite the fact that we would expect presidents to take more control in a hyperinlfation crisis (99)
• Arg: interestingly, de la Rua's presidency resulted in little recentralization, despite big economic crises (101)
• the crisis actualy made Peronist governors even more in need of federal transfers, adn thus unwilling to give them up with dlR needed to pay creditors instead of giving money to the provinces (101-102)
• in Brazil subnational governments had borrowed liek crazy for pork, expecting national government ot bail them out (102)
• Cardoso changed this with Real plan
• recentralization only started happening when the governors' bad habits became public, adn this issue outweighed the gains made through patronage spending
• formal/decree powers (aka presidential partisan powers) were not really used to recentralize in Argentina (105), though president's personal power gave hims some leverage (106)
• didn't help at all in Brazil, as constitution laid out most of the rules here (107)
• Menem's power and popularity in teh party gave him a lot of control over who got nominated and elected, which helped his recentralization efforts (108-109)
• but he was a lame duck after 1995, and lost a lot of this power (109)
• none of this happenened in Brazil, as there is little party discipline for Cardoso, but he did have popular support which was helpful (110)
• the cabinet and bureaucracy is important, hurt Menem in his second term (112-113), helped Cardoso throughout (113-114)
• COnclusion
• need to remember not just look at elections, but look at bureaucracis!!! (115)
• economic crisis did not drive re-centralization efforts (115)
• table of findings on page 116

McGuire 1997

McGuire, James W. 1997. Peronism without Perón: unions, parties, and democracy in Argentina. Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press.

• Chapter 1: Peronism, Party Institutionalization, and Democracy
• "Peronism is a strong collective identity, but weakly institutionalized as a political party. ... Those who have spoken for the Peronist movement, beginning with Juan Perón himself during his 1946-55 presidency, have repeatedly insisted that Peronism is a national movement committed to real democracy, not a political party preoccupied with formal democracy." (1)
• the plebiscitarian leader and the trade unions have always been the core
• "The leaders and members of a national movement, by contrast, think it desirable, and potentially feasible, to establish full ad permanent control of the polity." (4)
• and power can be won in many different ways, electorally or otherwise
• union leaders are not very devoted to the party, meaning they don't have as much at stake for the survival of democracy (5)
• suggestion that the level of party institutionalization is heavily dependent on its origins, and Peróns didn't want or need a strongly institutionalized party (14-15)
• Augusto Vandor tried to create a peronist pary not centered on Perón, but Perón allied with those marginalized by Vandor, and Perón's candidate beat vandor's in the 1966 governor election in Mendoza (18-19)
• this first cycle of routinization ailed, and the specter of Perón's growing power led to military coup (19)
• the second cycle of (attempted) institutionalization came after Luder lost the 1983 election, led by the Renovation wing, Menem had ambiguous but existent ties with the old wing, so the 2nd attempt also failed (19-22)
• this study contends Perón's and Menems unwillingness to institutionalize the party was a big cause PJ never institutionalized (22)
• union leaders were key to both party building movements and the groups that thwarted these movements (26)
• "struggles among Peronist unionists, along with the power-preservation and power-enhancement interests of Peronism's plebiscitarian leaders, have contributed to Peronism's weak party institutionalization.
• Chapter 7, the rise and fall of renovation peronism
• Alfonsin's presidency helped the isntitutionalization of the PJ, for three reasons
• the military had lost legitimacy, so there was a feeling democracy would be around a while (187)
• public opinion seemed to favor adn support political parties (instead of, say corporatism) (187-188)
• Radical Party gained some legitimacy as well, didn't look liek the party that always lost to PJ or always allowed military to take over (188)
• PJs loss in presidential election of 1983 meant the party had to build party from the legislature, not be headed by a super strong prez (188-189)
• leader of the metalworkers had been major power, leader in the party for this election, loss discredited him
• renewal faction of PJ wanted internal elections, less backroom maneuvering (190)
• in the midterm elections the UCR won 43 to 35%, with the renewal faction of the PJ winning by 2-1 margin
• the July 1984 union reform law helped to democratize unions a bit, even if peronists still maintained a lot of control in elections (192)
• with the PJ 62 unions were old school, wanted to control the party, while the "25" ceded leadership of the party to politicians, but also used more leftist talk, opposing hegemony of the US and transnational capital (192-193)
• 13 general strikes against Alfonsin 
• between 1984 and 88 there wre 2721 local strikes (199)
• general strikes may have been an effort on the part of union leaderhsip to contain, channel protests from the base (200)
• neither the 15 (conciliated with Alfonsin) nor the Ubaldinistas (current in CGT) saw the PJ as a useful vehicle for making a mark on politics and society, they wanted to get direct influence on the national executive
• the 15 tried to control the labor ministry
• Ubaldini tried to mobilize unionists with pure economic/societal power to influence the exec (205-6)
• "The "62" liked the tercio because the financial and organizationl weakness of of nonunion Peronism assured them control of nominations in the women's and men's branches of the movement as well as in the union sector." (209)
• Menem did not have the support of hte party but did have the support of the unions (210)
• when Menem won presidential primary in 1988, renovadores lost power in the PJ (211)
• Menem's style reflected Peron's a bit, willing to disregard the rules
• "Above all, Menem defended the notion that Peronism was, first and foremost, a national movement, not a party preoccupied with democracy..." (212)
• for the 15 Menem's victory gave them a chance to get power that their weakness in the CGT and the PJ had long denied them (215)
• left Ubaldini forced to pursue general strike strategy against a peronist, not a great idea
• Chapter 8 free=market reform and political shenanigins
• some peronist leaders opposed Menem's reforms, but most went along with them thansk to the many inducements involved (216), these, of course, meant declines in union membership and deterioration of finances, as well as a new limit on the right to strike
• by 1995 when the growth had slowed, many unions now wanted to oppose menem, but the reforms had already progressed far enough tht there was litlte chance of stopping them (217)
• Menem's rule by decree deinstitutionalized the PJ and, despite runnign fiar elections, did many things that udnermined democratic consolidation
• Menem's economic reforms, content and impact
• Menem's economic reforms were implemented in bad ways, especially privatization which broke most of the UN's "Seven Sins of Privatization", especially the use of discretionary/nontransparent procedures (220)
• currency overvaluation meant wages went down while productivity rose (221)
• main cost was a huge surge in unemployment (223)
• mainly caused by massive layoffs, wage cuts in public sector, capital repalcing waged laborers, and increased import competition (223)
• unions:
• employment dropped in public and private sector, so membership dropped (223-4)
• curtailed right to strike (224)
• collective bargaining was decentralized a bit (by decree, law never quite made it out of congress) (224-5)
• also a decree to reform obras sociales, though labro leaders fought off real reform (226)
• union responses
• union leaders had differing responses to these reforms, from strong opposition to cooperation with tepids of both
• actual responses simply came about because union leaders were very autonomous and just ended up responding differently to conflicting imperatives (protect union versus be loyal to PJ) (226)
• turf battles also played a role (227)
• CGT splits when menemists (allied, oddly enough, with anti-menemists) try to get Ubaldini out of Sec gen position in 1989 (228)
• surprisingly, some of the more combative "25" union leaders became menemists (230)
• when Menem went after the obras sociales, CGT reunited (though with lots of internal conflicts remaining) to fight this (231)
• and the same time the leaders of the state workers ATE and teachers CTERA broke to form the CTA
• CGT called for a General strike in in 1992, but it was weakly attended, and afterwards they adopted a conciliatory tone, whcih didn't win them much (231-232), CTA was combative of all Menem's reforms (232)
• when Menem went after obras sociales in 1993/4 CGT called for a general strike, but called it off after neogtiations were started
• MTA, within CGT, was more combative and untied with CTA for some general strikes and protests against obras changes in 1994 (233)
• CGT acquiesced to Menem because reforms were pretty good, in some instances, for the economy (234-5)
• also menem was head of PJ, adn workers supported the PJ (235)
• hyperinflation had been rough, so fixing it made workers OK with other things (236-237)
• also, privatizations were new opportunities for unions to make money (237)
• suggests decline in normal strike activity was because telephone workers lost a showdown strike (a la PATCO), and economic growth then made future strikes less likely (240-241)
• The Deinstitutionalization of the PJ


• Menem bypassed the party in filling government posts and picking candidates for office, increased isolation of party leadership from government and party members (241)
• internal elections continued, but above meant that party was more deinstitutionalized that insti'ized
• during Alfonsin, everyone had to try and gain power through teh legislaturem, but with Menem everyone could skip legislature adn go straight to the top (241-242)
• Menem imposed lots of extraparty candidates (243)
• "menem thus desintitutionalized the PJ in part by ignoring and then capturing and subordinating a party leadership whose ties to party members, union chiefs, and provincial presidents were in any case tenuous at best." (248)
•  Menem and democratic institutions
• "Some conditions became more propitious for the development of a principles commitment to democracy during Menem's first term in office. Menem presided over six years of electoral activity, proposed or backed legal and constitutional reforms that increased the resilience, fairness, and relevance of certain democratic arenas and procedures, and reduced the level of overt military contestation.
• Against these credits, however, one must weigh Menem's manipulation of electoral rules, bypassing of congress with executive decrees, stacking of the supreme court, tolerance for administrative corruption, lackadaisical respo0nse to physical attacks on journalists critical of the government, and pardons of military officers convicted of human rights violations." (252)
• On the one hand, Menem's policies may grow the national pie, making it easier to settle claims for distribution (260)
• on teh other hand, the party is now less able to actually channel distributive claims, meaning the outcome could still be conflict of distributional issues (261)
• Chapter 9: conclusion
•  weak party institutionalization encouraged union leaders to express their demands through strikes and protests, not the party or elections (262)
• also meant unions weren't devoted to democratic institutions, meaning they didn't necessarily always oppose military dictatorship
• the party became dispensable in union leaders' eyes
• the argument of this book is that, like the rural elites who controlled votes of peasants, the working class leaders could mobilize enough votes to dominate politics, and thus was uninterested in creating strong political democracy (263)
• union power and democratic consolidation are not necessarily at odds, but strong unions can increase distributive conflict and wield a stronger ability to sway political system, meaning democratic consolidation can come down to the level that union leaders want democratic consolidation (266)
• at times union power can have ambiguous results for the poor, who may bear the costs of the creation of a privilege working class
• 1980s union density data (268)
• the strong labor movement from 1955-1983, coupled with weak parties, meant that the labor unions contributed to a strong distributional conflict without any institutional ways to channel it, which created instability (270-271)
• why is it a problem that democracy is not institutionalized? it makes crises and nondemocratic responses to these crises more likely (281)
• 
  

Risley 2011

Risley A. 2011. "The power of persuasion: Issue framing and advocacy in Argentina". Journal of Latin American Studies. 43 (4): 663-691.

·         Analyzing strategies of NGOs that found it necessary and desirable to work with the political class post-2001

o   Two issues: children’s rights and greater transparency in government institutions (664)

o   Non-profit, public interest NGOs and community organizations

·         Argument: by devising effective framing strategies, civil society actors increase their chances of participating in the agenda-setting, formulation, and adoption phases of policy-making

o   Using motivational framing

o   But frames must also incorporate positive of constructive measures

o   In a place where CSOs aren’t normally consulted by the government, activists do not merely respond to existing political opportunities but endeavor to CREATE opportunities for participation (665)

·         It is clear that activists mobilize ideas as well as resources (667)

o   The strategic use of ideas can make up for lack of resources

·         The power of ideas

o   Diagnostic framing: problematizes issue (668)

o   Prognostic framing: suggests solutions

o   Motivational framing: provides rationale for collective action

§  For the last, the motivation must work for both the public AND elites

§  But all three are necessary

o   Policy-friendly frames have THREE MORE characteristics:

§  Contain a positive/constructive message (669)

§  Downplay blame

§  Propose feasible solutions

·         This is only influence over het policy-making process, not over outcomes (671)

·         Two cases:

o   FOI legislation, which CSOs were influential in creating through 2003, but had stalled by 2006 despite continued clamoring by CSOs (672)

o   Child welfare legislation, in which CSOs had only gotten middling levels of policy influence through 2004, but the law went through in 2005 (policy influence ramped up in 2004-2005)

o   Argument: differing levels of involvement was partly the result of different framing

·         FOI

o   Lots of CSOs that had been working on this since the 1990s

o   Did conferences to garner public support and attempted to gain elite support (675)

o   Instead of echoing “que se vayan todos”, they tried to give political elites a chance to do FOI to improve their own image (676)

§  Reforms specifically did not revolve around culpability

o   The legislation as a whole conveyed a sense of hope and institutional building/improving even as much of the rest of the country was angry and disgusted at politics

o   ME: So it seems like these guys did a pretty good job of framing the issue in a way to get everyone on board

·         Advocating for Children

o   CSOs had strong credentials as watchdogs for justice (680)

o   Very successful educating the public on children’s issues (681)

§  Great at motivational framing, but these advocates did not have great diagnostic or prognostic framing (682)

§  Constantly talked about how bad everything was (683)

§  Linked neoliberalism to child poverty

§  Entire system painted as “bad”, bleak (684)

·         Frame of criminalization of poverty emphasized system’s failure

o   Frame suggested only a fundamental change in social and economic model would fix the problem (685)

o   Frame antagonized executive branch and the family courts

§  The extent to which the frame threatens elites has an effect on whether it is implement…child legislation should seem obvious, but frames did not allow elites options for workable solutions (686)

o   BUT all of this changed in 2004-5, when activists latched on to a “modernization” frame, whereby child-poverty legislation was seen as part of modernizing project

·         What changed? Why do we get child legislation and not FOI?

o   Everyone else in the region (not Chile or Mex) had adopted childrens’ rights legislation, Argentina wanted to catch up (687)

§  Took out reproductive rights, which make the legislation more palatable

o   Kirchner did FOI decree for executive branch agencies in 2003, which took off some of the pressure (687)

§  FOI is example that doing everything right does not = policy success (688)

§  But a few years later the momentum picked up again, FOI passed lower house in 2010, stalled in upper house in 2011 (unsure of result due to publishing)

·         Conclusion:

o   Key aspect of CSO advocacy is circulation of people between CSOs and state (689)

Helmke and Levitsky 2006

 Introduction, Helmke and Levitsky, 1-30

editors Helmke, Gretchen, and Steven Levitsky 2006. Informal institutions and democracy: lessons from Latin America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

• lots of literature, the "unrule of law" scholars, question the extent to which focus on "parchment" rules of law actually misses important on-the ground realities (1)
• "informal rules shape how democratic institutions work" (2)
• some informal rules compete with and subverts democracy (dedazo in Mexico), others can complement and help sustain them (Chilean Concertacion) (3)
• informal institutions definition: socially shared rules, usually unwritten, that are created, communicated, and enforced outside officially sanctioned channels (5)
• they must be enfored in some fashion (5)
• four distinctions: informal institutions should be distinguished from (6)
• weak institutions
• other informal behavioral irregularities: a patterned behavior must be accompanied by a rule and social sanction (if not done) for it to be an informal institution
• informal organizations (7): separate rules from players
• culture. these are not culture, though it can at times be hard to tell them apart
• why informal rules matter: (8) (can be good and/or bad)
• Political representation can be affected in both directions
• programmatic links can be broken
• sometimes looks like the tradeoff in clientelism
• democratic accountability (9):
• vertical accountability (citizens can punish officials), and
• horizontal (officials are responsible to other agencies, officials)
• informal rules can provide more accountability, but it might not provide the right type of public accountability (10-11)
• democratic governance
• informal rules of accommodation, power-sharing, and coalition building can prevent intractability problems (11)
• at times these may improve governance and stability, but not democracy
• citizenship and the rule of law
• brown areas = places where citizens do not actually possess the rights they should, especially indigenous (12)
• informal institutions can both violate and advance citizenship rights in areas not fully controlled by the state
• typology (13)
• two dimensions:
• degree of convergence between informal and formal institutions
• effectiveness of relevant formal institutions
• page 14:

	Effective formal institutions	Ineffective formal institutions
Convergent	Complementary	Substitutive
Divergent	Accommodating	Competing

• some final points on this typology
• Substitutive may be able to achieve things that formal rule fail to (17)
• same informal rules may be in different box depending on the formal institutions discussed
• the relationship between formal/informal institutions is dynamic, both can cause decay and/or institutionalization of the other, can cause stability or instability in formal rules

Peruzzotti 2005

"Demanding Accountable Government: Citizens, Politicians, and the Perils of Representative Democracy in Argentina" Enrique Peruzzotti, p.229-249

in Levitsky, Steven, and Maria Victoria Murillo. 2005. Argentine democracy: the politics of institutional weakness. University Park, Pa: Pennsylvania State University Press.

• Introduction
• in the past 20 years a more sophisticated and demanding citizenry has emerged, demanding representation and accountability from Argentine politicians (229-230)
• and important actor was the rise of the human rights movement in response to the dictatorship (230)
• Menem's disregard of demands for greater accountability also spured the citizenry
• Redefinition of Representation
• Argentine citizenry switched from  "authorization" view of representation, which is connected to populism, to demanding accountability of representatives as in liberal democracy (Pitkin 1972) (231)
• populist leaders were given authorization to act in the interests of the people
• now citizens demand politicians be directly accountable
• this pivoted thanks in part to the emergence of the human rights movement in the 1980s and their demands against the military (231-232)
• there is no longer a direct relationship between constituents and representatives...this relationship is mediated by institutions (233)
• this is a change driven by leveling off of high expectations for politicians and a new trust in institutions
• The partial dissolution of captive electorates has led to more fluid and unpredictable electoral behavior (235)
• footnote: the PJ has been able to keep hold of its lower class constituents through clientelism
• The Politics of Social Accountability
• three main actors
• NGOs and advocacy organizations (236-237)
• Social movements (237)
• watchdog journalism (237-238)
• threefold contribution
• signalling to population, "what's happening, why its bad" (238-239)
• social initiatives can activate a network of horizontal agencies of accountability, gets a movement going (239-240)
• establishment of permanent watchdog groups/agencies (240)
• 2001 buildup and Accountability politics
• Alianza promised to renew ties, not be corrupt (241)
• then the Senate scandal (241-242)
•  the scandal cast doubts n the electoral arena as a place where accountability could be found (243)
• the bribes went to the very heart of the state's electoral institutions
• Alianza was slow to respond, and had a tepid response
• this led to electoral protest/null ballots in 2001 (244-245)...
• ...and mobilizations against leaders, que se vayan todos, (245-246)
• and local, representative, unofficial neighborhood "governments" called asambleas sprung up (246-248)
• these eventually ran out of steam in 2002 and most were gone by 2003 (248)
• Conclusion
• shared concern of the quality of democratic institutions connects the politics of social accountability, the cacerolazos (pot banging protests), and the asambleas (249)
• importantly, though, these mobilizations were triggered by the spread of frustration that the government wasn't listening/wasn't accountable

Levitsky and Murillo 2005b

"Building Castles in the Sand? The Politics of Institutional Weakness in Argentina" Levitsky and Murillo, 21-44

in Levitsky, Steven, and Maria Victoria Murillo. 2005. Argentine democracy: the politics of institutional weakness. University Park, Pa: Pennsylvania State University Press.

•  Central argument OF THE BOOK: the major cause of Argentina's under-performance was persistent and widespread institutional instability (21)
• The Origins of Institutional Instability
• between 1955 and 1972 Argentina politics were deadlocked (24)
• one the one hand, allowing Peronist party to compete in elections woul certainly result in Personit victory, which was unacceptable to many elites
• yet, on the other hand, keeping the Peronists out of elections was a major destabilizing influence
• eventually military leadership had to allow Peron back into power (25), then another military regime
• The brutality and dramatic failure of the military regime discredited the military in the eyes of the public (26)
• gave rise to broad public support for liberal democracy (Catterberg 1990
• and gave rise to a powerful human rights movement
• change in office between Alfonsín and Menem was first time democratic change of hands, but even then Alfonsín resigned early because of economic crisis, and there was a lot of institutional fluidity
• Argentina under Menem
• Menem abandoned traditional Peronism, set off on neoliberalism (27)
• among the fully democratic countries, Argentina carried out the most rapid and far-reaching reforms
• among the countries with the deepest crisis and radical reform, Argentina was the most democratic
• BUT many of the policy arrangements made by Menem proved to be economically unsustainable
• AND Menem did little to strengthen political institutions, and in same cases he weakened them
• The Politics of Radical Economic Reform: Why Menem was successful
• Menem's ability to end hyperinflation increased public support for him/his policies (28)
• The strength of the PJ helped Menem keep a solid electoral base
• the PJ's hegemony in the popular sectors limited possibility of anti-reofrm appeals (29)
• PJ's close ties to organized labor gave union leaders a stake in limiting opposition from working class
• Menem gave side payments and policy concessions to losers (30)
• unions protected pro-labor law
• industrialists were giving help in competing for privatization contracts
• governors wooed by putting off provincial budgetary adjustments
• Encroachment on legistlative and judicial perogatives
• lots of executive decrees
• court-packing and impeachments
• PROBLEMATIC LEGACIES (31)
• convertability left governmetn without tools to rspond to economic shocks or erosion of competitiveness
• public debt grew a lot
• reforms generated large-scale social exclusion (and middle class shrunk
• Democratic Institutions under Menem
• Menem frequently circumvented legistlaive process using decrees (32-33)
• M allowed little judicial independence (33)
• executive accountability decreased, allowing corruption to increase
• widespread perception of corruption and abuse eroded the credibility of Argentina's representative institutions (35)
• Party system and Political representation in the 1990s
• Alianza able to win on anti-corruption ticket (37)
• mostly because middle and upper-middle classed had little faith in credibility of government
• The Post-Menem Era
• Alianza failed to clean up politics (37)
• actually got caught up in its own curruption scandal, which it didn't handle very well (37-38)
• Alianza did poorly in economic arena
• inherited a recession *38)
• convertibility left them without policy tools, and convertibility was too popular to be touched
• in 1999 legislative vote 22% cast spoiled/blank votes
• three Presidents in 2 weeks
• third was Duhalde, who ended convertibility (39)
• economic plunged into chaos
• poliitcal system and parties pushed into crisis as well
• FREPASO and UCR disintegrated (40)
• 2003 elections:
• military made no move to intervene
• despite anger, no anti-establishment outsider received more than 2% of the vote (41)
• PJ finished 1-2-3 in presidential vote, all other partis wiped out
• PJ proved remarkably resilient
• Kirchner 1
• concentrated power in the executive (43)
• but his initiatives were more transparent and oriented toward institutional integrity
• rst of the story yet to be seen (chapter form 2005)....

Wibbels and Roberts 2010

Wibbels, Erik, and Kenneth Roberts. 2010. "The Politics of Economic Crisis in Latin America". Studies in Comparative International Development. 45 (4): 383-409.

• Introduction
• Most quantitative models show that strong unions and powerful left parties are associated with severe economic crises (383)
• BUT some evidence that the combination of left parties and strong unions can actually alleviate inflationary crises
• crisis differ in depth, duration, and frequency (384)
• but crises also need to be analytically separated from neoliberal economic reforms (previous scholarship tends to conflate these things)
• authors examine three types of crises (385)
• inflationary
• growth
• fiscal
• Political conditions tested:
• are new democracies more vulnerable to crises?
• what effects do sub-regime variables have, including executive powers, party systems, and electoral competition?
• how organized/powerful is labor and the left?
• Early reporting of results:
• different types of crises are independent and have distinct political correlates
• neither powerful executives nor high levels of democracy are correlated with crisis events or duration
• strength of electoral left and labor are correlated to more frequent crises...
• BUT left in power + strong unions can facilitate early exits from crises
• Methodological considerations
• drawbacks to current literature
• economic crises are often conflated with economic performance (386)
• crises differ in depth and duration
• any attempt to relate crises to political factors needs to include factors that explain variation in severity and duration
• Crises vary in type
• are some type of governments more prone to certain types of crises?
• finally, really need to disentangle crises from neoliberal turn (387)
• explanation of their variables (387-388)
• The Political Determinants of Economic Crisis
• most of these hypotheses built off existing literature
• regime level of analysis:
• literature supports two hypotheses regard new democracies, combined to form this one hypothesis: (388-389)
• H1: Economic crises will be more severe and prolonged in new democracies (389)
• sub-regime level
• party system fragmentation is an impediment to economic efficiency (Haggard and Kaufman 1995; Mainwaring 1999) -- mans executive can easily get legislative majority and push reforms/policies
• BUT also: fragmented party systems could make it less likely the executive will have legislative majority, and just add more veto players (Tsebelis 1995) -- meaning parties will have short-time horizons and not want to enact unfavorable policies
• but more veot players may result in gridlock, a sort of backdoor to stability, which will improve investors' outlook
• H2: the severity and duration of crises will have a U-shaped relationship with the number of effective political parties (390)
• close electoral compeititon could result in both parties uniting behind reforms, realizing that their future ability to govern may be constrained iuf current crisis isn't dealt with
• H3: economic crises will be more severe and prolonged in less competitive electoral environments
• presidents with a ton of power can push reforms
• H3: economic crises will be longer and more severe when the chief executive is weaker (391)
• Labor and the Left (392)
• H5a: economic crises will be longer and more severe when labor mobilizing or populist parties are strong
• H5b: economic crises will be longer and more severe when organized labor movements are strong
• H5c: economic crises will be longer and more severe when combined strength of left and labor is high
• Finally, politics should have the greatest impact on financial crises, less impact on inflationary crises, and the least impact on growth crises (393)
• Research Design
• crises are measured as deviations from the regional mean performance for the entire period under study (394)
• 13% of country-years experienced GDP crises
• 11% of country-years experienced inflationary crises
• 11% of country-years experienced fiscal crises
• the correlations between these crises are quite low
• countries predisposed to one type of crisis are not necessarily predisposed to another (395)
• on average, GDP crises (1.5 years) are shorter than fiscal crises (3.4 year) which are shorter than inflationary crises (5 years)
• also, depth and duration are distinct
• Results and Discussion
• "politics play a much stronger role in producing crises than they do in year-to-year performance" (397)
• more significant effect on the probability of inflationary and fiscal crises than growth crises
• Strongest indicators: labor and the Left
• strong left significantly increases probability of inflationary crises (397)
• strong unions significantly increases probability of inflationary crises , even more than left parties(398)
• BUT!!!!  electoral strength of the left increases probability of inflationary crises ONLY WHEN UNIONS ARE WEAK (398-399)
• strong left and labor unions allows governments to negotiate pacts between labor and capital on wages, investment, and employments that can temper redistributive demands (399)
• Other important indicators
• new regimes are more likely to have inflationary and/or fiscal crises (400)
• political competition was not significant
• increasing the power to the chief executive increases the probability of a fiscal crisis (emphasis in original)
• party system fragmentation is weird...has an inverted u-shaped relationship with inflationary and fiscal crises (401)
• could be that fragemented party systems block adjustment, but do block risky policies that could result in crisis
• My take: that sounds unlikely...fitting the theory to the data, not finding an explanation
• global economic conditions are not associated with inflation or fiscal crises
• Outside of the variables on the left and labor unions, no other variable is consistent across all the models (401)
• Duration of crisis
• political variables provide less insight into this (402)
• left will increase inflationary crisis length when labor is weak (402-403)
• left + labor = shorter inflationary crises (by about 3 months) (403)
• crises are shorter as party system fractionalization increases (404) -- ?????
• Conclusions
• the most important factor seems to be the nature of party-society linkages (405)
• countries with conservative parties and weak labor unions were less susceptible to crises in general

Muirillo, Oliveros, and Vaishnav 2010

Murillo, Maria Victoria, Virginia Oliveros, and Milan Vaishnav. 2010. "Electoral Revolution or Democratic Alternation?" Latin American Research Review. 45 (3): 87-114. 

• Introduction
• Argument: Left wave is actually just the normalization of democratic politics (87)
• electoral accountability is still the primary mechanism of controlling the executive in the region's democracies (88)
• democratic elections have allowed voters to punish bad performers
• thus the rise of the Left is a result of retrospective voting
• they use Levitsky and Roberts' definition of the left, which is based on overarching redistributive goals irrespective of the strategies pursued to achieve those goals (89)
• Arnold and Samuels (2011...in Levitsky and Roberts) note that the Left turn has not been accompanied by citizens' self-placement on ideological scales (though some authors disagree...)
• other surveys agree, as does authors data, which shows leftward shift in votes, but not a giant shift (89-90)
• thus the authors test to see if voting is related to right-leaning candidates poor performance in the economic arena during the 1990s (90)
• Explaining the rise of the Left
• their take is that the sudden "backlash" and rise of the Left is actually due to the institutionalization of democracy and electoral accountability, not a radical swing to the Left (93)
• My take: so it's not a Marxist revolution, but why does that mean it's not a backlash? or even a radical backlash?!
• Democracy
• Hypothesis 1: failure of prior economic policies and poor economic growth will increase the share of Left voting ONLY WHEN there is a right wing candidate to blame (94)
• dependent on the extent of democratic experience in each country (95)
• Socioeconomic factors
• Inequality hypotheses (2 and 3)
• greater inequality = more left votes (95), OR
• U shaped curve (Debs and Helmke 2008):  same as above, but at some high point of inequality rich people start bribing poor to maintain current inequality (95-96)
• Left as a refuge from the economic insecurity of being in the global market, hypothesis 4 (96)
• Crisis of Political representation
• left-wing outsiders will benefit when crisis of representation comes under right wing leader (97)
• Empirical Model (97-100) 
•  Results
• high inflation under right-wing leader greatly increases likelihood of left-win (100)
• but reaction AGAINST left-wing governments in same situation is slightly stronger (101)
• but right wing governments are not necessarily rewarded for achieving growth (100-101)
• no support for income inequality arguments (101)
• no support for left-votes because of representation crisis under right government (103)
• weak/inconsistent support for globalization argument
• Conclusion
• inflation may be more visible than growth to everyday people, meaning voters may decide their vote on the former but not on the latter (106)
• strong effect of inflation and non-result by other hypotheses shows electoral accountability on economic issues is mostly at work in rise of Left

Kurtz 2004

Kurtz, Marcus J. 2004. "The Dilemmas of Democracy in the Open Economy: Lessons from Latin America". World Politics. 56 (2): 262-302.

• Introduction
• destabilizing political conflict is no longer the biggest threat to democracy because, paradoxically, it is less likely to emerge out of the current social makeup, because mobilization is less likely (263)
• Rather, the greater threat to democracy in the democratic, neoliberal era is the underarticulation of societal interests, atomization of the polity, which undermine the effectiveness of formal democracy
• this is because neoliberalism causes this atomization (263-264)
• neoliberalism had all sorts of downsides, which should have evoked political and societal mobilization, but these mobilizations didn’t occur (264)
• this is largely a function of the new relationship between the state and market, namely that the state can’t/won’t touch the market
• both liberal and statist patterns of organization have their own specific threats, neither is a panacea (265)
• statist patterns result in polarization and state control
• neoliberal patterns result in lack of participation in politics
• The Theory: Democracy in the Open and the Closed Economy
• statist system (267)
• elites control resources
• autonomy of citizens is threatened, clientelism can take root
• interest groups provide info to politicians, but also inform citizens about actions of politicians...check and balance
• BUT some interest groups may have more power than others (268), which will likely lead to rent-seeking (270)
• VIRTUE: it can encourage aggregation and blancing of societal interests (270)
• neoliberal model
• collective action problems decrease interest group formation (268)
• also, there are few associations to articulate groups interests, nor to keep polity informed of politicians actions (268-269)
• leads to a gradual decline in citizens ability to act politically (269)
• interest groups are more autonomous from government (271)
• BUT government has withdrawn from economy, so there so no obvious target for unhappiness when economy is bad (272)
• political decisions seem less materially consequential for citizens (273), so why bother voting/mobilizing?
• TWO EXAMPLES:
• labor law is weakened, making collective labor action harder
• modernization of agriculture weakens communal ties, creates collective action problems (273)
• Exploring the theory in Mexico and Chile (274-280)
• quick case studies of Mexico and Chile
• focuses on diminished labor movement and privatization/marketization of previously communal agricultural lands
• My Take: WEAKNESS:
• this account argues that neoliberalism weakened labor and peasants, reduced their ability to mobilize
• It is assumed that labor and peasants would be able to mobilize as context democratizes
• BUT, problems:
• organizations were already crushed during neoliberal era, can’t expect them to just bounce back in democracy
• limited protest during transitions in Mexico and Chile could have easily also been the result of authoritarian/repressive contexts
• Inequality, Poverty, and Economic Reform in Latin America
• Two ways economic reform could mitigate mobilization against itself (280)
• fix social problems
• create collective action problems (it did this one)
• my take: why is economic reform an actor here?
• up to 1997, economic liberalization has not solved social and economic conditions for most people (281)
• little improvement in standards of living (282)
• minimum wage has collapsed (284)
• inequality has increased (283-285)
• Despite fears of most scholars, economic reform was not met with protest, but actually hollowed out much of the capacity for protest, which is a danger to democracy (286-287)
• labor mobilization down through 1995ish (287-292)
• still no account for labor’s general weakening, need time to bounce back?
• Political protest
• economic liberalization associated with a DECREASED amount of political protest (294-297)
• Voting also decreases, even when including the massively voted-in founding elections (297-299)
• Conclusions
• leaders in neolib, democratic states should focus on promoting organization & participation, not limiting mobilizational & political challenges (302)

Levitsky and Way 2002

Levitsky, Steven, and Lucan Way. 2002. "The Rise of Competitive Authoritarianism". Journal of Democracy. 13 (2): 51-65.

• During 1990s, many countries combined democratic rules with authoritarian governance (51)
• Analyses frequently treated hybrid regimes as in the middle of transitioning, when in fact many of them had stopped and were stable in the nexus between authoritarianism and democracy (51-52)
• “In competitive authoritarian regimes, formal democratic institutions are widely viewed as the principal means of obtaining and exercising political authority.” (52)
• “Incumbents violate those rules so often and to such an extent, however, that the regime fails to meet conventional minimum standards for democracy.”
• Modern democratic regimes meet four criteria (53)
• executives and legislatures are chosen through open, free, fair elections
• virtually all adults are allowed to vote
• political rights and civil liberties are protected
• elected authorities possess the rel authority to govern, are not puppets of the military, Church, etc
• in competitive authoritarianism these rules are violated enough to make the playing field biased in favor of incumbents
• more likely to use bribery, cooptation, and subtle forms of persecution
• even though democratic institutions may be flawed, incumbents have to take them seriously (54)
• Four arenas of democratic contestation: elections, legislature, judiciary, the media
• electoral process is usually bitterly fought (55)
• could be characterized by large abuses of power, biased media coverage
• BUT ELECTIONS MUST HAPPEN
• and they are generally free of massive fraud
• incumbents may attempt to, or successfully manipulate election results, this can also result in regime-ending scandal
• legislature tends to be relatively weak, but can be focal points for opposition activity (55-56)
• circumventing or shutting down the legislature can be s=costly to a regime (56)
• legislature can allow opposition groups to meet, join up, oppose regime in concertation
• judicial arena
• regimes can attempt to control judiciary through impeachments, etc.
• but judicial independence will allow some maverick judges an opening
• courts can protect media and opposition figures from state persecution (57)
• the media
• journalists often emerge as important opposition leaders, despite being threatened and/or attacked by regime
• independent media can be a watchdog
• executives in competitive authoritarian regimes often seek to suppress independent media through subtle mechanisms, like selective allocation of state advertising, bribery, and manipulation of taxes (58)
• but any attempt to repress media can be costly
• constant tension: repression could be costly, but incumbents can lose power if challenges go undealt with (59)
• SUCCESSION IS NOT DEMOCRATIZATION
• removal of a regime creates opportunity for democratization, but can also allow others to simply step in and take over authoritarian system
• Linkages to the west seem to make retrenchment of authoritarian retrenchment difficult (6)
• MY CRITIQUE: includes Mexico as an example of democratization, so not a fine-grained look at which countries actually have really democratized
• Paths to competitive authoritarianism
• decay of an authoritarian regime
• collapse of authoritarian regime, but weak civil society cannot get to full democratization
• decay of democracy (61)
• longstanding crises create situation that allow for executive to take control, but not entirely sweep away old system
• Since fall of USSR, however, there is now little legitimacy for authoritarian regimes...peripheral states expected to adopt democratic institutions in order to keep up good relationship with funding governments in the West (61-62)
• MY CRITIQUE: Terrorism and security precautions now becoming the new, hip excuse for US to support authoritarian regimes