Suchergebnisse

This article examines current trade patterns of the Caribbean Basin and the likely impact that changes in the international trade environment will have on them. The numerous bilateral and subregional preferential agreements that sustain the region's economy will be the framework in which Caribbean trade is examined. Also examined are the threats posed to these relationships by the implementation of free trade arrangements and the changing political alliances throughout the global community. We conclude with an evaluation of potential Caribbean responses to the challenges of the international economy of the twenty-first century.

'Life in the Political Machine' explores the political lives of everyday citizens who find themselves embedded in subnational dominant-party enclaves that lie within national-level democracies. While we know quite a bit about why such enclaves emerge and persist, we know very little about how those individuals living within them think about and engage with politics. This text offers one of the first systematic explorations of the ways in which subnational 'dominant-party enclaves' influence citizens' political attitudes and behaviours through a focus on the provinces and states of Argentina and Mexico.

Welcome to the machine -- Dominant-party citizens -- Conceptualizing and measuring dominant-party enclaves -- Tilling the soil of an uneven landscape : dirty politics in dominant-party enclaves -- The view from inside the machine : democratic attitudes in dominant-party enclaves -- Severed linkages : distorted accountability in dominant-party enclaves -- Stacking the deck : political participation in dominant-party enclaves.

Though a general consensus exists regarding the significance of perceived performance in voters' evaluations of incumbent governments, much of the research underlying this consensus has been carried out across political systems with little internal variance in the degree of democracy. We propose that in emerging regimes, where such uniformity in terms of the territorial diffusion of democracy is not a given, characteristics of subnational political regimes can prevent electoral linkages from forming. Specifically, we argue that in subnational contexts where some minimal level of political competition has taken hold, performance-based linkages such as those driving economic voting should surface. However, in subnational dominant-party systems, where clientelistic linkages between voters and political bosses tend to prevail, economic performance and other aspects of an incumbent's governance record will be less consequential for the voting calculus of citizens, in both provincial and national elections. We find support for this theoretical framework in Argentina and Mexico, two democratic countries characterized by highly uneven subnational political contexts. By highlighting how subnational regime characteristics facilitate or undermine electoral accountability mechanisms, we cast light on the very real representational consequences of uneven democratization in emerging regimes.

The confluence of Latin America's volatile economic development patterns and transition to democracy has given rise to a proliferation of work on the national-level political causes and consequences of economic shocks and recovery rates. We explore the subnational electoral determinants of crisis recovery through analysis of growth rates in Mexico's thirty-one states and Argentina's twenty-three provinces following their economic declines of 2000-2002. Consistent with a theory that views intra-national variations in democracy as critical to understanding broader development patterns, we find that subnational electoral "regimes" significantly affect provincial recovery rates. Provinces that have an established electoral legitimacy prior to the onset of an economic shock, and those in which the governor enjoyed a substantial margin of victory, had significantly stronger recovery rates than those provinces stuck in a subnational regime transition with a sitting executive who lacked any claim to an electoral mandate. [Copyright Elsevier Ltd.]

AbstractAs indigenous movements around the world seek to strengthen their collective voice in their respective political systems, efforts continue to design political institutions that offer both sufficient local autonomy and incentives to participate in the broader political system. The state of Oaxaca, Mexico, offers a test case of one such effort at indigenous-based institutional design. This article argues that such reforms often fail to confront the tension between local autonomy and citizen engagement in politics outside the borders of the community. Testing this theory through a comparative analysis of voter turnout rates in municipalities across the state of Oaxaca and the neighboring state of Guerrero, this study finds that the adoption of indigenous institutions at the local level is associated with significantly lower voter turnout rates for national elections.