Suchergebnisse

AbstractLeftist governments with strong links to organized labor are expected to increase the number of people protected by job security rules. But do they? I explore whether the Left in power at the local level in Brazil cracks down on enterprises that employ noncontract, informal‐sector workers, and implements policies aimed at reducing the size of the informal sector. With a close‐election regression‐discontinuity design, I show that mayors from the Workers' Party (PT) in fact slow down enforcement and improve conditions in the informal sector, rather than encouraging a shift to formal jobs. This reflects a challenge that leftist parties face across the world: how to simultaneously improve the employment prospects and conditions of workers in precarious employment and those in full‐time jobs in the context of increased global competition, segmented labor markets and, in Latin America, truncated welfare states.

El trabajo analiza el proceso político mediante el cual la presidencia de Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007) cambió la debilidad electoral y fragmentación partidaria por una fuerte concentración del poder en el presidente. Para ello, en primer lugar, se revisan los debates académicos sobre los rasgos de los presidencialismos latinoamericanos. Luego, el trabajo analiza el poder del presidente argentino y las características del liderazgo presidencial y se enfoca en las estrategias que llevó adelante en relación con su propio partido para la conformación de una mayoría legislativa disciplinada. Dos son las conclusiones que pueden extraerse de este proceso: en primer lugar, si bien las crisis políticas y económicas pueden traer consigo cambios importantes sobre la dinámica de funcionamiento del sistema político, en detrimento del poder presidencial, estas nuevas condiciones son abandonadas rápidamente una vez que las condiciones económicas y políticas mejoran. En segundo lugar, la fortaleza de los presidentes argentinos es fruto del ejercicio de las funciones presidenciales, antes que de una construcción partidaria previa. ; This article analyzes the political process by which president Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007) overcame an initial context of electoral weakness and partisan fragmentation concentrating the political power on the presidential figure. With this purpose, first this article summarizes the academic debate around Latin American presidentialism. Then it analyzes the power of the president, the presidential leadership and the specific strategies that president Kirchner applied to interact with his own party with the objective of building a supportive legislative majority. From this process the article infers two conclusions: first, even if economic and political crises can introduce important changes over the functioning dynamics of the presidential systems by ameliorating the president's prominent position, these new conditions can be rapidly abandoned when economic and political conditions improve. Second, the strength of the Argentine presidents depends mainly on the exercise of the presidential functions, rather than on a previous partisan construction.

RESUMEN: El trabajo analiza el proceso político mediante el cual la presidencia de Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007) cambió la debilidad electoral y fragmentación partidaria por una fuerte concentración del poder en el presidente. Para ello, en primer lugar, se revisan los debates académicos sobre los rasgos de los presidencialismos latinoamericanos. Luego, el trabajo analiza el poder del presidente argentino y las características del liderazgo presidencial y se enfoca en las estrategias que llevó adelante en relación con su propio partido para la conformación de una mayoría legislativa disciplinada. Dos son las conclusiones que pueden extraerse de este proceso: en primer lugar, si bien las crisis políticas y económicas pueden traer consigo cambios importantes sobre la dinámica de funcionamiento del sistema político, en detrimento del poder presidencial, estas nuevas condiciones son abandonadas rápidamente una vez que las condiciones económicas y políticas mejoran. En segundo lugar, la fortaleza de los presidentes argentinos es fruto del ejercicio de las funciones presidenciales, antes que de una construcción partidaria previa. ABSTRACT: This article analyzes the political process by which president Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007) overcame an initial context of electoral weakness and partisan fragmentation concentrating the political power on the presidential figure. With this purpose, first this article summarizes the academic debate around Latin American presidentialism. Then it analyzes the power of the president, the presidential leadership and the specific strategies that president Kirchner applied to interact with his own party with the objective of building a supportive legislative majority. From this process the article infers two conclusions: first, even if economic and political crises can introduce important changes over the functioning dynamics of the presidential systems by ameliorating the president's prominent position, these new conditions can be rapidly abandoned when economic and political conditions improve. Second, the strength of the Argentine presidents depends mainly on the exercise of the presidential functions, rather than on a previous partisan construction.

Abstract
Courts prosecuting corruption serve a critical horizontal accountability function, but they can also play a role in moments of vertical accountability when voters can sanction corrupt candidates. This article documents the strategic use of corruption lawsuits, demonstrating the presence of an electoral cycle in filing new corruption accusations against politicians. Using an original dataset of daily corruption complaints filed in federal courts against members of Argentina's main political coalitions between 2013 and 2021, we document increased corruption accusations against and by politicians in the periods immediately preceding an election. A second dataset of daily media coverage of corruption accusations in two leading newspapers suggests that corruption is more salient before elections, offering politicians a temporal focal point to prepare and launch especially impactful lawsuits. Our findings shed new light on using courts for accountability and debates about the so-called 'lawfare' in Latin America.

Contrary to the established belief that low agricultural prices fuel peasant rebellion, our study investigates the surge in peasant unrest during a period of high agricultural prices. The transition to capital-intensive agriculture, characterized by reduced labor demand and heightened entry barriers, prompts landowners to expand into the agricultural frontier during periods of price increases. In these frontier regions, the soils, while comparatively less suitable, become economically viable for commercial agriculture when crop prices are high. This scenario sets the stage for heightened collective resistance, particularly where organizational capacities and subsistence communities provide peasants with symbolic and material resources to resist land encroachment. We provide evidence of this argument by using unique municipal-level data from Paraguay between 2000 and 2014, a period of rising yet fluctuating prices. Our study shows how the interplay between technological advancements in agriculture and global market forces reshape the geography of peasant rebellion.