Suchergebnisse

"This book provides an overview of elections throughout Latin America, including formal electoral institutions, informal practices, and the behavior of voters and candidates. Drawing on a wide range of scholarly and primary sources, the book provides readers with a highly accessible look at how elections in Latin America work"--

This article contributes to the scholarship on Latin American campaigning by presenting data on the use of social media by presidential candidates in Guatemala's 2019 election, including a content analysis of more than 2,000 Facebook posts along fifteen variables. The data show that Facebook use by presidential campaigns is ubiquitous and allows campaigns to disseminate messages in non-traditional formats. Candidates use their Facebook accounts to mention issues of concern to voters and to make promises to fix the country's problems, but offer far more slogans and vague promises than detailed policy proposals. They also rarely attack other candidates or tout their own qualifications for the presidency. The data also reveal systematic differences in campaign messaging between frontrunner and long-shot candidates.(JPLA/GIGA)

ABSTRACTThis article describes a simulation designed to teach students about the interests and interactions involved in the international political economy of development. The design and implementation of the simulation are discussed and sample simulation instructions for students are included.

Countries holding competitive elections vary in the extent to which the administrative practices surrounding the voting process facilitate or impede voter participation. Differences in the requirements for voter registration, the distances voters must travel to reach a polling place, the mechanics of casting a ballot, and the provision of voter education, among other factors, pose varying obstacles to participation. This variation poses a puzzle that this dissertation addresses: Why do some democracies adopt election administration practices that lower barriers to voter participation, while others adopt practices that raise prohibitive obstacles to the participation of at least some citizens? More simply, why is it easier to vote in some democracies than in others? This dissertation develops the concept of election administration inclusiveness, consisting of numerous administrative and procedural factors that affect voter access to the ballot. To develop a theory of why election administration inclusiveness varies across countries and over time, the project undertakes an in-depth comparison of three country cases: Guatemala, Nicaragua, and El Salvador. The case studies document and explain the origins of striking differences in election administration inclusiveness across the three countries in their early years of democratic transition, as well as variation in inclusiveness within each case over time. The case studies draw on elite interviews and archival research carried out by the author in each country. The study identifies a number of factors that influence the choice of election administration practices that bear on voter access to the ballot box. Of particular significance are historical legacies of election fraud, patterns of partisan identification among voters, the composition of electoral commissions that conduct elections, and international political pressures.

AbstractUnlike indigenous social movements in several other Latin American countries, Mayan movements in Guatemala have not formed a viable indigenous-based political party. Despite the prominence of the Mayan social movement and a relatively open institutional environment conducive to party formation, indigenous groups have foregone a national political party in favor of a more dispersed pattern of political mobilization at the local level. This article argues that the availability of avenues for political representation at the municipal level, through both traditional political parties and civic committees, and the effects of political repression and violence have reinforced the fragmentation and localism of indigenous social movements in Guatemala and prevented the emergence of a viable Mayan political party. The result has been a pattern of uneven political representation, with indigenous Guatemalans gaining representation in local government while national political institutions remain exclusionary.

Do campaigns message to voters consistently across different media? And do competing candidates tend to converge over time on a single national style of campaign messaging? To address these questions, this article employs novel data from a content analysis of campaign spots and candidate tweets from the 2015 and 2019 presidential elections in Argentina. We find that the policy orientation of candidate messaging is similar across different media, with spots and tweets addressing specific issues in similar proportions. We also find that, consistent with the theory of success contagion, campaign messaging across candidates and election cycles varies along a wide range of variables as candidates have failed to converge on a similar campaigning style. Contrary to expectations drawn from prior research, we find that candidate tweets contain policy content and attacks on opponents just as often as do campaign spots.

This volume adopts a comparative politics model in order to analyze and evaluate pressing issues in Guatemala, including a floundering economy, backsliding in the military's civilianization, retreats in state power and peacemaking commitments, autocratization, and the repression of social movements.