Suchergebnisse

AbstractIncidents of state repression and criminal violence trigger disparate public responses: Some cases elicit widespread citizen solidarity with victims while others do not. What explains these different reactions? Public debates surrounding civilian victimization vary in the extent to which they present victims as deserving of help, often engaging in victim‐blaming narratives. I argue that through the use of attributional evidence, individuals primarily determine their level of support for the victims based on whether or not they are deemed deserving of assistance, instead of focusing on alternative information such as their similarity with victims' demographic characteristics or the perpetrator's identity. I test this argument using various forms of evidence, including experimental, observational survey, and qualitative data from Mexico's War on Drugs—one of the most significant contemporary human rights crises that has nonetheless triggered only sporadic solidarity. Consistent with the argument, the results show that narratives characterizing people as responsible for their misfortune reduce prosocial behavior by eroding compassion and perceptions of social norms—whether helping victims is socially acceptable. In contrast, citizens are more likely to aid victims perceived to have little control over their situation. These findings suggest that elite and media discourses crucially shape public responses to violence.

Citizens' ability to influence public decisions is the hallmark of democracy, and central to this are candidate selection mechanisms. Despite the increasing popularity of primaries across the globe, scholars disagree on how incumbency status shapes primary election contests. To address this question, I exploit an electoral reform in Argentina that forces parties and coalitions to participate in primaries, but allows these to be contested or uncontested. Employing an original data set on federal legislative nominations between 2011 and 2017, I show that internal divisions encourage contested primaries within the opposition, to which district-level rivals strategically respond in kind by fielding multiple internal lists to counter any potential electoral "bonus" others may enjoy from contesting primaries. Combined with the influence of presidents and governors over selection procedures, these patterns mean that primary races are closely fought within the opposition but are trouble-free under incumbency status.

Literature on legislative success tends to focus on independent variables of which lawmakers have scarce control. This article analyzes instead how legislators' strategies affect their success in Congress. I posit that while weak ties between congresspeople are the most useful in increasing success in the chamber of origin under majoritarian settings, they do not raise the likelihood of bill approval in the second chamber or in plurality‐led legislatures. Building on a data set that contains all bills proposed to the Argentine Congress between 1983 and 2007, results support these context‐dependence hypotheses. I then use data from the Uruguayan Congress (1995–2010) to explore how the argument plays out in a Latin American legislature with weaker gatekeeping rules (i.e., an "open sky" legislature). Findings help gain insight into the strategies used in environments different from that of the widely studied U.S. Congress.

Una de las herramientas más poderosas que tienen las elites partidarias es el control de las candidaturas para cargos ejecutivos y legislativos. Entonces, ¿por qué algunos partidos pierden ese control a través de primarias en lugar de seleccionar a sus candidatos por otros mecanismos más cerrados?

Este trabajo examina uno de los recursos institucionales de que disponen los presidentes para sostener sus coaliciones de gobierno: los gabinetes. Se sostiene que, pese a haber sido soslayadas en la literatura, las segundas líneas ministeriales son especialmente relevantes en las estrategias presidenciales ya que el botín a repartir entre los diferentes partidos es mayor al analizado hasta ahora por la ciencia política. Se desarrollan dos índices que permiten identificar el tipo de estrategia que utilizan los gobiernos de coalición para la conformación de sus gabinetes, a través de una evaluación de la interacción entre ministros y secretarios entre sí −congruencia ministerial− y entre ellos y las legislaturas −coalescencia ampliada−. Así también se propone una hipótesis para explicar las motivaciones que impulsan a los presidentes a llevar adelante un tipo de estrategia determinada en la composición de su gabinete. ; Fil: Skigin, Natán. Universidad de Buenos Aires; Argentina. Universidad Torcuato Di Tella; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina ; Fil: Seira, Iván. Universidad de Buenos Aires; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de San Martín; Argentina

Extensive research suggests that electoral competition and power alternations increase violence in weakly institutionalized democracies. Yet, little is known about how political parties affect violence and security. We theorize that the type of party strengthened in elections shapes security outcomes and argue that the rise of programmatic parties, at the expense of clientelistic parties, can significantly reduce violence. In contexts of large-scale criminal violence, programmatic parties are less likely to establish alliances with coercive actors because they possess fewer incentives and greater coordination capacity. Focusing on Brazil, we use a regression discontinuity design that leverages the as-if random assignment of election winners across three rounds of mayoral races. We find that violent crime decreased in municipalities where programmatic parties won coin-flip elections, while it increased in those where clientelistic parties triumphed. Our findings suggest that whether electoral competition increases violence depends on the type of party that wins elections.

When (and why) do legislators quit their jobs? Previous answers to this question have focused on retirements. Looking at voluntary resignations instead, in this article we argue that leaving Congress to assume an elected (executive) office or a position in the (sub)national bureaucracy may be a career‐advancing move motivated by progressive ambition. We document this claim with data from Argentina, where roughly 12% of elected deputies leave voluntarily before their term ends, but rarely become unemployed. Consistent with expectations, we show that resignations tend to follow instances of executive alternation at the (sub)national level, and are driven by legislators placed at the top of party lists as well as those elected in midterm years.

A pesar de no existir un consenso acerca de las fronteras que delimitan el concepto de coalición, la coordinación rutinizada entre actores es una noción omnipresente en los estudios politológicos. El objetivo del presente es sistematizar ideas en torno a la presencia que las coaliciones ocupan en las investigaciones en política comparada, siendo tanto objeto de estudio como elemento explicativo de otros fenómenos. ; Fil: Clerici, Paula Andrea. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad de Buenos Aires; Argentina ; Fil: Cruz, Facundo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad de Buenos Aires; Argentina ; Fil: Goyburu, Maria Lara. Universidad de Buenos Aires; Argentina ; Fil: Skigin, Natán. Universidad de Buenos Aires; Argentina ; Fil: Seira, Iván. Universidad de Buenos Aires; Argentina ; Fil: Albala, Adrián. Universidade de Sao Paulo; Brasil ; Fil: Molina, Anabella. Universidad de Buenos Aires; Argentina