Suchergebnisse

Un argumento central en la teoría de la democracia es que esta induce a los gobiernos a ser responsables frente a las preferencias de los ciudadanos. Los partidos políticos organizan la política en cada democracia moderna, y algunos observadores sostienen que son los partidos los que inducen a las democracias a ser responsables. Sin embargo, para otros, los partidos dan voz a las posturas extremas y reducen la responsabilidad de los gobiernos para con la ciudadanía. El debate sobre los partidos y la democracia asume una importancia renovada en la medida que nuevas democracias en todo el mundo enfrentan problemas de representación y gobernabilidad. En este ensayo trato de mostrar que nuestra visión del impacto de los partidos sobre la responsabilidad democrática depende de lo que los partidos sean - sus objetivos y su organización. Repaso teorías en pugna de los partidos políticos, bosquejo sus implicaciones contrastables empíricamente y destaco los hallazgos empíricos que pueden ayudar a elegir entre estas teorías. También reveo los debates sobre los orígenes de los partidos, sobre los determinantes del tamaño de los sistemas de partidos y sus características, y sobre la competencia de partidos.

Political machines (or clientelist parties) mobilize electoral support by trading particularistic benefits to voters in exchange for their votes. But if the secret ballot hides voters' actions from the machine, voters are able to renege, accepting benefits and then voting as they choose. To explain how machine politics works, I observe that machines use their deep insertion into voters' social networks to try to circumvent the secret ballot and infer individuals' votes. When parties influence how people vote by threatening to punish them for voting for another party, I call thisaccountability. I analyze the strategic interaction between machines and voters as an iterated prisoners' dilemma game with one-sided uncertainty. The game generates hypotheses about the impact of the machine's capacity to monitor voters, and of voters' incomes and ideological stances, on the effectiveness of machine politics. I test these hypotheses with data from Argentina.

Argues that lack of response to the popular mandate by the political parties reveals a conflict between the elite and the masses with respect to public policy; Latin America.

Contrasts the policy positions of the 1990 electoral campaign with early policies of the government elected; examines different explanations for the policy switch and whether it was responsive or unresponsive to popular demand.

The broadly held view that promarket reforms are good for most people is in conflict with the equally broadly held view that, in democracies, reforms will generate widespread resistance. Resistance is expected because reforms typically produce economic downturns, at least over the short term. Under normal circumstances, we expect citizens to withdraw support from governments during periods of economic decline. If citizens withdraw support, then governments, worried about the next election, may abandon reforms. But our expectations should be different of new democracies pursuing promarket reforms. Citizens may believe governments when they claim that things have to get worse before they get better or that economic stagnation is the fault of the past model. Research in Poland, Peru, and Mexico, reported in this special issue, supports these expectations. Hence under democracy there is more scope for support of painful reforms than frequently acknowledged.

Even if they are confident that prosperity lies just over the horizon, politicians who embark on promarket reforms know they are in for some stormy weather. How will they fare in voters' eyes once the pain is felt? Will voters inevitably turn against politicians who impose painful measures without an electoral mandate to do so? The story of economic reform and public opinion in Peru under Alberto Fujimori (1990-1995) poses just these questions. The author uses monthly public opinion polls and monthly economic data to analyze the impact of economic changes during Fujimori's reform program on opinions of the reforms and the president. The author finds that Limeños withdrew support from the program and the president when employment fell and inflation rose, responses consistent with the findings of the economic voting literature. But when real wages fell, they became optimistic about the future and more likely to support reforms and the government.