The administration of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso enacted measures to constrain subnational politicians in a newly democratized and highly decentralized federal system. Lacking sufficient accountability at the subnational level, the central government attempted to increase its control of educational funding and minimize local discretion over educational spending. These reforms constrained the distribution of intergovernmental transfers, but entrusted the disbursement of educational spending to local oversight. This article argues that while the constraints protected the federal treasury from predatory practices, the local oversight did not protect educational spending from mayoral discretion. This argument is based on an analysis of initial reform implementation in four municipal school systems. The mayors responded to the federal initiatives in a variety of ways, but these were based on the requirements of their own political survival. The four cases thereby become studies in how one effort to recentralize democracy is working in Brazil.

In 1952, Bolivia experienced the most thorough-going social revolution in Latin America since the Mexican upheaval early in this century. In the twelve years which have followed, the Andean republic has made remarkable progress in breaking down centuries-old societal gaps and forging an integrated nation. The Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario (MNR), which inspired the revolution and which has retained firm political leadership of the nation, has played a vital role in politically activating the traditional Indian segment of the population. Prior to 1952, there had been very little communication between this indigenous majority and the Westarnized minority; this “vertical” cleavage was ona major barrier to the political socialization of Bolivia. On a “horizontal” plane, the process was further complicated by cleavages among the various Indian groups and, predominantly along regional lines, among the relatively homogeneous whites.

In geographic studies of modernization, attention has tended to focus on the processes of urbanization and the characteristics of urban areas rather than on rural areas. The latter have been included in macro-scale studies such as those of Gould and Soja in Africa investigating the spatial diffusion of modernization. In their studies of change in the Pacific, Brookfield (1973) and his associates also worked in rural communities, concentrating on the micro-scale. In research dealing with change in rural Latin America, emphasis has been on colonization studies and ruralurban migration, (Parsons, 1973; Preston, 1974; Stouse, 1971) but study of the effects of urbanization on change within a traditional rural areas has been neglected. Further, there have been few attempts in research on modernization to integrate macro and micro studies or to work at an intermediate scale.

An exploration of cabinet leadership in Mexico has always provided insights into political recruitment trends for leading policymakers. An examination of the present cabinet from 2012 through 2016 is valuable for four reasons. First, to what extent does the current leadership reflect changes in compositional patterns of the most influential policymakers as a result of a democratic electoral process dating from 2000? Second, does the return of the PRI reflect traditional patterns established by the last two PRI presidential administrations, or has the present cabinet taken on features that can be attributed to the two previous PAN administrations? Third, have significant patterns emerged, reflected in recent appointments, that suggest influential characteristics exercising broader influences in the future? Fourth, will the most influential cabinet figures under the PRI presidency reestablish their dominance as leading contenders for their party’s presidential election in 2018?

This article analyzes how niche parties may utilize a strategy of policy shifting to garner additional voters. It leverages a unique opportunity in which a Costa Rican political party released two different versions of its party manifesto at different moments during a single election cycle. This rare opportunity uncovers how the party shifted from having a hard conservative stance on social issues, such as abortion, to moderating its stance and centering its focus on less contentious issues in a runoff election campaign. Understanding how a single political party may alter its strategy is important because it allows us to better gauge the effectiveness of shifting policy positions, especially for niche parties, for which a particular issue area is dominant. Moreover, this analysis opens additional avenues of research on political parties in the Latin American context, since research utilizing manifesto data in this context has been limited.

A growing body of literature has focused on how different states continuously “make race” by legitimizing certain racial categories while invisibilizing others. Much less has been written on the actual processes of transforming race into a bureaucratic category when implementing antiracist public policies. This article focuses on the recent use of verification commissions to validate the racial self-identification of potential beneficiaries of racial quotas at federal higher education institutions in Brazil. We argue that through their choices, particularly through their definition of what race is, of who can see race, and of how to see race, these commissions are transforming not only understandings about affirmative action’s aims but also understandings of race. The study focuses on three potential consequences of commission practices for Brazilian racial boundaries: the disciplining of racial identifications, the decontextualization of race, and the individualization of racial injustice.

Electoral contests in Latin America are often characterized by attempts by political parties to sway the outcome of elections using vote buying—a practice that seems to persist during elections throughout the region. This article examines how clientelist parties’ use of vote buying is jointly shaped by two voter traits: poverty and partisanship. We hypothesize that clientelist parties pursue a mixed strategy, broadly targeting their core voters but also poor swing voters. While most of the existing evidence comes from single-country studies, this study adds cross-national evidence from multilevel regressions of survey data from 22 Latin American countries. Empirically, we find that poverty matters mainly for swing voters. For partisans, the effect of poverty on vote buying is weaker. These results suggest that poverty plays an important role in vote-buying strategies—but also that partisanship moderates clientelistic parties’ vote-buying strategies during electoral campaigns.

Development planning in Venezuela began in 1959 as a result of the changes in the economic conditions and in the political situation that occurred in 1958. In that year, on January 23, Pérez Jiménez government was deposed after 10 years of military rule. A provisional government was established and elections were held December 7, 1958 with Rómulo Betancourt (Democratic Action Party) winning a near majority (49%) of votes for Presidency. A coalition government of the Democratic Action party (AD), Democratic Republic Union party (URD), and the Christian social party (COPEI) was established according to a pre-election agreement among these parties.

The economic conditions also changed in 1958. Until that year Venezuela was able to achieve a high rate of economic growth (see Table I) and to accumulate considerable foreign exchange that prevented balance of payments crises such as those which interrupted economic development in other countries.

In their identification with Latin America, major foreign powers-including Japan—have always considered the Central American region-the zone of present-day Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica—of secondary or lesser significance. For more than three centuries Spain attached marginal importance to this area and during the last 150 years, the five states there have played minor, though occasionally dramatic, roles in U.S. relations with Latin America. For Japan, until quite recently, the region has rarely fostered more than the single interest of trade, and that with stuttering results.

Because of its potential as a canal route, Nicaragua first drew Japanese attention to the area, attention that entered the historical record in such roundabout fashion that it raised more questions than it supplied answers.

En el curso de estos últimos años, los países hispanoamericanos han venido celebrando con singular júbilo el sesquicentenario de sus independencias nacionales. El pensamiento de sus más altos valores humanos ha enriquecido la historiografía de nuestra América, y ha venido a confirmar en sentido crociano, que toda nuestra Historia es también hazaña de libertad. Nuestra lucha se agita contemporáneamente, pues cada día conquistamos y reconquistamos nuestra libertad. El hombre de nuestras naciones todavía se debate en servidumbres y esclavitudes, mas su libertad y dignidad son valores permanentes.