What allows unpopular judiciaries to gain the trust of the public? Some suggest that judicial confidence depends on procedural integrity. Others emphasize the importance of ideological congruence between the court and the public. This article examines the explanatory power of these two leading hypotheses while also paying closer attention to the moderating effects of political and economic inclusion. It finds that confidence in the judiciary is driven by normative considerations when inclusion is high, but by ideological proximity when inclusion is low. The findings highlight that institutional support does not emerge from a single causal path. Instead, inequalities in the economic and political structure make people trust institutions for different—and sometimes contrasting—reasons.

It has normally been argued that because compulsory voting systems present higher turnout rates relative to voluntary voting systems, they do not generate as many biases between different groups of voters. This article qualifies that view. It argues that in cases in which compulsory voting does not ensure near-universal participation, there is no certainty that switching to voluntary voting will increase inequalities. This issue is examined by looking at Chile, a democracy that moved from compulsory voting to voluntary voting in 2012. The research finds that while the reform generated class bias in urban districts, it also substantially reduced age bias and, in national elections, equalized participation between small and large districts. The conclusion is that abandoning compulsory voting does not necessarily increase turnout biases, since much depends on the structure of preexisting biases and how these are conditioned by particular electoral institutions.

This study analyzes whether Guatemalan success with the kingpin decapitation strategy of bringing major drug traffickers to justice has accomplished its greater objectives of reducing cocaine trafficking and drug-related violence. The analysis finds little evidence of success for the first objective in Guatemala but notable success for the second. One of the few studies to examine the application of this strategy outside Mexico and Colombia, its findings are interpreted in light of their contrasting experiences. The article provides an overview of drug trafficking in Guatemala and concise studies of two of its most important organizations targeted by the kingpin strategy.

Contending rationales of peace and conflict coexist between countries and within regional spaces as conditions that motivate or constrain militarized behaviors. While the idea of balancing is still a relevant concept to understand contemporary security in South America, the region produces patterns of a nascent security community. This article argues that the regional repertoire of foreign and security policy practices draws on a hybrid security governance mechanism. The novelty brought by the cumulative interaction among South American countries is that the coexistence turns into a hybrid between both practices and discourses. To explain how hybrid formations are produced, this study analyzes the most empirically intense and academically controversial political and security interactions from interstate relations in the two security complexes in the region, the Southern Cone and the Northern Andes.

Previous research examining selection to legislative committees has assumed that the impact of constituency preferences on committee assignments is due to the incentives for individual legislators to use their committee seats to increase their personal chances of re-election. Examining the case of the Mexican Chamber of Deputies (where legislators were, until recently, barred from re-election), this study argues that the impact of constituency preferences on selection to committees also occurs because parties have incentives for their members to use committee assignments to increase the party’s chances of being re-elected. Analysis of assignments to 11 committees over 4 legislative terms provides support for the argument. These findings reinforce previous research arguing that concerns with constituency representation and its impact on re-election also apply to political parties and not solely to individual legislators.

This study examines the extent to which priming voters on the trustworthiness of candidates or that of their parties elicits candidatecentric or partycentric attitudes. The analysis provides evidence of the trade-off for voters between mavericks and party insiders in presidential elections. It shows that voters are sensitized to the risks of electing a candidate with no party support, but in the particular case of Argentina, they still consider the candidates’ qualities to be more important than those of their parties. The results show that priming on the trustworthiness of candidates elicits stronger responses from low-income voters, who already have prior candidatecentric inclinations. The findings also reveal statistical differences in vote choice when respondents are primed with party- or candidatecentric frames.