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21. Resilience and Change: The Party System in Redemocratized Chile

Author:
J. Samuel Valenzuela, Timothy R. Scully, and Nicolás Somma
Publication Date:
12-2016
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
Recent literature on the Chilean party system has noted that its characteristics changed under the impact of Pinochet's long dictatorship. The right allegedly became a tool for maintaining his regime's “legacies,” and this generated a binary pattern of electoral competition between “pro-authoritarian” and “prodemocratic” forces after the return to democracy. The literature has also stressed that levels of identification with the nation's parties have plummeted, thereby questioning the extent to which the Chilean party system is an institutionalized one. And yet all analysts acknowledge, without being able to explain, that the distribution of voter options for the main parties from one election to the next has continued to be largely stable
Topic:
International Affairs
Political Geography:
Chile

22. Increasing Anti-Malaria Bednets Uptake Using Information and Distribution Strategies: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment in Senegal

Author:
Jacopo Bonan, Philippe LeMay-Boucher, Douglas Scott, and Michel Tenikue
Publication Date:
05-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
This paper studies the effects of information about malaria and of bednet distribution strategies on the demand for anti-malaria bednets, using a randomized experiment in the city of Thiès in Senegal. We offer two orthogonal treatments to a random sample of households. The first is a sale treatment and consists of 1) an offer to purchase on the spot a bednet at a subsidized price or 2) an offer to purchase a bednet at the same subsidized price with a voucher valid for seven days. The second is an information treatment that consists of a ten-minute information session on malaria-related issues. We find that information has no significant effect on the demand for bednets and that receiving a voucher increases purchasing by 20%. Our results suggest that selling bednets at a subsidized price and allowing for some flexibility with a short period of seven days increases purchase compared to the on-the-spot sale approach.
Topic:
Health, Human Welfare, Humanitarian Aid, and Health Care Policy
Political Geography:
Africa

23. Geographies of Violence: A Spatial Analysis of Five Types of Homicide in Brazil’s Municipalities

Author:
Matthew C. Ingram and Marcelo Marchesini da Costa
Publication Date:
05-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
Objectives: Examine the spatial distribution of five types of homicide across Brazil’s 5,562 municipalities and test the effects of family disruption, marginalization, poverty-reduction programs, environmental degradation, and the geographic diffusion of violence. Methods: Cluster analysis and spatial error, spatial lag, and geographically-weighted regressions. Results: Maps visualize clusters of high and low rates of different types of homicide. Core results from spatial regressions show that some predictors have uniform or stationary effects across all units, while other predictors have uneven, non-stationary effects. Among stationary effects, family disruption has a harmful effect across all types of homicide except femicide, and environmental degradation has a harmful effect, increasing the rates of femicide, gun-related, youth, and nonwhite homicides. Among non-stationary effects, marginalization has a harmful effect across all measures of homicide but poses the greatest danger to nonwhite populations in the northern part of Brazil; the poverty-reduction program Bolsa Família has a protective, negative effect for most types of homicides, especially for gun-related, youth, and nonwhite homicides. Lastly, homicide in nearby communities increases the likelihood of homicide in one’s home community, and this holds across all types of homicide. The diffusion effect also varies across geographic areas; the danger posed by nearby violence is strongest in the Amazon region and in a large section of the eastern coast. Conclusions: Findings help identify the content of violence-reduction policies, how to prioritize different components of these policies, and how to target these policies by type of homicide and geographic area for maximum effect.
Topic:
Political Violence, Crime, Environment, and Poverty
Political Geography:
Brazil and South America

24. Power, Markets, and Top Income Shares

Author:
Evelyne Huber, Huo Jingjing, and John D. Stephens
Publication Date:
04-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
The rise of the super-rich has attracted much political and academic attention in recent years. However, to date there have been few attempts to explain the cross-national variation in the recent rise of very top incomes. Drawing on the World Top Incomes Database, we study the income share of the top 1% in almost all current postindustrial democracies from 1975 to 2012. We find that extreme income concentration at the very top is a predominantly political phenomenon, not the outcome of economic changes. Top income shares are largely unrelated to economic growth, increased knowledge-intensive production, export competitiveness, market size, financialization, and wealth accumulation. Instead, they are driven by various political and policy changes that reflect a decline in the relative power and resources of labor, such as union density and centralization, secular-right governments, and cuts in top marginal income tax rates as well as in public spending on education.
Topic:
Economics, Industrial Policy, Political Economy, and Social Stratification

25. The Electoral Basis of Ideological Polarization in Latin America

Author:
Juan Andrés Moraes
Publication Date:
03-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
Polarization has been always identified as a problem for Latin American democracies. Yet its determinants remain largely undertheorized and without systematic evidence. This paper tackles this shortcoming with a new explanation where polarization is conceptualized as a mobilizational tool used by parties to deliver unequivocal signals to voters about their location in the policy space. The explanation holds that Parties’ strategies depend on the electoral context in which they compete, making volatility a crucial indicator of their behavior. Low-volatility contexts inhibit parties from seeking polarization due to potential electoral punishments by voters and the internal costs of programmatic change within the party organization. High volatility, however, increases the risk of electoral survival, decreasing the costs of seeking polarization. Here, volatility makes polarization more likely. Using time-series cross-sectional regression analysis for eighteen Latin American countries for 1995–2010, this paper provides robust statistical results to support the causal link between electoral volatility and polarization.
Topic:
Democratization, Demographics, Political Economy, and Governance
Political Geography:
Latin America

26. Democratization and Other Civil War Legacies in Central America

Author:
Fabrice Lehoucq
Publication Date:
02-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
This paper analyzes the impact of civil war on regime change. It focuses on Central America, a region where several countries underwent transitions to democracy in the wake of civil war during the second half of the twentieth century. It argues that armed conflict, not increasing levels of economic development, led to political change. Violence liquidated stubbornly resilient autocracies in El Salvador and Nicaragua, catalyzed the democratization of Costa Rican politics, and was the backdrop to regime liberalization in Guatemala. Postwar negotiations, at a time when Cold War bipolarity was ending, led to the establishment of more open, civilian regimes on the isthmus. This paper also notes that the transition from autocracy was enormously costly in both lives and economic well-being, which helps to explain why political change has given birth to low-quality democracies or mixed regimes on the isthmus, ones that also have witnessed the explosion of criminal and drug-related violence.
Topic:
Civil War, Crime, Democratization, Development, Regime Change, and Narcotics Trafficking
Political Geography:
Latin America