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11. The Enduring Presence of Religion in Chilean Ideological Positionings and Voter Options

Author:
Nicolás Somma, Timothy R. Scully, and J. Samuel Valenzuela
Publication Date:
03-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
Analysts of Chilean politics assert that the Pinochet dictatorship created a new political cleavage characterized as “authoritarianism versus democracy.” It fostered the formation of two party coalitions that took positions for and against Pinochet's continuation as head of state in the plebiscite that he lost in October 1988. As a result, they argue, while the religious and class cleavages had powerfully shaped voter options and the party system in the pre-dictatorship past, these fissures have lost their salience in the current context.
Topic:
Development, Politics, and Religion
Political Geography:
South America and Chile

12. Latin America and the Catholic Church: Points of Convergence and Divergence (encontros e desencontros) 1960–2005

Author:
Luiz Alberto Gómez de Souza
Publication Date:
02-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
The author aims at uncovering points of convergence and divergence in the relationship between the Catholic Church and society. He begins by analyzing the challenges facing the Church in modern times, using the case of the United States and the traditional political relationship between Church and State in Latin America until the rise of the social-Christian options in the 1960s. He then describes Vatican II, which opened the Church to the influences of modern times. Subsequently, the author explains what he calls the “glorious period” of the Latin American Church, from the conference of bishops in Medellin (1968) to the meeting in Puebla (1979), with the Church's critique of “social sin,” its option for the poor, and liberation theology. Concurrently, the author shows the contradictory effects of the military regimes in the region. Looking at the relationship between Christians and politics, he analyzes in particular the case of Brazil, later expanding his analysis to Latin America and the world. The author then addresses social participation and politics in ecclesiastical practices and the slow building of democracy in the region, offering methodological criticisms of some static and nonhistorical analyses. He delineates how democracy has challenged the Church and, looking ahead, explores the present dynamism of society, especially the virtuosity of social movements and ecclesiastical communities when facing future transformation. The author ends by describing the current situation in Latin America, highlighting the pressing need for the Church to face issues that are presently frozen (such as sexuality, celibacy, and women as priests), in the hopes of a possible Council process in the future.
Topic:
Civil Society, Government, and Religion
Political Geography:
United States, Brazil, South America, and Latin America

13. Radical Democracy in the Andes: Indigenous Parties and the Quality of Democracy in Latin America

Author:
Donna Lee Van Cott
Publication Date:
12-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
I explore whether recently formed indigenous political parties in Ecuador and Bolivia are fulfilling their promise to improve the quality of local government by establishing institutions that promote intercultural cooperation and the participation of individuals and civil society groups. To the extent that such improvements have occurred, I seek to identify the conditions under which they succeed. I argue that under certain conditions even "least-likely cases" for the establishment of radical democratic models can produce positive changes in relations among hostile ethnic groups, shift resources toward underserved populations, and create spaces for citizens and civil society groups to deliberate public spending priorities. Such models are most likely to work when indigenous parties and their social movement sponsors are able to (1) maintain internal unity and solidarity; (2) develop distinct, complementary roles; (3) attract charismatic, talented mayors who are willing and able to work across ethnic lines; (4) reelect successful mayors; and (5) attract resources and technical support from external donors.
Topic:
Civil Society, Democratization, and Development
Political Geography:
South America, Latin America, Ecuador, and Bolivia

14. Latin American Catholicism in an Age of Religious and Political Pluralism: A Framework for Analysis

Author:
Frances Hagopian
Publication Date:
12-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
This article identifies and proposes a framework to explain the responses of Latin America's Roman Catholic churches to a new strategic dilemma posed by religious and political pluralism. Because the church's goals of defending institutional interests, evangelizing, promoting public morality, and grounding public policy in Catholic social teaching cut across existing political cleavages, Church leaders must make strategic choices about which to emphasize in their messages to the faithful, investment of pastoral resources, and alliances. I develop a typology of Episcopal responses based on the cases of Argentina, Chile, Brazil, and Mexico, and explain strategic choices by the church's capacity to mobilize civil society, its degree of religious hegemony, and the ideological orientations of Catholics. The analysis draws from 620 Episcopal documents issued since 2000.
Topic:
Development, Government, and Religion
Political Geography:
Brazil, Argentina, South America, Latin America, Mexico, and Chile

15. Unemployment, Macroeconomic Policy and Labor Market Flexibility: Argentina and Mexico in the 1990s

Author:
Roberto Frenkel and Jaime Ros
Publication Date:
02-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
This paper compares the divergent unemployment experiences in Argentina and Mexico in the 1990s, examining in detail the remarkable contrasts in the adjustment of the labor market in these two countries that occur despite equally striking similarities in the evolution of a number of macroeconomic variables and external economic shocks. The paper focuses on the role of macroeconomic policies and the type of industrial restructuring in these developments and considers to what extent the divergent unemployment experiences can be explained by differences in the institutional characteristics of the labor market.
Topic:
Economics and Industrial Policy
Political Geography:
Argentina, South America, North America, and Mexico

16. La Posguerra Colombiana: Divagaciones Sobre la Venganza, La Justicia y la Reconciliación

Author:
Iván Orozco
Publication Date:
05-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
This essay explores the relationships between vengeance, justice and reconciliation in contexts of war and transitions towards democracy, with a special emphasis and interest on the Colombian situation. It aims at easing, at least partly, the tensions facing peace makers and human rights activists who deal with the issue of “impunity” for atrocious crimes perpetrated by the state and other political organizations. It does so by distinguishing between vertical and horizontal processes of victimization and by distributing functions between peace makers and human rights activists in accord with this distinction. Based upon the premise that transitional Justice always entails a compromise between punishment, truth and reconciliation, the paper argues for a certain priority of punishment in contexts of vertical victimization and for a partial precedence of reconciliation in contexts of horizontal victimization. The notion of “gray areas” where the distinction between victims and perpetrators, best represented by certain kinds of “collaborators” and, “avengers” collapses, lies at the heart of the logics of forgiveness and reconciliation. After characterizing the Colombian conflict as a case of horizontal victimization—i.e., symmetric barbarism—the paper proposes a model of transitional justice for Colombia built on the primacy of truth and forgiveness for the inhabitants of gray zones and punishment for the engineers and managers of barbarism.
Topic:
Democratization and Government
Political Geography:
Colombia and South America

17. ¿Crisis en el Sindicalismo en América Latina?

Author:
Francisco Zapata
Publication Date:
01-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
Economic adjustment policies, trade liberalization, privatization of State enterprise and transformation of labor markets and labor market institutions relate to a process of transition between a model of import substitution industrialization and a "new economic model" characterized by the transnationalization of Latin American internal markets. All these elements contribute to change the premises of the organization of unions and to weaken their role in the negotiation of salaries and working conditions, their intervention in the regulation of employment and their participation in the administration of social security and health benefits. On the basis of the cases of Brazil, Chile and Mexico, the presentation will provide a context in which to pose the question of the crisis of Latin American labor and examine some of the alternatives that are available for trade unions in the new economic conditions.
Topic:
Industrial Policy and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
Brazil, South America, Central America, North America, Mexico, and Chile

18. Ámbito y Papel de los Especialistas en las Reformas en los Sistemas de Salud: Los Casos de Brasil y México

Author:
Raquel Abrantes Pêgo and Célia Almeida
Publication Date:
09-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
The purpose of this study is to consider the role played by the community of public health experts in the contemporary health sector reform process. It discusses the issue based on the case of Brazil and Mexico, because, as specialists, public health researchers in both countries have directed their participation to influencing the conflict over the reorientation of health policy in their respective countries. One of their approaches has consisted in developing a new cognitive framework that underpins technical health sector reform projects understood as policy proposals with technical content. Our purpose is to show that these experts manage to influence the national debate over health sector reform when the technical and scientific discussion leaves the academic sphere and goes to the realm of social and political debate. In our opinion, this occurs because this technical and scientific knowledge has been held out, independently of its intrinsic value, as a political and ideological alternative platform for sustaining a health sector reform proposal which, once transformed into a policy project, has served to aggregate certain political and social forces and not others. The study sets out each case separately, in each showing first the emergence of a new body of thinking in the field of public health (Collective Health in Brazil and New Public Health in Mexico). It then demonstrates how these groups of experts have articulated and interacted with specific political and social forces within their respective societies, and analyses how they have become a political stream within health institutions in the struggle to control the sector's future.
Topic:
Development and Human Welfare
Political Geography:
Brazil, South America, Latin America, Central America, North America, and Mexico

19. Contradiction Without Paradox: Evangelical Political Culture in the 1998 Venezuelan Elections

Author:
David Smilde
Publication Date:
09-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
Venezuelan Evangelicals' responses to candidates in that country's 1998 presidential election seem to confirm the view that their political culture is inconsistent, contradictory, and paradoxical. Not only were Evangelicals just as likely as the larger population to support nationalist former coup leader Hugo Chávez, they rejected Venezuela's one Evangelical party after it made a clientalist pact with the infamous social democratic party candidate. In this article, concepts from recent cultural theory are used to examine qualitative data from these two voting behaviors. Ways to make sense of the contradictory nature of Evangelical political culture are suggested.
Topic:
Government and Politics
Political Geography:
South America, Latin America, and Venezuela

20. The Labor Movement in Democratic Chile, 1990-2000

Author:
Frank K. Volker
Publication Date:
06-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
This article examines the experience of the Chilean labor movement during the first decade of democracy. In so doing, it calls attention to the need for further study of how institutional variables, such as labor legislations, influence labor movement strategies across different political regimes (authoritarian and democratic). Evidence from the Chilean case demonstrates that while important, exogenous variables such as new democratic governments and new labor legislations have only limited explanatory power with regard to labor movement strategies. This warrants a closer look at internal organizational aspects.
Topic:
Globalization, Industrial Policy, and Political Economy
Political Geography:
South America, Latin America, and Chile