In 2015, Chile fundamentally reformed the electoral system it had used since 1989. The old system was characterized by high levels of malapportionment, or differences across districts in the ratios of voters to representatives. In the first elections after redemocratization, malapportionment favored the ideological right, but elections since 2000 have yielded no evidence that malapportionment produced ideological bias. The new, postreform electoral system reduces malapportionment in the lower chamber, although it remains pronounced in both chambers. Nevertheless, analysis of results from previous elections, coupled with information about the new districts, suggests that, consistent with recent experience, malapportionment will not produce ideological bias in elections to either chamber.

Analysts agree that political corruption is an obstacle to democratic consolidation but disagree about how to measure the extent of corruption in individual nations. This analysis of the Central American countries demonstrates that the most important competing quantitative measures of political corruption produce strikingly different rankings. These contradictory results are caused less by poor measurement techniques than by the existence of two different dimensions of corruption that do not always coincide. Statistical indicators based on expert perceptions of corruption and alternative indicators based on ordinary citizens' firsthand experiences with bribery measure, respectively, grand corruption by senior officials and petty corruption by lower-level functionaries. This study attempts to explain why several Central American nations suffer primarily from one or the other rather than both. It advances recommendations for future research and future anticorruption policies that may be applied to Latin America as a whole.

Economically vulnerable voters are expected to hold politicians accountable for their management of the economy because these voters are more likely to be personally affected by economic shocks and less able to cope with the resulting dislocation. Evidence from the informal sector in Argentina, where the lack of formal registration increases income volatility and denies unemployment benefits, is consistent with this hypothesis. Data from Argentina from 2005 to 2006 show that the association between evaluations of the economy and evaluations of President Néstor Kirchner was stronger among those working without formal employment guarantees. The implication is that the electoral support of Latin America's many informal workers may very well be fickle and dependent on economic performance.

This essay charts the entanglements and “blowback” effects of U.S. policy toward Latin American drug exports over the last century as the backdrop to today’s cascading drug violence in northern Mexico. The history of cocaine reveals a series of major geopolitical shifts (closely related to U.S. interdictionist drug war policies) that bring drug commodity chains, illicit trafficking centers, and conflicts, over the long run, closer to the United States. It analyzes shifts from initial legal cocaine and small-time postwar smuggling of the central Andes to the concentrating 1970s–1990s “cartel” epicenter in northern Andean Colombia, to the 1990s political shift north to Mexican transhipment and organizational leadership. Violence around cocaine has intensified at every step, and the present conflict portends another shift in the chain.

Throughout Latin America, particular business conglomerates have begun to sponsor their own political parties, building those parties on their own corporate assets. These “corporation-based parties” represent a new wave of highly particularized conservative representation in the region. Indeed, corporation-based parties have become a regular—though largely unrecognized—feature of contemporary Latin American party systems. This article develops a theory of how and why particular business conglomerates sponsor their own parties, provides substantial evidence for the existence of corporation-based parties across much of Latin America, and uses a case study of a party built on a Panamanian supermarket chain to demonstrate how such parties are organized. In closing, it discusses the possible future for these parties in the region.

This study argues that the costs associated with El Salvador's dollarization clearly outweigh the benefits and that the decision to dollarize was prompted not only by the need to promote economic growth, but also by the impluse to serve the interests of the financial sector and the large entrepreneurs who control the ruling ARENA party. Although the policy facilitates investment and international financial transactions, it has a negative effect on the poor by increasing inequality. To develop this argument, the authors discuss the socioeconomic and political situation in El Salvador at the time of dollarization, examine the Law of Monetary Integration, and analyze die effect of the dollarization policy on the poor.

Social conflict in Peru has increased dramatically since 2004. The economic origins of these disputes, which result mostly from the growth of mining operations, have received considerable scholarly attention. The emergence of collective action directed at the performance of regional and local government, however, has received little notice. This essay examines Peru's regional and local governance conflicts on the basis of hundreds of reported cases. It investigates the nature of these episodes and the strategies adopted by community organizations to get their complaints addressed. It finds that the political opportunity of the posttransition period, dissatisfaction with government performance, and new participatory rights have helped to give rise to such collective action. Community protagonists choose between institutional and noninstitutional strategies but often combine them to help ensure success. Maintaining legitimacy proves essential to both sides. This article argues that these events represent both constraints and favorable developments for subnational democracy in Peru.

Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), founded in 1980s Los Angeles by Salvadoran immigrant youth, is today one of the largest street gangs in North and Central America. In recent years the group has acquired a reputation for extreme brutality and has ostensibly mutated into a fast-expanding, transnational organized crime network with possible ties to international terrorists. Drawing on key concepts in gang research and multiple methodological tools, this article seeks to sharpen understanding of MS-13’s structure and activities. While the group is active in many countries, it is transnational only in a symbolic manner, not in its configuration or span of authority. Impelled largely by Central American gang-suppression policies, MS-13 has evolved from a traditional street gang into a group with organized crime characteristics, but it remains a social phenomenon rooted in urban marginality. Ultimately, a more nuanced picture of Mara Salvatrucha can inform the search for more effective gang policies.

The Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) emerged in Bolivia’s Chapare region in the 1990s. Born of a rural social movement of coca growers, it spread to the cities and became the country’s dominant political force as its leader, Evo Morales, was elected to the presidency in 2005. This article argues that the MAS is a hybrid organization whose electoral success has been contingent on the construction of a strong rural-urban coalition, built on the basis of different linkages between the MAS and organized popular constituencies in rural and urban areas. Whereas the MAS’s rural origins gave rise to grassroots control over the leadership, its expansion to urban areas has fostered the emergence of top-down mobilization strategies. The analysis also reveals how much popular sectors allied with the MAS have pressured the Morales government from below and held it accountable to societal demands.