This paper advances the study of democratic trajectories – whether democracies deepen, stagnate, erode or break down over time. We show that econometric panel models usually neglect cumulative effects, which are implicitly central to many theories of democratic change. Some important factors, such as economic growth, have cumulative effects that shape medium- to long-term regime trajectories. To overcome the limitations of conventional statistical estimators, we propose the use of latent growth curve models, which are better able to capture cumulative processes. We demonstrate the advantages of this approach by analyzing the trajectory of 103 democratic regimes inaugurated after 1974. Conventional estimators fail to predict democratic trajectories, while latent growth curve models properly capture cumulative effects.

This paper introduces the concept of dialogic oversight, a process by which judicial bodies monitor compliance through a combination of mandated state reporting, third-party engagement, and supervision hearings. To assess the effectiveness of this strategy in the international arena, we evaluate the supervision hearings conducted by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. We employ propensity-score matching, difference-in-difference estimators, and event-history models to analyze compliance with 1,878 reparation measures ordered by the Court between 1989 and 2019. We find that dialogic oversight has moderate but positive effects, increasing the probability of state compliance by about 3 percent per year (a substantial effect compared to the baseline rate of implementation). However, it requires the engagement of civil society to yield positive outcomes. Our framework connects related findings in distant literatures on constitutional law and international organizations.

Students of judicial behavior debate whether justices time their retirement to allow for the nomination of like-minded judges. We formalize the assumptions of strategic retirement theory and derive precise hypotheses about the conditions that moderate the effect of partisan incentives on judicial retirements. The empirical implications are tested with evidence for Supreme Court members under democracies and dictatorships in six presidential regimes between 1900 and 2004. The theory of strategic retirement finds limited support in the United States and elsewhere. We conclude that researchers should emphasize “sincere” motivations for retirement, progressive political ambitions, and—crucial in weakly institutionalized legal systems—political pressures.

Desde hace más de quince años, el debate sobre la gobernabilidad democrática latinoamericana gira en torno al problema de la “pugna de poderes”, enfatizando el potencial desestabilizador de los conflictos entre el Ejecutivo y el Legislativo. Este ensayo se basa en el análisis histórico de cuarenta y cinco disputas constitucionales en dieciocho países latinoamericanos entre 1950 y 2000. En la primera parte se propone el concepto de crisis presidencial como categoría analítica para estudiar este problema. Las secciones segunda y tercera exploran los efectos de estas crisis sobre la estabilidad del régimen político y su impacto sobre el equilibrio de poderes a lo largo de las últimas cinco décadas. En las conclusiones se sugiere que los efectos desestabilizadores atribuidos al presidencialismo son históricamente contingentes y se exploran los parámetros bajo los cuales ha operado el nuevo presidencialismo latinoamericano a partir de la década de los noventa.

Report presented at the meeting of the Executive Council of the Latin American Studies Association (online session), May 22–23, 2020.

Among the many scholarly attempts to reckon with the causes and consequences of Donald Trump’s rise, few have attracted popular attention on the scale of Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt’s How Democracies Die. Seldom do books by political scientists make it onto the New York Times best sellers list, but this one has, a testament to its broad influence. Levitsky and Ziblatt situate Trumpism within a broader comparative and historical context in order to assess its similarities to and differences from democratic breakdowns elsewhere, particularly in Europe and Latin America. Their broad argument is that modern slides into authoritarianism are not the result of revolutions or military coups, but rather the consequence of a steady erosion of political norms and the assault on such fundamental democratic institutions as an independent judiciary and a free press. In short, contemporary democracies die not as a result of men with guns attacking from outside the system, but rather because elected leaders from inside that system slowly undermine them. Judged from this standpoint, the authors argue that American democracy is now in real danger, and they offer a range of suggestions for saving it. How convincing is Levitsky and Ziblatt’s analysis of democratic breakdown, and how well does it apply to the American case? How useful are the solutions that they offer for rescuing American democracy? We have asked a range of prominent scholars from across the discipline to consider these questions in the present symposium.

Report presented at the meeting of the Executive Council of the Latin American Studies Association in Barcelona, Spain, on May 20, 2018.

This article analyzes the conditions that facilitate the ousting of Latin American presidents and the mechanisms that prevent their downfall. Drawing lessons from the impeachment of Paraguayan president Fernando Lugo, it extends previous arguments about the “legislative shield” to show that the same forces that sometimes conspire to terminate an administration at other times work to resist its demise. The argument underscores the interaction between legislators and social movements, two prominent actors in the literature on presidential instability. The article presents a two-level theory to identify possible configurations of mass and legislative alignments, and tests some implications of the theory with data for 116 Latin American presidents over 28 years. Multiple comparison tests based on random effects logistic models show that popular protests can be neutralized by strong support in Congress, and hint at the possibility that legislative threats can be neutralized by loyal demonstrators in the streets.

Report presented at the meeting of the Executive Council of the Latin American StudiesAssociation in Lima, Peru, April 27, 2017.

Editor’s foreword

Legal scholars frequently advocate institutional reforms to modernize the judiciary and promote judicial independence. However, constitutional reforms also offer an opportunity for politicians to reshuffle the high courts. The negative consequences of constitutional change for judicial stability are explored using an original database of Supreme Court and Constitutional Tribunal members in eighteen Latin American countries between 1904 and 2010. Because unobserved factors potentially explain constitutional replacement as well as judicial turnover, a two-stage event-history model has been employed. The analysis integrates two literatures, studies of constitution-making and studies of judicial politics. The results show that constitutional change is a significant cause of judicial instability and court manipulation, even after potential endogeneity has been taken into account.