Allyson Lucinda Benton

Dissatisfied Democrats or Retrospective Voters? Economic Hardship, Political Institutions, and Voting Behavior in Latin America

This article examines recent trends in Latin American voting behavior and casts them in terms of sincere (economic) and strategic (electoral) concerns. It argues that thanks to years of economic adversity, Latin Americans have developed long, sophisticated economic memories. Although this has resulted in rising frustration with democratic government, according to recent opinion polls, it has not always led voters to punish all parties responsible for hardship at election time. A panel study of the region’s presidential systems demonstrates that citizens punish incumbents by voting for established nonincumbents when electoral laws reduce opportunities available to small parties in the systems, even if nonincumbents have also been blamed for hard economic times. More permissive electoral systems, in contrast, encourage citizens to reject all parties responsible for economic decline. The analysis demonstrates how economic and electoral concerns interact to affect voting behavior, political accountability, and public opinion in Latin America.

Political Institutions, Policymaking Processes, and Policy Outcomes in Mexico

This paper uses a transaction-costs framework to link the policymaking process (PMP) and the outer features of public policies in Mexico, a middle-income developing country. It shows how a highly secretive PMP, centralized around the presidency, fashioned nationalist policies that were stable, adaptable, coordinated and private-regarding for the urban-based corporatist pillars of the regime. When growth faltered in the late 1970s, however, this PMP was unable to adapt to economic volatility, although it remained dominant in an increasingly turbulent polity. The paper explains how unified government and corporatist control of the economy made a constitutionally weak president the envy of executives around the world, even at the cost of being unable to enact reforms with short-term costs for the corporatist pillars of the regime. The article also explains why democratization in the 1990s is giving rise to a less centralized and more open PMP that benefits larger shares of the population. As the separation of powers enshrined in the 1917 constitution materializes, policymaking is increasingly wedded to the status quo. On the one hand, divided government preserves a macroeconomic framework consistent with an open economy (such as fiscally sound policies and a floating exchange rate). On the other, checks and balances are helping old and new parties and interest groups to veto agreement on the raising of chronically low tax rates (at 10 percent of GDP) and on reforming nationalist policies that limit private sector investment in the state-controlled energy sector.

Party Leader or Party Reputation Concerns? How Vertical Partisan Alignment Reins in Subnational Fiscal Profligacy

Some scholars argue that party leader considerations drive governors copartisan with presidents toward fiscal discipline, while others argue that party reputation concerns guide their behavior. To demonstrate how to assess whether either of these mechanisms is at work, I extend this analysis to the municipal level. If mayors aligned with both governors and presidents are more disciplined than mayors aligned with presidents only, copartisan governors affect mayoral fiscal behavior through party leader considerations. If mayors aligned with both governors and presidents are just as fiscally disciplined as those aligned with presidents only, party reputation concerns drive mayoral fiscal behavior. Cross-sectional time-series analysis of debt used to finance fiscal excess in municipal Mexico reveals support for the party-leader-concern logic in this nation, but the party reputation logic (or both logics or neither logic) may be at work in others.

Configuring authority over electoral manipulation in electoral authoritarian regimes: evidence from Mexico

ABSTRACT How do electoral authoritarian autocrats choose strategies for manipulating elections? Most scholars assume that autocrats strategize all electoral manipulation from above, with local regime agents charged with carrying out these top-down strategies. In contrast, a few assume that local regime agents strategize all electoral manipulation from the bottom up. More likely, reality lies in between. To make this point, I build an argument for how autocrats might configure the distribution of decisions over electoral manipulation among regime agents. I argue that autocrats delegate decisions about electoral manipulation to local regime agents in core regime districts – to ensure aggregate support – and to regime agents in recently marginal regime districts – to ensure territorial control. In contrast, autocrats determine strategies in long-time marginal districts and in those turned adverse to the regime. Statistical analysis of a unique political reform in one state in electoral authoritarian Mexico – where autocrats transferred the authority to restrict political rights and the secret ballot to some regime agents but not to all – supports the argument. It also reinforces the proposition that wholly centralized/decentralized decision-making about electoral manipulation only occurs under specific political conditions, raising questions about the empirical validity of these assumptions in current research.