Jonathan Hiskey

Pitfalls of Power to the People: Decentralization, Local Government Performance, and System Support in Bolivia

Across the developing world, many governments have implemented political reforms—heavily promoted by international donors—designed to transfer greater power to subnational levels of government and to provide a more substantial policymaking and oversight role to citizens. Although economic analyses have frequently argued that such decentralization programs improve the efficiency of public expenditures, far less is known about their political impact. Based on an analysis of two large national public-opinion surveys from Bolivia, a country that has recently implemented one of the most comprehensive decentralization reforms yet attempted in Latin America, we analyze the role decentralized local institutions are playing in shaping citizen attitudes toward their political system. Our findings support the contention that decentralization can bolster citizen levels of system support at the national level. Equally important, however, we also demonstrate that the renewed emphasis on local government can have the opposite effect of producingmore negative views of the political system when the performance of local institutions falters.

The Demise of One-Party Politics in Mexican Municipal Elections

The third wave of democratization has profoundly affected national political institutions and procedures throughout the developing world. In many nations, however, local political institutions and actors also hold considerable power. Democratic reforms at the national level are not necessarily replicated at the local level, yet democratization is inherently incomplete if a nation is speckled with scores of authoritarian local political enclaves. It follows that the process of subnational political change is of vital importance. In this article this process is examined, focusing on Mexico. The question is what dynamic has led to the erosion of the PRIs dominance at the municipal level since the mid-1980s. Two theoretical models, a diffusion model and a realignment model, are proposed. Empirical tests centre on data from municipal elections in four states for the period 1985 to 1998. Using event history analysis, substantial support for the diffusion model is discovered. In contrast, evidence consistent with the realignment model emerges in only one context – a state in which a new opposition party enjoyed unusual strength.

Migration in the Americas: Mexico and Latin America in Comparative Context

Because Mexico–U.S. migration represents the largest sustained migratory flow between two nations worldwide, much of the theoretical and empirical work on migration in the Americas has focused on this single case. Yet in the past few decades, migration has emerged as a critical issue across all nations in Latin America and the Caribbean. Indeed, over the past fifteen years, this region has changed its historical position from a net migrant-receiving region to one of the leading sending areas of the world. In this volume, we offer the first systematic assessment of Latin American migration patterns using ongoing research on the Mexican case as a basis for comparison. We include work by leading scholars of migration who draw on a common source of comparable data. Our specific purpose is to determine whether and how Mexican migration is similar to or different from migration in other countries of the hemisphere. The analyses are comparative and based on data from the Mexican Migration Project (MMP) and the Latin American Migration Project (LAMP), which together offer the most comprehensive and reliable source of data on migration from Latin America and the Caribbean. Each chapter examines specific propositions or findings derived from the Mexican case that have not yet been tested for other Latin American or Caribbean nations. Work from Mexico has now produced a fairly conventional account of migration and settlement in the United States, but we know very little about how Mexican patterns generalize to other migratory flows in the region. A major shortcoming of prior research is its overreliance on data from just one country. To the extent that other countries have been studied, most of the research to date has been conducted on a case-by-case basis rather than comparatively. As a result, conclusions about migration trends and patterns in Latin America are derived from a diverse array of studies that make use of divergent data, methods, and theoretical models. In this volume, we seek to remedy this lack of coherence by systematically comparing Mexico to other source countries in the Americas using a common framework of data, methods, and theories. In doing so, we hope to situate findings about Mexico–U.S. migration in the larger context of migration in the Americas and to discover how country-specific characteristics affect patterns and processes of emigration. Such a comparative approach to the study of migration represents a unique and innovative contribution to scholarship on international migration—a topic of considerable interest in the twenty-first century. The chapters derive from papers originally presented at a conference held at Vanderbilt University in May 2008. With support from Vanderbilt’s Center for the Americas, the conference brought together an interdisciplinary set of scholars from universities throughout the Americas who were instructed to base their analyses, at least in part, on data collected by the MMP and the LAMP in 118 Mexican communities and 35 communities from eight other nations of Latin America and the Caribbean, including Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Peru, Paraguay, Argentina, Puerto Rico, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic. In their comparative breadth, the resulting chapters offer a new perspective on the causes and consequences of migration in the Western Hemisphere. In this introduction, we underscore some of the salient challenges and rewards of doing comparative work on migration. We begin by describing the structure and organization of the MMP and LAMP, highlighting their origins, developments, and strategies of data collection. These projects, and the important gaps in data they were designed to overcome, explain why research done to date has generally not been comparative and why it has failed to discern which causes and consequences of migration are unique to Mexico and which apply as well to other countries and regions. We conclude by looking to the future to consider how truly comparative investigations might better inform research on migration in the Americas.

Shaping Politics at Home Cross-Border Social Ties and Local-Level Political Engagement

The dramatic rise of democratic regimes around the world has coincided with an equally significant increase in migration, characterized by an unprecedented movement of people from emerging to established democracies. Through analysis of survey data from six Latin American countries, we offer an empirical evaluation of theoretical mechanisms through which migration can shape the political behaviors of non-migrants in sending nations. We find that individuals who have strong cross-border ties that connect them with relatives living in the United States are more likely to participate in local politics, sympathize with a political party, and persuade others to vote for a party. Those effects are influenced by the positive impact of cross-border ties on civic community involvement, political interest, and political efficacy. Moreover, the evidence suggests that frequent usage of the Internet among non-migrants with strong cross-border ties results in increased political knowledge, which contributes to their greater political interest and efficacy.

Changing Trading Patterns of the Caribbean Basin

This article examines current trade patterns of the Caribbean Basin and the likely impact that changes in the international trade environment will have on them. The numerous bilateral and subregional preferential agreements that sustain the regions economy will be the framework in which Caribbean trade is examined. Also examined are the threats posed to these relationships by the implementation of free trade arrangements and the changing political alliances throughout the global community. We conclude with an evaluation of potential Caribbean responses to the challenges of the international economy of the twenty-first century.

Severed Linkages: Distorted Accountability in Uneven Regimes

Though a general consensus exists regarding the significance of perceived performance in voters’ evaluations of incumbent governments, much of the research underlying this consensus has been carried out across political systems with little internal variance in the degree of democracy. We propose that in emerging regimes, where such uniformity in terms of the territorial diffusion of democracy is not a given, characteristics of subnational political regimes can prevent electoral linkages from forming. Specifically, we argue that in subnational contexts where some minimal level of political competition has taken hold, performance-based linkages such as those driving economic voting should surface. However, in subnational dominant-party systems, where clientelistic linkages between voters and political bosses tend to prevail, economic performance and other aspects of an incumbent’s governance record will be less consequential for the voting calculus of citizens, in both provincial and national elections. We find support for this theoretical framework in Argentina and Mexico, two democratic countries characterized by highly uneven subnational political contexts. By highlighting how subnational regime characteristics facilitate or undermine electoral accountability mechanisms, we cast light on the very real representational consequences of uneven democratization in emerging regimes.

Transition Shocks and Emigration Profiles in Latin America

Scholars have long recognized the impact transformative political events have had on migration patterns in individual countries, but few have extended these ideas to the current period of political transition taking place across Latin America. Through analysis of data from the Latin American Migration Project (LAMP) and the Mexican Migration Project (MMP) from across Peru, Nicaragua, and the Mexican states of Guerrero and Oaxaca, the authors offer cross-national and subnational evidence of the role political “shocks” play in determining the demographic and socioeconomic profiles of migrants from these areas over the past twenty years. The results suggest that even in times of democratic opening, citizens’ migration decisions are in part driven by political considerations.