Miguel Centellas

“We’re Off to Replace the Wizard”: Lessons from a Collaborative Group Project Assignment

This article examines the effectiveness of a collaborative group learning project for teaching a core competency in comparative politics: constitutional structures. We use a quasi-experimental design and propensity score matching to assess the value of a constitutional writing group project and presentation. The results provide strong evidence that these learning tools are highly valuable for teaching abstract concepts. Students who participated in the project scored significantly higher on a short series of questions in final exams given several weeks after the completion of the group project. Somewhat paradoxically, the project increased competency but did not affect student self-reported interest in the subject matter. The challenges and improvements that can be made for the use these types of learning tools concludes the article.

Pop Culture in the Classroom: American Idol , Karl Marx, and Alexis de Tocqueville

This article discusses the use of pop culture in the classroom as a means to teach foundational political science authors and concepts. I focus on my experience using American Idol as a point of reference to discuss Marx and Engels The Communist Manifesto and Tocquevilles Democracy in America in undergraduate comparative politics courses. Students are asked to construct a written argument projecting Marx or Tocquevilles perceptions of American Idol , based on their readings. My experiences demonstrate that asking students to reflect on their own contemporary experience through the prism of these two works helps them in three ways: (1) to better understand the ideas of Marx and Tocqueville, as well as their differences; (2) to develop an appreciation for the continued relevance of works in the disciplines canon; and (3) to sharpen and develop critical thinking and analytical skills.

Cycles of Reform: Placing Evo Morales's Bolivia in Context

Decentralization and Popular Democracy: Governance from Below in Bolivia. By Jean-Paul Faguet. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2013. Pp. xi + 358.

Isabela Mares, From open secrets to secret voting: democratic electoral reforms and voter autonomy

35.00 paper. ISBN: 9780472035441. Evo Morales and the Movimiento al Socialismo in Bolivia: The First Term in Context, 2005–2009. Edited by Adrian Pearce. Institute for the Study of the Americas, 2011. Pp. xxv + 239.

Revisiting Assessing the Quality of Democracy: Measuring Democratic Competition and Participation in Latin America Since the 'Left Turn'

20.95 paper. ISBN: 9781900039994. The Reform of the Bolivian State: Domestic Politics in the Context of Globalization. By Andreas Tsolakis. Boulder, CO: FirstForum Press, 2011. Pp. xiv + 393.

The Democracy Cluster Classification Index

79.95 cloth. ISBN: 9781935049272.

The 2009 presidential and legislative elections in Bolivia

In the context of growing interest in subnational politics—particularly rigorous applications of quantitative analysis of electoral dynamics at lower levels of disaggregation—a monograph on electoral politics in Imperial Germany might seem anachronistic, especially in an increasingly ahistorical field (comparative politics). Yet Isabel Mares’ From open secrets to secret voting offers much to comparativists, regardless of their regional area of focus. Her rich study of electoral reform in Imperial Germany prior to the First World War offers insights for historians interested in Western Europe’s early democratization process, as well as comparativists interested in relationships between electoral processes and electoral reforms in authoritarian regimes. Throughout, Mares develops a framework for combining various kinds of data using disaggregated subnational analysis. Despite its shortcomings, she offers a template for research agendas across a wide range of regions and time periods. Anchored in the particular case—Imperial Germany from 1870 to 1912—the book tackles three substantively different (but related) research projects. The first (chapters 3–5) analyses how voter intimidation was structured in Imperial Germany, based on qualitative analysis of such practices by employers and state agents. Adopting a theoretical framework derived from economics, she conceptualizes distinct “supply-side” and “demand-side” political realities that shaped such practices. The second (chapters 6–7) investigates the movement for secret ballots, particularly the economic and political factors that drove members of the Reichstag to support such reforms. A third (chapters 8–9) tackles two distinct issues: the growth of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) into Germany’s dominant party, and the adoption of proportional representation (PR) with the passage of the 1903 Rickert Law. Although the volume focuses on one case, Mares mines a rich combination of quantitative and qualitative data. Much of it comes from existing databases, such as the ICPSR’s German Reichstag Election Data, Daniel Ziblatt’s land inequality data, and others. But a great deal comes from meticulous archival research and painstaking coding. This is the case with the occupational census data, collected Notes on contributor

Preaching What We Practice: Bringing Scope and Methods "Back In"

This paper revisits the challenge of empirically measuring the quality of democracy in Latin America in the wake of the region’s ‘left turn’ since the 1990s and the rise of classic populist leaders in several countries. Building on an earlier effort by David Altman and Anibal Perez-Linan to measure the quality of democracy, this paper develops a revised measure of effective competition. The paper develops this new measure through an exploratory assessment of nine key cases. The paper then tests the validity of this measure against the Freedom House index, a widely accepted assessment of the quality of democracy. Finally, the paper then measures the nine cases, at various points in time, along two dimensions consistent with Robert Dahl’s understanding of polyarchy: effective competition and effective participation (based on the author’s previous work).