Journal of Politics in Latin America

Transitions from authoritarianism and breakdowns of democracy have long been central puzzles for scholars of Latin American politics. Because structural explanations have proved to be weak, recent work has emphasised political agency. This strand of research is promising, but major questions remain unanswered: Who are the key actors driving regime change? How do their individual preferences affect transitions and breakdowns? This article focuses on three central members of the political elite: presidents, opposition leaders, and military commanders. These actors develop unique preferences about regimes and unique degrees of radicalism regarding their preferred policies; in turn, these preferences and radicalism affect the probabilities of regime change. Testing the argument in 20 nations between 1945 and 2010, we find that an average measure of preferences masks crucial distinctions in the chain of regime change. Transitions to a competitive regime are more likely when autocrats have low intrinsic commitments to dictatorship. The survival of democracies hinges on whether top military officials develop pro-democratic preferences. The role of executive preferences, by contrast, is moderated by the attachments and radicalism of opposition leaders. Next, we examine how structural contexts shape both preferences and political outcomes, finding that economic development shapes both the emergence of preferences and radicalism and their impacts on regime change. Our findings improve the validity of political agency theories and reconcile the roles of actors with the environments in which regimes emerge and fall.

What activates individuals’ support for autocratic governments? Some suggest that the answer is perceptions of increased corruption and/or poor economic performance. We do not dispute this explanation but instead contend that it depends on individual differences in personality. We hypothesise that introverted and closed-minded citizens are generally resistant to democracy. When democracies appear unable to address problems, introverted and closed-minded citizens defer to authoritarian leaders for efficient solutions. We test our hypotheses with cross-national survey data from Latin America. Our findings have important implications for how we understand the roots of autocratic attitudes.

Conventional wisdom indicates that politicians in Latin America are all wealthy. However, the literature on both political elites and social origins of political parties indicates that we should expect differences in the capital accumulation of politicians depending on their ideological position. This study seeks to explore that question using financial disclosure forms made available in six Latin American countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Peru, and the Dominican Republic. We calculate the median wealth of the main political parties in each country and compared them according to their ideological position on the left–right continuum. We consistently find that the most right-leaning party in each country had a higher median wealth than the most left-leaning one. This relation is non-linear since centrist parties often represent anomalies in the distribution of wealth. When there are no ideological differences, we do not observe significant wealth differences either.

Studies on party system change in Latin America commonly label similar processes as constituting dealignment or realignment. To clarify the boundaries between both concepts, we distinguish between abrupt and gradual realignments. While both imply change, they differ in the number of election cycles involved. Abrupt realignments occur in a single election cycle, while gradual realignments take place in two or more. We apply this conceptualisation to Costa Rica, Latin America’s longest-running democracy, and a country where the party system has decayed without collapsing. To better identify the type of change that has taken place, we use canton-level election data from 1958 to 2018 and public opinion surveys from 1978 to 2018. The evidence contests the notion of electoral dealignment. Instead, we show that the party system experienced an abrupt realignment in the 2002 election and gradual realignment in more recent election cycles.

Research has underscored the agenda-setting and policy implementation advantages associated with the concentration of political and policy-making authority. But to what extent does this concentration of authority within health policy-making institutions determine the early timing and depth of non-communicable disease (NCD) policies? Are other factors within and outside of government more important? Comparing one Latin American country exhibiting a strong concentration of political and policy-making authority, Mexico, to one that does not, Brazil, we find that weaker, fragmented political and policy-making powers in Brazil expedited the creation and implementation of NCD programs. As seen in Brazil, our findings suggest that the factors that account for the earlier adoption of NCD policies and successful implementation are the early institutionalisation of societal interests and pressures within the bureaucracy, the “bottom-up” diffusion of early policy ideas, and international policy recommendations. This institutional, participatory, and ideational approach may provide more important predictors for explaining variation in NCD policies.