Political Institutions

2024 Awards:

The award committees were composed of the following LAPIS members:

Donna Lee Van Cott Award Committee: Virginia Oliveros (Chair), Laura Gamboa, Calla Hummel

LAPIS Best Paper Award Committee: Andrés Schipani (Chair), Cecilia Rossel, Brian Palmer-Rubin

The winners were:

- Winner of the 2023 Donna Lee Van Cott Award: Undermining the state from within, by Rachel Schwartz

Undermining the State from Within is fascinating, important, and novel. Rachel Schwartz’s fantastic book studies the long-lasting effects of civil wars on political institutions and political and economic development in Central America. The book convincingly shows how counterinsurgent actors use the excuse of combating insurgency threats to create alternative rules within state institutions, that undermine the state in areas as diverse as tax collection, public security, and property administration long after a conflict formally ends. The argument flips the conventional wisdom on war and state building by arguing that war can undermine state structures rather than enhance them. Leveraging the case of Guatemala, an unlikely and understudied case of state building, the book rests on truly impressive archival fieldwork and hard-to-get elite interviews and is full of compelling stories with rich detail, which makes the book a delight to read. Schwartz’ argument makes a significant contribution to the literature on civil war, post-conflict states, state building, and institutional change. The book also speaks to the more specific literature on Central America and the factors behind the region’s pervasive state “incapacity.” This is an important contribution that will be cited and read widely for years to come. Put simply, an extraordinary book.

- Honorable mention: Courts that matter, by Sandra Botero

In Courts that Matter, Sandra Botero poses important questions in judicial politics: Under what conditions can courts in the Global South produce political and social change? Why do some rulings have higher impact than others? The answer relies on the “particular synergy” that can be produced when court-promoted oversight mechanisms encounter civil society engagement creating “collaborative oversight arenas” and enhancing impact. Botero carefully and methodically develops this argument through eight paired case studies of socioeconomic rights rulings by the Colombian and Argentine highest courts, combining within-case process tracing with a cross-case comparison. Her novel definition of judicial impact separates immediate effects from effectiveness, which allows Botero to build a nuanced and creative argument of the drivers of judicial impact that focuses not only on what happens inside the court (i.e. monitoring mechanisms) but also what happens outside of it (i.e. legal constituencies). Botero’s conceptual and methodological precision is also particularly impressive—her book is a masterclass on research design.

- Honorable mention: Prosecutors, Voters, and the Criminalisation of Corruption in Latin America: the Case of Lava Jato, by Ezequiel Gonzáles-Ocantos, Paula Muñoz, Nara Pavao, and Viviana Baraybar Hidalgo

In Prosecutors, Voters, and the Criminalisation of Corruption in Latin America, Ezequiel Gonzáles-Ocantos, Paula Muñoz, Nara Pavao, and Viviana Baraybar Hidalgo use the case of Lava Jato—a watershed event in Latin America— as the backdrop to tackle two important questions: Under what circumstances do we see “zealous” prosecutorial efforts? And what is the effect of these efforts? Through an impressive, multi-method approach, Prosecutors provides a systematic and rigorous study of the Lava Jato prosecutions —a bribery case that started in Brazil and spread throughout Latin America—to show why investigations gain momentum in some countries but not others. Institutional reforms that enhanced prosecutors’ capacity alongside with the creation of aggressive taskforces, they argue, were key to transform the Lava Jato prosecutions into anti-corruption crusades. The authors bring in data on public opinion to demonstrate the effects of these campaigns and show that corruption prosecutions only build trust in the state under a narrow set of circumstances. The authors developed this original argument with the Brazilian case and test it in Peru, Argentina, and Ecuador, clearly separating theory building from theory testing—a methodological must rarely seen in practice. The book is truly mixed methods: it uses qualitative and quantitative methods to assess different parts of their argument in an elegant and convincing manner. The book also marshals a truly impressive amount of data: elite interviews, voter focus groups, and surveys and survey experiments with voters. Prosecutors is also beautifully written, which makes it an absolute pleasure to read.

- Winner of the 2023 LAPIS Best paper Award: Dependent Elites: The Role of Elite-Citizenship Linkages in Inequality Reduction at the City Level, by Silvia Otero

Silvia Otero-Bahamón's paper, "Dependent Elites: The Role of Elite-Citizenship Linkages in Inequality Reduction at the City Level", addresses an important question of our time: the determinants of inequality, through an original lens—why do some cities reduce income inequality while others do not? By focusing on two major Colombian cities, Barranquilla and Cartagena, Otero-Bahamón explores how local economic elites' dependence on the local market influences their commitment to inclusive labor markets. Her argument is that when business leaders rely on selling goods and services to the local market, their economic wellbeing is inevitably tied to the employment prospects of city inhabitants, leading them to promote more inclusive labor markets. Conversely, when economic elites do not depend on local consumption, they are less inclined to promote such inclusivity. The study employs a rigorous comparative analysis, demonstrating that Barranquilla's elites, who are more reliant on local consumption, have fostered public policies at the local level that produced inclusive labor markets with lower income inequality. In contrast, Cartagena's elites, detached from local economic dynamics, have not prioritized policies that promote inclusivity, resulting in stagnated inequality levels.

One of the strengths of the paper is its comprehensive methodological approach. Otero-Bahamón skillfully combines qualitative and quantitative methods, including quantitative analysis to study the determinants of inequality in the two cities and rule out alternative explanations, as well as interviews with local actors that allow her to test her hypothesis. Her qualitative evidence shows how elites whose economic success depends on local markets lobbied for inclusive local policies, such as investment in large infrastructure projects or providing public utilities to poor neighborhoods. The paper's theoretical originality lies in linking elite interests to specific types of public investment and their impact on inequality reduction at the local level. The paper's most important contribution is how it integrates three literatures—subnational politics, inequality, and labor policies—that are not often combined in empirical analysis. This integration provides a fresh perspective for studying the determinants of inequality at the local level.

- Honorable mention: Can Anti-Corruption Policies Curb Political Budget Cycles? Evidence from Public Employment in Brazil, Guillermo Toral

Guillermo Toral's paper, "Can Anti-Corruption Policies Curb Political Budget Cycles? Evidence from Public Employment in Brazil", explores the unintended consequences of measures to mitigate political cycles. The study addresses a significant gap in the literature by examining how legal constraints designed to curb electoral manipulation may displace and even exacerbate these cycles. Through the use of monthly panel data of public employment in Brazilian municipalities, Toral demonstrates that, despite the legal ban on hiring during election periods, governments can adeptly circumvent these restrictions by strategically timing their hiring practices. This results in a surge of employment actions in the periods immediately preceding and following the official freeze, indicating that the constraints shift rather than eliminate political manipulation.

One of the paper's key strengths is its rigorous methodological approach, combining quantitative analysis of administrative data that spans over a period of 20 years, with the exploitation of randomly assigned audits on municipalities and exogenously determined variation in legislature size. This quasi-experimental design improves on previous studies that rely mostly on endogenous covariates, allowing Toral to identify the causal effects of context on cycles. The paper's theoretical contribution lies in linking electoral incentives, legal constraints, and public employment practices in a novel way. Toral's findings have important implications for policymakers, forcing them to rethink the way anti-corruption measures are designed and to incorporate the strategic response by politicians into more comprehensive strategies aimed at reducing fiscally irresponsible practices.

2022 Donna Lee Van Cott Award

Award committee:

• Yanilda González
• Virginia Oliveros
• Guillermo Trejo

Winner:

Laura Gamboa (The University of Utah), Resisting Backsliding: Opposition Strategies against the Erosion of Democracy, Cambridge University Press, 2022.

Are societies helpless when elected presidents try to dismantle democracies? Resisting Backsliding demonstrates that the erosion of democracy is not a foregone conclusion: political actors, and in particular the opposition, have considerable agency to prevent an aspiring autocrat from eroding democratic institutions and remaining in power. Focusing on Colombia and Venezuela, Laura Gamboa’s brilliant book leverages convincing within- and cross-case analysis to demonstrate the conditions under which opposition parties can play a central role in safeguarding democracy. As Gamboa shows, employing institutional strategies to achieve moderate objectives can maintain the opposition’s domestic and international legitimacy while also decreasing incentives and increasing costs of repression by the executive. Theoretically insightful and empirically rich, Gamboa’s book uses a masterful research design that exemplifies the best use of mixed methods for testing powerful ideas with novel quantitative and qualitative data. Few scholarly works offer concrete pathways to revert or slow democratic erosion; in contrast to most academic books, there are clear policy recommendations that can be gleaned from this book. In the tradition of Donna Lee Van Cott, Resisting Backsliding is living proof that the best scholarship in political science can have profound practical implications for democratic politics.

Honorable mention:

Calla Hummel (University of Miami), Why Informal Workers Organize: Contentious Politics, Enforcement, and the State, Oxford University Press, 2022.

We know quite a bit about why formal workers organize but we know little about why informal workers create formal organizations. Why Informal Workers Organize not only investigates the conditions under which informal workers organize; but also why state officials incentivize organizing by people engaged in work the state characterizes as unlawful. Focusing on La Paz, Bolivia and São Paulo, Brazil, Calla Hummel’s outstanding book shows that local governments with weak regulatory capacities often delegate the governance of informal work to local leaders who organize to enforce laws and regulations while defending the groups’ interests. Using a wide range of methods, including extensive fieldwork and data science, Hummel provides an insightful explanation of how poor people’s organizations emerge and how they can improve their members’ quality of life. This is the type of scholarship that Donna Lee Van Cott advocated for throughout her influential career.

2022 LAPIS Best Paper Award

“Segmented Retrenchment: The Politics of Welfare Cuts in Developing Countries” Andrés Schipani, Universidad de San Andrés.

Award Committee:

• Brian Palmer-Rubin
• Rafael Piñeiro
• Luis Schenoni

After reviewing a very strong set of nominated papers, the selection committee is happy to grant the 2023 LAPIS Best Paper Award to Andrés Schipani’s “Segmented Retrenchment: The Politics of Welfare Cuts in Developing Countries.” This paper analyzes an important puzzle in recent Latin American politics—the expansion of social policy to labor market “outsiders” (mainly informal sector workers) by conservative governments in the past decade at the same time that they cut back pensions and labor policies for unionized labor market “insiders” (mainly unionized formal sector workers). Schipani’s proposed explanation relates to the electoral and fiscal incentives faced by conservative governments in middle-income democracies. Electorally, these governments must turn to outsiders to construct viable coalitions given the smaller size of the middle class compared with rich democracies. Fiscal restraints motivate these administrations to cut benefits to labor market insiders—a core constituency for rival left-wing parties—to fund benefits for outsiders. The article goes further to explain why some right-wing governments are more successful at this “segmented retrenchment” than others. This theory is developed on the basis of process tracing of two important Latin American cases: Argentina under Macri and Brazil under Temer and Bolsonaro. For scholars of Latin American social policy, this empirical work will be valuable, as it expands beyond the well-studied conditional cash transfer policies to analyze the policy process behind COVID economic relief programs, contributory cash pensions, and workers cooperatives. The committee was impressed by the careful and convincing dialogue between empirics and theory, which ultimately results in a set of findings that are sure to have an impact on the study of social policy beyond the Latin American region.

2021 Co-Winner, Donna Lee Van Cott Award for the Best Book on Latin American Politics and Institutions

Title: Authoritarian Police in Democracy: Contested Security in Latin America

Author: Yanilda María González

Twitter: @che_shani

Institution: Harvard Kennedy School

Citation: Why do we see the persistence of violent, unaccountable police forces? Under what conditions can political and societal actors reform police forces? In this pathbreaking book, González examines the persistence of authoritarian policing practices in democracies in Latin America to reveal that it persists not in spite of democracy but in part because of it. Developing the concept of the “structural power of police,” she draws from Charles Lindblom’s classic discussion of the structural power of business in Politics and Markets. González adapts this idea to explain the power of police to resist reform by withdrawing services and thus creating disorder when politicians and citizens seek to bring them to account. She offers an impressive comparison of three countries: Brazil, Argentina, and Colombia, where González conducted in-depth qualitative field research for over two years. This is process tracing at its best. But rather than simply note the structural difficulties of reform, González explains that reform has been possible when politicians perceive the convergence of societal preferences over reform and face robust political competition. This beautifully written, engaging book makes an enduring contribution to our understanding of Latin American political institutions and transforms how we think about the role of policing in democracy more broadly.

2021 Co-Winner, Donna Lee Van Cott Award for the Best Book on Latin American Politics and Institutions

Title: Patronage at Work: Public Jobs and Political Services in Argentina

Author: Virginia Oliveros

Twitter: @VirOliveros

Institution: Tulane University

Citation: What public employees do affects both electoral competition and the quality of democracy. In this outstanding book, Oliveros describes what public employees do and, importantly, why they do it. Challenging conventional wisdom, she argues that public workers’ jobs are in fact tied to incumbent politicians’ fates, so it is in their best interest to provide political services. In treating both patrons and clients as self-interested, strategic individuals, Oliveros offers a novel theory of self-sustaining patronage in Argentina and beyond. The author masterfully shows that the interests of both actors align, favoring politicians’ continuity in office. Oliveros’s methodological approach is particularly powerful. The author combines a subnational comparative research design focused on three Argentina cities with ethnographic evidence and surveys of public workers, while exploring the applicability of her argument to Chile and Bolivia. In studying patronage on the ground, she marshals a wealth of original quantitative data to reveal that, despite democratization reforms in the region, patronage is resilient in Latin American countries, affecting politicians’ access to power as well as exercise of power. Oliveros’s book makes a remarkable contribution to our understanding of patronage politics and will surely spark new lines of research. Patronage at Work offers an important reminder of the importance of the state and how the political use of public employment can undermine the quality of democratic politics in developing countries.

2020 Winner, Donna Lee Van Cott Award for the Best Book on Latin American Politics and Institutions

Title: Votes, Drugs, and Violence. The Political Logic of Criminal Wars in Mexico

Author #1: Guillermo Trejo (University of Notre Dame)

Author #2: Sandra Ley (CIDE)

Twitter: @Gtrejo29, @sjleyg

Citation: While the democratic regimes installed in Latin America since the 1980s have been resilient, many are plagued by violence associated with gangs and drug cartels that have taken the life of hundreds of thousands of citizens. In this extraordinary book, Trejo and Ley zoom in on Mexico and offer a theoretically sophisticated explanation of why and how violence escalated to unprecedented levels. There is a central paradox at the center of the book, having to do with the unexpected character of violence in the wake of the country’s transition to democracy. And, contrary to previous research, violence results from partisan conflict endogenous to competitive democracy. The authors masterfully leverage a subnational research design that combines statistical analysis with case studies. The newspaper-based Criminal Violence in Mexico (CVM) and Criminal Attacks against Public Authorities in Mexico (CAPAM) datasets created by the authors will become mandatory sources for anyone interested in studying violence in Mexico. These datasets are complemented by compelling evidence from more than 40 in-depth interviews with former governors and mayors, among other high-level government officials and NGO leaders. This book is an outstanding achievement–it will make a lasting and timely contribution to our understanding of the political foundations of criminal wars.

Prize name: Winner, Best Paper on Political Institutions from the 2021 LASA Congress

Title: Accountability in Time: Gradual Change in Access-to-Information Institutions

Co-authors: Brian Palmer-Rubin brian (Marquette University);  Daniel Berliner (London School of Economis); Aaron Erlich (McGill University) and Benjamin E. Bagozzi (University of Delaware)

Twitter: @aserlich

Citation:Desarrollando aportes del institucionalismo histórico, este trabajo propone una tipología teórica para explicar el cambio institucional de las instituciones de acceso a la información - a través del tiempo. Los autores encuentran que el cambio gradual endógeno de conversión (Thelen 2003), a través de dos mecanismos (evolución y aprendizaje) es más influyente para explicar los cambios en la implementación de la Ley de Transparencia en México que modos “externos” de cambio institucional, como drift (desvío) y reforma. Además de este aporte teórico a la literatura de instituciones de accountability social, el trabajo utiliza una aproximación metodológica mixta novedosa, al combinar herramientas de la ciencia de datos (analizando la totalidad de solicitudes de información pública del sistema mexicano del 2003 al 2020) con análisis de process tracing. Si bien los propios autores reconocen las limitaciones del análisis de datos emprendido, logran proporcionar indicios convincentes de los patrones empíricos que su teoría de cambio institucional endógeno supone.