Kathleen Bruhn

University of California, Santa Barbara | UCSB · Department of Political Science

This article examines how political context affects the strategic choice of nomination rules, using data from federal and state-level legislative elections. Our analysis indicates that competition affects the selection rules parties adopt. Overall, parties are most likely to use open selection rules when they think they will win, largely due to the...

With the collapse of both the Soviet Union and the import substitution industrialization model, two of the great referents that once defined the Latin American Left fell into disgrace. What, many wondered, was left of the Left? What could, or should, the Left offer as an alternative to representative democracy and neoliberal capitalism? Writing ear...

This article looks at how the major Mexican parties chose their gubernatorial candidates between 1997 and 2011. In contrast to arguments that parties adopt internal elections in order to achieve an electoral advantage by selecting 'better' candidates, this article finds that the decision to use an internal election to select candidates primarily re...

Gootenberg Paul and Reygadas Luis , editors. Indelible Inequalities in Latin America: Insights from History, Politics, and Culture. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010. xvi +228 pp. ISBN 978-0-8223-4719-4, $79.95 (cloth); 978-0-8223-4734-7, $22.95 (paper). - Volume 15 Issue 4 - Kathleen Bruhn

When parties adopt internal elections to choose candidates, power shifts from party leaders to party activists. Some authors suggest that this results in more ideologically extreme candidates and helps party outsiders. However, based on surveys of legislative candidates in Mexico's 2006 national elections, two findings are evident. First, candidate...

Adler-LomnitzLarissaSalazar-ElenaRodrigo and AdlerIlya, Symbolism and Ritual in a One-Party Regime: Unveiling Mexico's Political Culture (Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 2010), pp. xv + 368, $39.95, pb. - Volume 44 Issue 1 - KATHLEEN BRUHN

This article focuses on the Mexican Left and the Partido de la Revolución Democrática. It first analyzes the relationship between the democratization of Mexico's political system and the arrival of the modern Mexican Left. It then investigates the Left's pathologies in order to understand better the tensions and internal dynamics of Mexican politic...

Although 'populism' has become something of a buzzword in discussions about politics, it tends to be studied by country or region. This is the first book to offer a genuine cross-regional perspective on populism and its impact on democracy. By analyzing current experiences of populism in Europe and the Americas, this edited volume convincingly demo...

Claudio Holzner's book examines how the institutional incentives created by neoliberalism and democratization have differentially structured political behavior, resulting in a growing participation gap between the middle- and upper-income classes and the poor. Most studies of the impact of neoliberalism and democracy on participation use aggregate...

s Do primaries help political parties perform better in general elections, or do they undermine electoral performance by contributing to internal divisions and to the weakening of party organizations? This article examines the effect of holding a primary on the general election prospects of candidates, using cases from two of the three major partie...

This article examines the political strategies of the EZLN, or Zapatista army, in Chiapas and the EPR, which operates mostly in Oaxaca and Guerrero, through a content analysis of their communiques. It argues that these two guerrilla movements demonstrate, through their cultural production, significantly different priorities and preferences; and tha...

Why do social organizations decide to protest instead of working through institutional channels? This book draws hypotheses from three standard models of contentious political action - POS, resource mobilization, and identity - and subjects them to a series of qualitative and quantitative tests. The results have implications for social movement the...

Even before the 2006 presidential election dissolved into a nasty street battle, it was widely perceived as strongly polarized. The two leading candidates, Felipe Calderón of the conservative National Action Party (PAN) and Andrés Manuel López Obrador of the leftwing Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), staked out starkly different positions o...

This engaging book provides a broad and accessible analysis of Mexico's contemporary struggle for democratic development. Now completely revised, it brings up to date issues ranging from electoral reform and accountability to drug trafficking, migration, and NAFTA. It also considers the rapidly changing role of Mexico's mass and elite groups, and i...

Latin American Politics & Society 47.1 (2005) 143-148 Marcus J. Kurtz's ambitious new book takes a hard and often pessimistic look at the social and political implications of neoliberal economic reform for the peasant sector, focusing on the empirical cases of Chile and Mexico. Ultimately, the author's combination of theoretical rigor and solid sch...

The Myth of Civil Society: Social Capital and Democratic Consolidation in Spain and Brazil. By Omar G. Encarnación. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. 244p. $55.00. When a Google search for “civil society promotion” turns up 847,000 potentially relevant links, it is time for a provocative book like this one. Omar Encarnación takes on the prevailin...

The Americas 61.2 (2004) 339-340 The central claim of Caroline Beer's interesting new book is that the rise of electoral competition "has important institutional consequences" (p. 2) which strengthen legislatures, alter patterns of political recruitment, reinforce trends toward decentralization, and in general improve the quality of governance. Thi...

This article examines the factors that led to improved representation of women in an unlikely setting: Mexico. Quotas can ensure gender balance in nominations and diminish the importance of other factors by limiting strategic choice. Yet few have examined why parties adopt quotas. I argue that activist pressures may be more important than electoral...

The author argues that liberalization strategy in Mexico has been successful in the short-term, but in looking at issues of employment, income distribution, foreign trade and industrial specialization, it has created a polarization of economy and society resulting in unsustainable conditions.

The literature on democratic transitions has emphasized the role of elite negotiations, or pacting. The study of Mexican politics has also focused heavily on political elites. However, new work on Mexican politics and regime liberalization places much greater emphasis on other dimensions of politics, especially on elections. Electoral politics has...

Roderic Ai Camp (ed.), Polling for Democracy: Public Opinion and Political Liberalization in Mexico (Wilmington, DE: SR Books, 1996), pp. viii+186, $45.00. - - Volume 30 Issue 2 - KATHLEEN BRUHN

Howard Handelman, Mexican Politics: The Dynamics of Change, (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997, pp. vii+200, £13.99 pb. - Volume 30 Issue 2 - KATHLEEN BRUHN

Almost all agree that political systems in Latin America underwent a transformation in the 1980s. The usual quick description of this change was ‘democratization’. But whether one takes an optimistic or a pessimistic view of the level of democracy that was achieved, one thing was sure—the traditional forms of participation by, and representation of...

Neoliberal programs impose costs on the population that can entail loss of political support. It has been contended that social spending can bolster an electoral coalition behind neoliberal programs. In Mexico, the National Solidarity Program may have improved the general image of the ruling party and government but did not affect electoral support...

Abstract will be provided by author.

When parties adopt internal elections to choose candidates, power shifts from party leaders to party activists. Some authors suggest that this results in more ideologically extreme candidates and helps party outsiders. Based on surveys of legislative candidates in Mexico’s 2006 national elections, this article makes two main claims. First, candidat...