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Introduction
Latin America. Elections. Public Opinion. Legislative affairs. Executive legislative relations. Democratic institutions.
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May 2004 - present
September 2005 - December 2015
Publications
Publications (217)
This chapter introduces a method encompassing three political attitudes commonly linked to disaffection: internal political efficacy, external political efficacy, and political interest. We investigate their interactions with social media use for civic engagement and the type of device used to access the Internet. Additionally, we incorporate a con...
This chapter explores the critical role of territorial contexts in shaping modern political sentiments of powerlessness and frustration. While discontent is often studied through individual-level factors, recent research highlights the profound influence of geographical and contextual elements. Building on concepts such as Katherine J. Cramer’s “ru...
The perception of insecurity increasingly explains political behaviour in Latin American democracies. Since the literature on referendums underlines that people often vote motivated by issues not directly addressed in the ballot, we assess if the perception of insecurity impacted the vote choice in the September 2022 constitutional referendum in Ch...
This book aims to explore the intricate relationship between spatial inequalities, political discontent, and the potential role of the Internet in including inhabitants of politically marginalized areas. Focusing on Chile’s Valparaíso region, we provide a theoretical and methodological framework to understand the anger, frustration, and sense of ab...
In this chapter, we delve into the multifaceted dimensions of the digital divide, the implications of territorial dynamics, and the development of political discontent. Initial findings suggest that digital inequalities persistently shape Online Political Efficacy. This new attitude evaluates whether the digital world makes political systems more a...
When submitted to popular ratification, new constitutions tend to be approved. Chilean voters, however, rejected the proposal put forward by the country’s Constitutional Council in 2023. This article examines the reasons for this outcome. Leveraging an original conjoint experiment exploring voter preferences across four policy areas, we demonstrate...
In 2024, three decades after the “election of the century” that marked the country’s transition to democracy, Salvadorans re-elected Nayib Bukele as president despite an explicit constitutional ban. Due to the government’s success in addressing public security, Bukele and his party, Nuevas Ideas, won by a landslide majority. After having one of the...
The study of party systems tends to focus on individual parties and overlooks factions and other sub-party units. Although the impact of the district magnitude on the number of electoral parties is well established, the electoral rules incentives on party subunits have been overlooked. Using electoral results at the district level, we assess the ef...
A partir de la evidencia que muestra que el gasto en campaña rinde más para los candidatos no incumbentes, en elecciones sin incumbentes en que candidatos que militan en partidos institucionalizados compiten contra candidatos de partidos emergentes e independientes el efecto del gasto debiera ser menor para los primeros, que gozan de más reconocimi...
Students of Latin American politics have identified the economy and public security as relevant determinants of voting behaviour. This article extends those insights to Central America. We use a decade of AmericasBarometer data from 2008 to 2018 to study whether voters in six Central American countries prioritise economic or public security issues...
Este trabajo evalúa el impacto del uso de las redes sociales para adquirir información política sobre la aprobación presidencial. Con base en la abundante literatura que asocia el uso de estas redes con el refuerzo de las opiniones entre las personas, postulamos una hipótesis que asocia el uso de las redes sociales para adquirir información polític...
Both the Theory of Affective Intelligence and the Expectancy Violation Theory suggest emotions are crucial in supporting political candidates. However, despite the considerable existing evidence on this topic, the impact of humor-induced emotions has been less explored. In this study, we examine whether positive and negative emotions mediate the ef...
Studies focusing on Belize reveal that clientelism is the glue that makes the party system stick. We explore whether ideology and ethnicity account for partisanship within that deeply clientelist setting. We use four AmericasBarometer survey waves by the Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP) to study the individual-level correlates of parti...
While scholars have relied on societal cleavages to explain the origins and evolution of party systems in Western democracies, drawing that link in Latin America and the Caribbean has been more challenging. Guyana is an exception to the norm. Its party system has aligned ethnically since independence in the 1960s. The People’s National Congress mos...
This study examines the impact of political risk on financial markets by leveraging high-frequency (minute-by-minute) price data and precise event timestamps from media outlets’ Twitter feeds during Pedro Castillo’s failed coup attempt in Peru. Unlike previous research that relies on low-frequency data and protracted political changes, our analysis...
Cabinet shuffles in multiparty democracies do not equally affect all posts as they are caused by changes in the composition of government coalitions and by shifting political conditions. With data from the 340 individual cabinet appointments in Chile's presidential system in seven presidential terms (1990–2022), we find that the type of cabinet pos...
Based on his record as president, Carlos Ibáñez is usually considered a populist caudillo in Chilean historiography. However, there are few studies of whether his electoral base permits this classification or of the type of populism he represented. In his four presidential bids between 1927 and 1952, Ibáñez ran with the support of both left- and ri...
What factors account for polarization in constitutional conventions comprised of party members and many independents without prior legislative experience? Using the 4,669 roll call votes in the 155-member constitutional convention in Chile (2021–2), comprised of more independents than party members, we explore the determinants of ideological polari...
While the success of the president's legislative agenda is measured by examining the rate of passage of presidential bills (the batting average), the dominance of the president over the legislative process can be better understood by considering the share of presidential bills among bills introduced and laws enacted. Studies on the success of the p...
Objective/context:
We assess the effect of turnout in multiparty-coalition presidential primaries on the electoral support for the primary winner in two-round presidential elections. Does holding presidential primaries have a positive impact on the vote share received by the primary winner and/or political party in the corresponding presidential el...
Although scholars have made substantial progress in the debate on party systems in Latin America, many questions about partisanship in the region remain unaddressed. This article explores how the determinants of partisanship identified in the literature navigate in Central America, a region commonly overlooked by scholars. We examine a decade of pu...
Previous literature argues that macroeconomic conditions and economic news impact socio-tropic assessments. Others find that ideological identification or ideological affinity with the government impact socio-tropic economic views. Here, we test the moderating effect of ideological identification on how economic growth and economic news shape econo...
To the growing literature on non-resident citizens’ special representation, we contribute with a systematic examination of the role of descriptive representation of citizens living abroad in elections for extraterritorial districts. Using data for the 308 candidacy observations in three two-seat extraterritorial districts in five legislative electi...
Defined as a credible threat that strengthens the bargaining position of the executive, presidential vetoes, widely understudied, carry a stigma of confrontation between state powers. But under some institutional setups, partial vetoes can be an additional step in the executive–legislative bargaining process. After a discussion of whether partial v...
This work analyzes the relationship between social media use and the development of internal and external political efficacy, using five 1,650-person polls conducted in 2017–2021 in the 10 most populated municipalities of in the Valparaiso Region in Chile, a country characterized by high levels of political discontent and social protests, especiall...
Introduction
In democracies with institutionalized parties, when district magnitude and legislature size increase, and other barriers to entry decrease, the number of parties with representation tends to increase. But does the diversity in sociodemographic attributes of legislators also increase?
Materials and methods
With information from the 318...
A recent line of research in the field of humor has proposed the existence of two morally based comic styles. One of them, corrective humor (or satire), seeks to ridicule and mock to establish justice. In contrast, benevolent humor attempts to correct deviances using humor in a friendly manner understanding human imperfections. Considering their fo...
Recent works have coined the term Online Political Efficacy (OPE) to assess the impact of Internet use on the perceived political empowerment of citizens. As the classic concept of political efficacy distinguishes between internal (IPE) and external (EPE) efficacies, we seek to confirm the usefulness of a new indicator of political efficacy for onl...
The issuance of parliamentary questions (PQ) in presidential democracies reflects an effort to connect with the electoral constituency to advance the legislator's career. We postulate six hypotheses on the association between party affiliation, career advancement and district-level incentives and the issuance of PQs in Chile's presidential multipar...
As democracies worldwide have reverted to competitive authoritarian regimes or full dictatorships, some autocrats have used clientelist policies to strengthen their positions of power. We contend that autocrats can weaponise conditional cash transfers (CCTs) to shore up electoral support under democratic backsliding. In this vein, we analyse the im...
Politicians are tasked with both holding expertise and being relatable to the general population they are representing. Accordingly, politicians strategize their communication style to achieve both aims. One strategy they implement is using humor in their communication to constituents. But is this an effective strategy across humor styles? Does pol...
This article examines the disruptive effect of coups on party systems. Coups are junctures that can increase polarization and explain party system disruption—measured in the dynamics and determinants of inter-party competition. Until recently, scholars labeled Honduras’s party system as one of Latin America’s most institutionalized, albeit based on...
We study the success of presidential bills in Chile between 1958 and 1973 and disprove the claim, made by Linz and others, in the debate on the perils of presidentialism, that Salvador Allende (1970–1973) suffered from legislative paralysis. We revise the 1113 bills introduced by presidents Jorge Alessandri (1958–1964), Eduardo Frei (1964–1970) and...
In presidential democracies with strong party systems, the congress shares legis- lative powers with the executive, and parties strongly influence the behavior of legislators. The law-making process should reflect that balance of power, as the reactive legislative powers of Congress should make committee membership less valuable than in systems whe...
Why do presidents make promises while in office and why do they fulfill some of them? We postulate 5 hypotheses to account for the fulfillment of promises made by sitting presidents and test them on an emerging presidential democracy in Latin America. With information on the 951 pledges made by presidents of Chile in annual state of nation addresse...
Conflicts resulting from the dual legitimacy problem of presidential systems (where the president and the legislature are elected by different majorities) sometimes result in legislative gridlock – a point made by those who criticize the alleged perils of presidentialism. The socialist government of Salvador Allende (1970–73), that ended with the b...
The legislative success of a president is normally measured with respect to president-initiated bills. However, when they control the legislative agenda, presidents can also prioritize legislator-initiated bills and take credit for their passage. We contend that presidential legislative success should be measured with respect to both types of bills...
In countries where parties have not adopted strong policy positions on immigration–and where the immigrant population is not large–popular perceptions of immigrants might not reflect the ideological divides reported in the literature for countries where immigration is a politically salient issue. We assess the association of ideological identificat...
Las explicaciones sobre los determinantes de actitudes democráticas a menudo suponen que estas se explican por las experiencias previas con regímenes democráticos. Haití se ha caracterizado históricamente por su inestabilidad política, económica y social, incluso después del proceso de transición democrática que comenzó en 1986 y a pesar de las co...
The impact of campaign spending, generally greater for challengers than for incumbents, is conditioned by electoral rules and incumbency—normally seen as a dichotomous condition. But when an electoral reform changes the composition of districts, a legislator is an incumbent only in the section of the new district. In Chile, the 60 open-list proport...
Social media has increased its popularity among politicians. If they wish to succeed in the political arena, politicians need to present themselves to citizens as attractive individuals through these platforms. This study examined how politicians present themselves using humor on Twitter. We analyzed tweets (n=6,443) from 27 politicians to determin...
Publicación: RESUMEN: Con 4741 votaciones de proyectos de ley en el Senado de Chile (1990-2018), evaluamos si los determinantes de cohesión partidista identificados para la Cámara de Diputados también aplican al Senado. En el Senado, el oficialismo está más cohesionado que la oposición. No hay más cohesión en proyectos más importantes, en proyectos...
In democracies where the executive has bill initiation powers and controls the legislative agenda, most laws enacted should come from executive-initiated bills. In Chile’s strong presidential system where the executive has broad legislative powers, one in three laws enacted are legislator-initiated. We postulate 5 hypotheses on the effect of the at...
Studies on party system collapse or individual-party breakdowns view programmatic inconsistency or convergence as necessary for abrupt party system change. In theory, a new or fringe contender can suddenly emerge and disrupt the party system under such circumstances. We test that claim by examining Nayib Bukele’s 2019 presidential election victory...
This article assesses the effect of changes in the lawmaking process on the success of the president’s legislative agenda, distinguishing between within‐term success (bills that passed during the term) and overall success (including bills that passed after the president left office). With the 2064 presidential bills introduced in seven terms (1990–...
The demand for an ideologically based party system is not always met with a supply. As a country where a large majority of adults identify on the ideological scale but whose weak political parties primarily function as short-lived personalist platforms, Guatemala represents an extreme case of a demand supply mismatch. Using six AmericasBarometer su...
In most democracies, women are a majority in the electorate, but men are the majority of those elected. Previous studies on gender affinity voting that point to substantive, descriptive and symbolic representation are often based on polling date and focus on whether women issues were central in the election. Since electoral rules—including candidat...
Analizamos el efecto de la definición de democracia que manejan las personas en el apoyo efectivo a las democracias. Usando la encuesta Lapop en América Latina de 2006 (23.190 casos, 16 países), identificamos las tipologías de democracia más prevalentes y estimamos modelos probit y MCO para medir su impacto sobre el apoyo a la democracia en 4 dimen...
In some countries, bicameral discrepancies are solved by the formation of a conference committee. In Chile, conference committees are exclusively and automatically formed when the second chamber rejects a bill passed in the first chamber or when the first chamber rejects the modifications to its original bill made by the second chamber. This articl...
Resumen Después de una discusión teórica sobre qué explica la percepción de corrupción y la importancia que le da la gente a que el combate a la corrupción sea una prioridad para la acción gubernamental, planteamos 4 hipótesis que testeamos en Chile, una democracia con baja percepción de corrupción, pero con varios escándalos de corrupción en años...
This paper assesses the impact of age and ideological identification on the left–right scale on the use of online social networks to acquire political information. Socio-demographic indicators and ideological identification have been found to impact democratic engagement and the access and use of social networks. In countries where the digital divi...
Este artículo analiza los desafíos de ascenso y consolidación del partido de derecha actualmente más grande de Ecuador, a nivel nacional, el Movimiento Creando Oportunidades (CREO). Nuestro enfoque se centra en el efecto de las reglas electorales y la organización interna de CREO. Empleando un análisis de oferta-demanda, discutimos las razones detr...
How do stances on public policies aimed at ethnic conflict resolution affect intergroup trust? Building on theories of pro-sociality, social identity, and intergroup bias, we expect redistributive policy preferences meant to resolve ethnic conflict to replace ethnicity as the main barrier to intergroup trust because their zero-sum nature raises int...
This article examines the choices made by revising chambers in bicameral congresses. It analyses how bill characteristics, chamber congruence, impatience and institutional context influence the decisions made by revising chambers regarding executive bills sent by the chamber of origin. The analysis focuses on the case of Chile, a presidential count...
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 el...
This article explores the growing popularity of alternative presidential candidates those from outside the two dominant coalitions-in Chile from 2009 to 2017. Following a theoretical discussion that focuses on the causes of voter discontent with the political establishment, we formulate four hypotheses. We view support for alternative presidential...
This article examines changes in the determinants of support for Nicaragua's Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), a party that has achieved dominant status during democratic backsliding. Using three waves of Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP) surveys from 2006 to 2016, we present binary logit models to test four hypotheses on the...
The Internet has been often described as a tool that fosters the inclusion of traditionally marginalized people in the democratic process. Yet, if the type of device used by people to access the Internet impacts their online democratic engagement, uneven Internet penetration and differences in the devices used by social groups will result in a deep...
The Internet has been often described as a tool that fosters the inclusion of traditionally marginalized people in the democratic process. Yet, if the type of device used by people to access the Internet impacts their online democratic engagement, uneven Internet penetration and differences in the devices used by social groups will result in a deep...
In countries where legislators can sponsor bills, but these bills have few chances of promulgation, motives other than seeing a bill become law must also account for bill sponsorship. After discussing the theoretical determinants of bill sponsorship, we propose five hypotheses that account for a legislator’s bill sponsorship. We test these hypothes...
Objetivo/contexto:
exploramos si los legisladores usan sus votaciones en la Cámara de Diputados en Chile como instrumento para responder al poder del Ejecutivo en el proceso legislativo. ¿Existe evidencia de solidaridad legislativa en la forma en que los diputados chilenos votaron proyectos de ley? ¿Votan más cohesionadamente en proyectos de ley pr...
In political systems that are strongly presidentialist, those who seek legislative careers often consider them as a stepping stone for something else. In Chile, one of the most presidential systems in Latin America, it would be reasonable that ambitious politicians did not want to build careers in Congress given the limited powers legislators have....
We investigated the presence of clientelistic linkages and patronage in Chile as a method of electoral mobilization. We analyze the 345 municipalities between 2008 and 2012. With spending data on personnel and municipal employees, we assess the causes of patronage and the effects that these practices on turnout and electoral performance of mayors....
With the growing personalization of politics, public opinion might assess government performance partially based on the leaders' traits. We test if the evaluation Chileans made of personal traits of presidents Michelle Bachelet (2006-2010, 2014-2018) and Sebastián Piñera (2010-2014) explains presidential approval. As the highest ranked personal tra...
The September 2015 ousting and imprisonment of Guatemalan President Otto Pérez Molina and the subsequent election of television personality Jimmy Morales, who ran on an anticorruption platform, were interpreted as evidence of the salience of corruption as a popular concern in the country. Using the Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP) from...
In 2010, Sebastián Piñera (2010-2014) became the first rightwing President of Chile after the dictatorship. His approval fluctuated significantly, experiencing an overall downward decline. Under favorable economic conditions, declining presidential approval must be explained by things other than economic vote. Using logistic regression models and p...
La presencia de mujeres en cargos de elección popular se asocia a la aparición de círculos virtuosos en la medida que su desempeño ayuda a derribar estereotipos que limitan el acceso de mujeres a dichos cargos. Aquí estudiamos los círculos virtuosos de la presencia de alcaldesas en elecciones en Chile. Con datos de siete elecciones locales —indirec...
The presence of women in popularly elected positions is associated to the emergence of virtuous cycles, since their performance in office helps bring down stereotypes that limit the access of women to those positions. We study virtuous cycles in the presence of women in elections in Chile. With data from seven indirect (1992-2000) and direct local...
RESUMEN La confianza interpersonal se asocia con atributos positivos, como el capital social o la fortaleza de la democracia. En los numerosos estudios sobre los determinantes de la confianza interpersonal, la identificación ideológica ha recibido menor atención. Ya que las personas que se identifican ideológicamente tienden a estar más preocupadas...
I respond to George Tsebelis’s article that explains how difficult it is to amend the Constitution of Chile given the high majority thresholds for constitutional reforms, the broad scope of issues covered by those high thresholds and the cumbersome process to modify the amendment section. I review the history of constitutional change in Chile to sh...
Studies on attitudes toward democracy in post-authoritarian settings tend to overlook support for democracy before the authoritarian experience. Since authoritarian experiences are alleged to affect attitudes towards democracy and authoritarianism, we use the case of Chile to assess the determinants in support for democracy between 1972 and 2013. E...
Explicamos la varianza en los temas de los spots televisivos a partir de las características de cada contienda electoral, de las prioridades de la gente, de las trayectorias y del género de los candidatos. Utilizamos datos de 1 885 menciones a temas de campaña en 37 924 segundos de las franjas televisivas de los candidatos presidenciales Michelle B...
It has been argued that close elections lead to policy convergence, as legislators elected by a small margin are more likely to adopt moderate policy positions (Downs 1957). However, Lee, Moretti, and Butler (2004) find that electoral competition does not affect legislators’ policy preferences in the United States, questioning the median voter para...
In analyzing the determinants of conventional political participation, this article highlights the effect of the economic vote and assesses its effect on non-conventional political participation. Using the UNDP-Human Development 2015 poll in Chile, the study assesses the effect of the economic vote —in its sociotropic, egotropic, retrospective and...
I respond to George Tsebelis’s article that explains how difficult it is to amend the Constitution of Chile given the high majority thresholds for constitutional reforms, the broad scope of issues covered by those high thresholds and the cumbersome process to modify the amendment section. I review the history of constitutional change in Chile to sh...
The debate about the malaise with representation—or with democracy in general—that allegedly exists in Chile has been a permanent feature of scholarly work on Chile and that of Chilean social scientists since shortly after democracy was restored in 1990. Claims that there is something wrong with Chilean democracy or that people are discontented wit...
We analyze the determinants of the nomination and success of the 592 women candidates and 128 women winners in the 345 municipalities in Chile between 2004 and 2012. With data from all 3.633 candidates, we assess the effect of party militancy, party quotas, incumbency, sex of the incumbent, poverty and schooling in municipalities. The sex of the in...
Though it first won seats in the Chilean Congress in 2009 thanks to an electoral pact with the center-left Concertación, the Partido Comunista (pc) was not formally a member of the coalition in the 2010-2013 legislative period. As part of the opposition, there were instances of cooperation between the Concertación and the pc. We assess if that coop...
The growth of social networks has fueled the perception that its use positively influences political participation. Using national polls, we assess the effect of traditional media consumption and the use of social networks on electoral participation in Chile between 2009 and 2013. Although the strongest determinants of electoral participation are i...
The defeat of socialist candidate Salvador Allende (28.9%) to rightwing candidate Jorge Alessandri in the 1958 presidential election in Chile has been explained by the presence of an alternative leftwing candidate, the defrocked priest from Catapilco, Antonio Zamorano (3.3%). The belief is that, had Zamorano not entered the race, Allende would have...
Since the restoration of democracy in 1990 until 2010, the centerleft Concertación coalition governed in Chile. During the period, Concertación parties were more disciplined in their legislative behavior than the rightwing Alianza opposition. That was either because they were in the government or because they were center-left. Since the Alianza gov...
In Chile, the difficulty of winning both district seats under the binominal electoral system has generated opposite motivations for office-seeking political parties, which want to maximize their seat share, and individual candidates who want to win. Carey and Siavelis (2003) argue that the Concertación rewarded good losers who contributed to its ov...
With polling and municipal level data, we analyse the determinants of Salvador Allende's presidential election victory in 1970 and the change in political and electoral support for his government (1970–3). Support for Allende is explained by ideology more than by social class, socio-demographic variables or the economic performance of the country....
Since the restoration of democracy in 1990 until 2010, the center-left Concertacion coalition governed in Chile. During the period, Concertacion parties were more disciplined in their legislative behavior than the rightwing Alianza opposition. That was either because they were in the government or because they were center-left. Since the Alianza go...
Como en Chile hay información del tipo de gasto en que incurren los candidatos en campaña, pasamos de estudiar quién gasta más a analizar en qué gastan más los candidatos y qué determina sus tipos de gasto. Explicamos por qué los candidatos gastan de distinta forma sus fondos de campaña. Usamos información de los 54.276 ítems de gasto electoral rep...
Como en Chile hay información del tipo de gasto en que incurren los candidatos en campaña, pasamos de estudiar quién gasta más a analizar en qué gastan más los candidatos y qué determina sus tipos de gasto. Explicamos por qué los candidatos gastan de distinta forma sus fondos de campaña. Usamos información de los 54.276 ítems de gasto electoral rep...
