Previous cross-national research on voter turnout has focused attention primarily on Western industrial democracies, with relatively little attention paid to turnout in developing countries. In this article, the authors extend the research program on comparative voter turnout to presidential and legislative elections held in Latin American countries from 1980 to 2000. Building on previous research, the authors estimate a series of models that represent the effects of institutional, socioeconomic, and political variables in shaping turnout. The findings suggest that turnout in Latin American countries is influenced primarily by institutional variables (such as unicameralism, compulsory voting, and concurrent legislative and executive elections) and political variables (i.e., founding elections and political freedoms). Surprisingly, the authors find that socioeconomic variables, which are found to have strong effects on turnout in Western democracies, are unrelated to turnout in Latin American countries.A lthough the issue of voter turnout is a perennial one in political science, its importance is increasing rather than decreasing. Because of the extraordinary global political changes of the past two decades, competitive elections are more widely practiced than ever before. And although voter 909 AUTHORS' NOTE: The authors' names are listed in random order, with each contributing equally to the preparation of this article. We would like to thank Daniel Buquet, Daniel Chasquetti, Kurt Weyland, and several anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on earlier versions of the article. We are also grateful to Mark P. Jones and J. Mark Payne for sharing unpublished data.
How do presidents win legislative support under conditions of extreme multipartism? Comparative presidential research has offered two parallel answers, one relying on distributive politics and the other claiming that legislative success is a function of coalition formation. We merge these insights in an integrated approach to executive-legislative relations, also adding contextual factors related to dynamism and bargaining conditions. We find that the two presidential "tools"-pork and coalition goods-are substitutable resources, with pork functioning as a fine-tuning instrument that interacts reciprocally with legislative support. Pork expenditures also depend upon a president's bargaining leverage and the distribution of legislative seats.
Brazilian voters delivered a sweeping victory to presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro, putting the far-right populist at the helm of the world's fourth-largest democracy. After a raucous campaign in which the former army captain demonized his political opponents and promised to save the country from total ruin, Bolsonaro handed a stinging defeat to the left-leaning Workers' Party (PT), which had governed Brazil from 2003 to 2016. Social media, along with networks of Pentecostal churches, helped to disseminate Bolsonaro's incendiary messages and organize his broad multiclass following.After nearly clinching the presidency in the October 7 first round with over 46 percent of valid votes, Bolsonaro received 55.13 percent of the vote in the runoff (see Table on p. XXXX). The remaining 44.87 percent went to PT candidate Fernando Haddad-a last-minute
Since the 1990s Brazilian foreign policy has become increasingly central to Latin American integration, to South—South relations, and to global governance, especially under the leadership of presidents Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1995—2002) and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003 to the present). This article argues that the making of Brazilian foreign policy since the mid-1990s has been marked by two major trends: pluralization of actors and the rise of presidentially led diplomacy. These two trends have promoted a gradual erosion of the influence of the highly professionalized and traditionally autonomous Foreign Ministry (Itamaraty). The article analyzes the role of global, regional, and domestic political factors in promoting this transformation, and examines the consequences for Brazil's foreign policy outputs.
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