Political Competition Partisanship And Policymaking In Latin American Public Utilities

This book studies policymaking in the Latin American electricity and telecommunication sectors. Murillo's analysis of the Latin American electricity and telecommunications sectors shows that different degrees of electoral competition and the partisan composition of the government were crucial in resolving policymakers' tension between the interests of voters and the economic incentives generated by international financial markets and private corporations in the context of capital scarcity. Electoral competition by credible challengers dissuaded politicians from adopting policies deemed necessary to attract capital inflows. When electoral competition was low, financial pressures prevailed, but the partisan orientation of reformers shaped the regulatory design of market-friendly reforms. In the post-reform period, moreover, electoral competition and policymakers' partisanship shaped regulatory redistribution between residential consumers, large users, and privatized providers.

Shows that electoral competition and partisan government helped balance the conflicting demands of voters' interests with the financial pressures generated by capital scarcity.

Calvo and Murillo consider the non-policy benefits that voters consider when deciding their vote. While parties advertise policies, they also deliver non-policy benefits in the form of competent economic management, constituency service, and patronage jobs. Different from much of the existing research, which focuses on the implementation of policy or on the delivery of clientelistic benefits, this book provides a unified view of how politicians deliver broad portfolios of policy and non-policy benefits to their constituency. The authors' theory shows how these non-policy resources also shape parties' ideological positions and which type of electoral offers they target to poorer or richer voters. With exhaustive empirical work, both qualitative and quantitative, the research documents how linkages between parties and voters shape the delivery of non-policy benefits in Argentina and Chile.

Rather than an unintended by-product of poor state capacity, weak political and legal institutions are often weak by design.

Shows that electoral competition and partisan government helped balance the conflicting demands of voters' interests with the financial pressures generated by capital scarcity.

Why labor unions resisted and submitted during the economic crises of the 1990s.

Explores the variation in welfare and other social assistance policies in Latin America.

Public opinion and political behavior experts explore voter choice in Latin America with this follow-up to the 1960 landmark The American Voter

This book provides a novel explanation of widespread social policy expansion in Latin America beginning in the 1990s.

This book identifies sources of power that help business and economic elites influence policy decisions.