Political Determinants of State Capacity in Latin America

State Capacity in Latin America

State capacity is exceptionally low in Latin America, even when compared to other former colonies. This paper analyzes four possible factors that could potentially explain this troubling feature: political inequality, economic inequality, interstate conflict and civil war. With the exception of external war, these variables have a negative effect on state-building in models where the accumulati...

Determinants of Social Spending in Latin America

Determinants of Social Spending in Latin America and the Caribbean Evelyne Huber, Thomas Mustillo, and John D. Stephens University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill We examine the determinants of social expenditure in an unbalanced pooled time series analysis for 22 Latin American and Caribbean countries for the period 1970 to 2000. The data are from a new data set assembled by the co-authors and ...

Long Live Democracy: The Determinants of Political Instability in Latin America

In this paper, we investigate the determinants of political instability in Latin America. In a panel of 18 Latin American countries from 1971 to 2000, we find that democratic countries experience less average instability in the region, indicating that the move to increased democracy in the last couple decades may alleviate the persistent problem of instability in the area. We also find that inc...

Inequality in Latin America: Determinants and Consequences

The Political Economy of Oil Production in Latin America∗

The 1990s witnessed a period of significant increase in investments in the oil and gas sector in Latin America. In most countries private investment took the lead after the privatization and liberalization of the sector. For example, in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, and Venezuela, private oil investment and/or some form of privatization made possible significant additions in hydrocarbons...