Brand Dilution and the Breakdown of Political Parties in Latin America

[ES] ¿Por qué un partido político que ha sido competitivo por décadas colapsa de un día para otro? En los últimos años, los partidos políticos en América Latina han pasado de ser los actores principales para puestos ejecutivos a ser electoralmente irrelevantes en el transcurso de un único ciclo electoral. Para explicar este fenómeno se enfatiza el impacto de las acciones de la élite en el comportamiento de los votantes. Durante las décadas de 1980 y 1990, los líderes de toda la región aplicaron políticas que eran incompatibles con su tradicional marca de partido, provocando conflictos internos y formando extrañas alianzas con quienes eran sus rivales tradicionales. Estos comportamientos diluyeron las marcas partidistas, erosionando los lazos partidarios. Sin el apoyo seguro de sus partidarios los partidos se vuelven más susceptibles al voto retrospectivo, y los votantes que ya no tienen lazos partidarios abandonan a los partidos de gobierno cuando no obtienen buenos resultados. Esta hipótesis interactiva se pone a prueba utilizando comparaciones por pares de seis casos de elecciones de Argentina y Venezuela[EN] Why would a national political party that has been competitive for decades collapse overnight? In recent years, parties across Latin America went from being major contenders for executive office to electoral irrelevance over the course of a single electoral cycle. I develop an explanation that highlights the impact of elite actions on voter behavior. During the 1980s and 1990s, leaders across the region implemented policies that were inconsistent with their traditional party brand, provoked internal party conflicts, and formed strange-bedfellow alliances with traditional rivals. These actions diluted the brands of their parties, eroding voters’ partisan attachments. Without the assured support of partisans, parties become more susceptible to retrospective voting. Voters who now had no party attachments deserted incumbent parties when they performed poorly. I test this interactive hypothesis using matched comparisons of six party-election cases from Argentina and Venezuel

The rich get elected – but it’s not because voters necessarily prefer them

We elect politicians who are far better-off than ourselves – in Europe, those who come from blue-collar backgrounds make up only a tenth of national parliaments. Is this because voters favour the rich? A new study by Nicholas Carnes and Noam Lupu suggests they are slightly more likely to opt for working-class candidates over business owners. Blue-collar candidates just don’t get onto the ballot paper in the first place

Survey Mode Effects in a Developing Country

Responses to phone surveys tend to exhibit higher rates of social desirability bias and extreme responses when compared to face-to-face surveys. Yet, studies of mode effects typically compare either representative studies that implausibly assume comparability or experimental studies that rely on convenience samples. Our study compares two national probability samples but uses matching to address comparability. We study Costa Rica, a middle-income democracy, to see whether the conventional wisdom drawn from Western Europe and North America extends to the Global South. We analyze two nationally representative surveys, one fielded by phone and one face-to-face, allowing us to compare identically worded items we placed on both surveys. We find that phone respondents exhibited more socially desirable responding and were more likely to choose negative endpoints on scalar items. This suggests that survey researchers and practitioners should carefully assess the tradeoffs in shifting modes or employing mixed modes

The right and democracy in Latin America

We explore the relationship between the right turn and authoritarian backlash in Latin America in terms of public opinion. Is there evidence of a right turn in public opinion? What is the relationship at the individual level between ideology and democratic support, particularly among those who identify with the right? Are people who identify with the “new right” less committed to democracy than other citizens? We study these questions using six waves of public opinion surveys conducted in 17 Latin American countries between 2008 and 2019.En este artículo exploramos, a nivel de la opinión pública, la relación entre el giro a la derecha y el backlash autoritario en América Latina. ¿Se puede hablar de un giro a la derecha a nivel de la opinión pública? ¿Cuál es la relación entre la ideología de los individuos, particularmente la de aquellos que se identifican con la derecha, y el apego a la democracia? ¿Son los individuos que se identifican con la “nueva derecha” menos democráticos que el resto de la población? Para responder a estas preguntas utilizamos encuestas de opinión realizadas en 17 países latinoamericanos entre 2008 y 2019 en seis olas de encuestas.We explore the relationship between the right turn and authoritarian backlash in Latin America in terms of public opinion. Is there evidence of a right turn in public opinion? What is the relationship at the individual level between ideology and democratic support, particularly among those who identify with the right? Are people who identify with the “new right” less committed to democracy than other citizens? We study these questions using six waves of public opinion surveys conducted in 17 Latin American countries between 2008 and 2019

The Partisan Politics of New Social Risks in Advanced Postindustrial Democracies: Social Protection for Labor Market Outsiders

Advanced postindustrialization generates numerous challenges for the European social model. Central among these challenges is declining income, unstable employment, and inadequate training of semi- and unskilled workers. In this chapter, I assess the partisan basis of support for social policies that address the needs of these marginalized workers. I specifically consider the impacts of postindustrial cleavages among core constituencies of social democratic parties on the capacity of these parties to pursue inclusive social policies. I argue – and find support for in empirical analyses – that encompassing labor organization is the most important factor in strengthening the ability of left parties to build successful coalitions in support of outsider-friendly policies. I go beyond existing work on the topic by considering the full array of postindustrial cleavages facing left parties, by more fully elaborating why encompassing labor organization is crucial, and by considering a more complete set of measures of outsider policies than extant work. I compare my arguments and findings to important new work that stresses coalition building and partisan politics but minimizes the role of class organization

Enhanced production yields of rVSV-SARS-CoV-2 vaccine using Fibra-Cel® macrocarriers

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to high global demand for vaccines to safeguard public health. To that end, our institute has developed a recombinant viral vector vaccine utilizing a modified vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) construct, wherein the G protein of VSV is replaced with the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 (rVSV-ΔG-spike). Previous studies have demonstrated the production of a VSV-based vaccine in Vero cells adsorbed on Cytodex 1 microcarriers or in suspension. However, the titers were limited by both the carrier surface area and shear forces. Here, we describe the development of a bioprocess for rVSV-ΔG-spike production in serum-free Vero cells using porous Fibra-Cel® macrocarriers in fixed-bed BioBLU®320 5p bioreactors, leading to high-end titers. We identified core factors that significantly improved virus production, such as the kinetics of virus production, the use of macrospargers for oxygen supply, and medium replenishment. Implementing these parameters, among others, in a series of GMP production processes improved the titer yields by at least two orders of magnitude (2e9 PFU/mL) over previously reported values. The developed process was highly effective, repeatable, and robust, creating potent and genetically stable vaccine viruses and introducing new opportunities for application in other viral vaccine platforms