Silvia Diana MERCADO. «El inventor del peronismo: Raúl Apold, el cerebro oculto que cambió la política argentina». Buenos Aires: Planeta, 2013. 360 pp. ISBN: 9789504931614.

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NEGRETTO, Gabriel. «Making Constitutions: Presidents, Parties, and Institutional Choice in Latin America». Nueva York: Cambridge University Press, 2013. 292 pp. ISBN: 978-110-702-652-0.

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Oversight or Representation? Public Opinion and Impeachment Resolutions in Argentina and Brazil

Why do legislators introduce impeachment resolutions against the president, even though most of these resolutions never succeed? We explore two possible answers to this puzzle, which are linked to the legislative functions of oversight and representation. First, legislators initiate impeachment procedures to expose (real or alleged) presidential misdeeds, an action that may weaken the president's approval rates, even if an impeachment process remains unlikely. Second, legislators introduce impeachment resolutions to express their constituents' outrage in the context of corruption scandals or poor economic performance- that is, in response to an exogenous decline in presidential approval. To test these hypotheses, we analyze 274 impeachment resolutions introduced against the presidents of Argentina and Brazil since the transition to democracy. We estimate models predicting presidential approval and impeachment resolutions using time-series and simultaneous equations estimators. Our results strongly support the representation hypothesis

La reversión del resultado en la doble vuelta electoral: Una evaluación institucional del Balotaje

En los últimos veinte años, varios países latinoamericanos hanadoptado el sistema de balotaje con el objeto de asegurar mayorías en la elección presidencial. Este trabajo sostiene que el balotaje es generalmente o bien innecesario o bien peligro

Report from the Editor (2017)

Report presented at the meeting of the Executive Council of the Latin American Studies Association in Lima, Peru, April 27, 2017

Report from the Editor (2018)

Report presented at the meeting of the Executive Council of the Latin American Studies Association in Barcelona, Spain, on May 20, 2018

Los legados de la inestabilidad judicial en América Latina

Los institucionalistas han identificado un patrón de "reemplazo en serie", distintivo para los países de América Latina, en los cuales el cambio institucional se ha vuelto frecuente y radical. Los patrones de reemplazo en serie son la base de las conocidas “trampas" de la des-institucionalización: los golpes militares generan más golpes, los quiebres democráticos hacen que los colapsos de la democracia sean más probables, los reemplazos constitucionales fomentan la adopción de nuevas constituciones, los conflictos entre los distintos poderes de gobierno fomentan mayores conflictos, etc. En este trabajo desarrollamos una “teoría del reemplazo en serie” y la aplicamos para explicar los ciclos de recambio de los jueces en las cortes para 18 países latinoamericanos. Usando una nueva base de datos que incluye más de 3,000 jueces de las Cortes Supremas y Tribunales Constitucionales entre 1900 y 2010, mostramos que los intentos políticos de reorganizar las Cortes Supremas y Tribunales Constitucionales fomentan nuevos intentos por reorganizar dichos tribunales en años posteriores, creando un patrón secuencial de inestabilidad judicial perdurable en el tiempo.Students of institutions have identified a pattern of “serial replacement,” distinctive of Latin American countries in which institutional change has become frequent as well as radical. Patterns of serial replacement underlie wellknown “traps” of deinstitutionalization: military coups beget more coups, democratic breakdowns make breakdowns more likely, constitutional replacements encourage the adoption of new constitutions, inter-branch conflicts feed further conflicts, and so on. In this paper we develop a theory of serial replacement and apply it to explain cycles of judicial instability in 18 Latin American countries. Using a novel dataset covering more than 3,000 Supreme Court and Constitutional Tribunal justices between 1900 and 2010, we show that political attempts to reshuffle Supreme Courts and Constitutional Tribunals encourage new attempts to reshuffle the high courts in later years, creating a sequential pattern of judicial instability.University of PittsburghUNSA