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The authors show that economic development increases the probability that a country will undergo a transition to democracy. These results contradict the finding of Przeworski and his associates, that development causes democracy to last but not to come into existence in the first place. By dealing adequately with problems of sample selection and model specification, the authors discover that economic growth does cause nondemocracies to democratize. They show that the effect of economic development on the probability of a transition to democracy in the hundred years between the mid-nineteenth century and World War II was substantial, indeed, even stronger than its effect on democratic stability. They also show that, in more recent decades, some countries that developed but remained dictatorships would, because of their development, be expected to democratize in as few as three years after achieving a per capita income of $12,000 per capita.

Political machines (or clientelist parties) mobilize electoral support by trading particularistic benefits to voters in exchange for their votes. But if the secret ballot hides voters' actions from the machine, voters are able to renege, accepting benefits and then voting as they choose. To explain how machine politics works, I observe that machines use their deep insertion into voters' social networks to try to circumvent the secret ballot and infer individuals' votes. When parties influence how people vote by threatening to punish them for voting for another party, I call this accountability. I analyze the strategic interaction between machines and voters as an iterated prisoners' dilemma game with one-sided uncertainty. The game generates hypotheses about the impact of the machine's capacity to monitor voters, and of voters' incomes and ideological stances, on the effectiveness of machine politics. I test these hypotheses with data from Argentina.

When a party or candidate loses the popular vote but still wins the election, do voters view the winner as legitimate? This scenario, known as an electoral inversion, describes the winners of two of the last six presidential elections in the United States. We report results from two experiments testing the effect of inversions on democratic legitimacy in the US context. Our results indicate that inversions significantly decrease the perceived legitimacy of winning candidates. Strikingly, this effect does not vary with the margin by which the winner loses the popular vote, nor by whether the candidate benefiting from the inversion is a co-partisan. The effect is driven by Democrats, who punish inversions regardless of candidate partisanship; few effects are observed among Republicans. These results suggest that the experience of inversions increases sensitivity to such outcomes among supporters of the losing party.

To what extent has the Argentine party system been polarized along class lines? The political historiography gives mixed and contradictory answers to this question. We explore the social bases of Argentina's political parties using an original database, the most comprehensive database of Argentine elections yet assembled, and new methods of ecological inference that yield more reliable results than previous analyses. We identify two distinct party systems, one in place between 1912 and 1940, the other emerging after 1946. The first party system was not consistently class based, but the second was, with the Radical Party representing the middle classes and the Peronists, workers and the poor. Still, there were important exceptions. Lower-class support for the Peronists, as proxied by literacy rates, declined during Perón's exile, which implies that the party had trouble mobilizing lower-class illiterate voters. Since the return to democracy in 1983, class polarization has again found some expression in the party system. /// ¿Cuán polarizado por clase socioeconómica ha sido el sistema partidario en la Argentina? La historiografía política nos ofrece respuestas variadas y contradictorias a esta pregunta. En este trabajo exploramos las bases sociales de los partidos políticos argentinos usando una base de datos original, la más completa de elecciones argentinas que se haya construido. Además aplicamos métodos novedosos de inferencia ecológica que producen resultados más confiables que estudios anteriores. Identificamos dos sistemas partidarios distintos, uno existente entre 1912 y 1940, y el otro surgiendo después del 1946. El primer sistema partidario no fue consistentemente basado en las clases sociales, pero el segundo sí lo fue, con el partido radical representando las clases medias y el peronista las clases trabajadoras y pobres. Sin embargo, hubo excepciones. El apoyo que la clase baja dio al peronismo, medido con tazas de alfabetismo como proxy, declinó durante el exilio de Juan Perón, sugiriendo que el partido no pudo movilizar votantes analfabetos pobres. Desde la transición democrática en el 1983, la polarización económica ha vuelto a ser expresada en el sistema partidario.

We analyze vote buying in Argentina--the payment by political parties of minor benefits (food, clothing, cash) to citizens in exchange for their votes. How widespread is vote buying in Argentina, and what is the profile of the typical vote \"seller\"? Did the shift toward a neoliberal economic model in the 1990s increase or reduce vote buying? Why do parties attempt to buy votes when the ballot is secret and people could simply accept campaign handouts and then vote as they wish? We analyze responses to surveys we conducted in Argentina in 2002 and offer answers to these questions. Our findings suggest that vote buying is an effective strategy for mobilizing electoral support among low-income people when parties are able to monitor voters' actions, make reasonably accurate inferences about how individuals voted, and credibly threaten to punish voters who defect from the implicit clientelist bargain. Our results point toward ballot reform as one way to reduce vote buying in Argentina.

Sometimes politicians run for office promising one set of policies, and if they win, switch to very different ones. Latin American presidents in recent years have frequently run promising to avoid pro-market reforms and harsh economic adjustment, then win and transform immediately into enthusiastic market reformers. Does it matter when politicians ignore the promises they made and the preferences of their constituents? If politicians want to be reelected or see their party reelected at the end of their term, why would they impose unpopular policies? Susan Stokes develops a model of policy switches and tests it with statistical and qualitative data from Latin American elections over the last two decades. She concludes that politicians may change policies because unpopular policies are best for constituents and best serve their own political ambitions. Nevertheless, even though good representatives sometimes switch policies, abrupt change tends to erode the quality of democracy.

What conditions are required to hold elected governments accountable to citizens? Are politicians unresponsive to voters when they adopt radically different policies from those announced in their campaigns? A responsive government, one that acts as an assembly of informed citizens in a direct democracy would act, may under some circumstances abandon campaign promises. In Peru, Alberto Fujimori promised gradual economic stabilization but shifted to draconian fiscal adjustment and far-reaching structural reforms. His experience helps sort out the motives and actions that distinguish responsive from unresponsive government.

In the early 1970s, Wayne Cornelius asked, “Are the migrant masses revolutionary? Definitely not, at least in Latin America and many other parts of the developing world.” These words summarized an emerging revisionist view of the political character of Latin America's new urban poor. Careful empirical research had proved wrong previous scholars and observers who had expected the new migrant populations in Latin America's cities to become sources of support for revolutionary political movements. A new picture of the inhabitants of Latin America's burgeoning shantytowns came into focus, showing these populations to be either passive or loyally engaged in the surrounding political system. According to this picture, squatters held considerable hope for individual advancement, forged clientelistic ties with government officials, and showed few signs of joining radicalized, class-conscious social movements.

Hasta qué punto el sistema de partidos argentino se ha polarizado según la composición social de sus votantes. La historiografía política da respuestas diversas y contradictorias a esta pregunta. Este trabajo explora las bases sociales de los partidos políticos argentinos usando una base de datos original, la más detallada de las elecciones llevadas a cabo en la Argentina, y nuevos métodos de inferencia ecológica que proveen resultados más confiables que otros análisis. Identifica dos sistemas de partido: uno es el que se desarrolló entre 1912 y 1940; y el otro, el que emergió a partir de 1946. En el primero no hubo consistencia de clase; en cambio sí en el segundo, con el partido radical representando a la clase media y el peronismo a los trabajadores y a los pobres. No obstante, hubo importantes excepciones. El apoyo de la clase baja a los peronistas como proxy de la tasa de analfabetismo, se redujo durante el exilio de Perón, lo que implica que el partido tuvo dificultades para movilizar a los votantes analfabetos de clase baja. Desde el retorno de la democracia en 1983, la polarización de clases encontró de alguna manera una nueva expresión en el sistema de partidos. /// To what extent has the Argentine party system been polarized along class lines? The political historiography gives mixed and contradictory answers to this question. We explore the social bases of Argentina's political parties using an original database, the most comprehensive database of Argentine elections yet assembled, and new methods of ecological inference that yield more reliable results than previous analyses. We identify two distinct party systems, one in place between 1912 and 1940, the other emerging after 1946. The first party system was not consistently class based, but the second was, with the Radical Party representing the middle classes and the Peronists, workers, and poor. Still, there were important exceptions. Lower-class support for the Peronists, as proxied by literacy rates, declined during Perón's exile, which implies that the party had trouble mobilizing lower-class illiterate voters. Since the return to democracy in 1983, class polarization has again found some expression in the party system.