Why have Latin American democracies proven unable to confront the structural inequalities that cripple their economies and stymie social mobility? Brian Palmer-Rubin contends that we may lay the blame on these countries’ systems of interest representation, which exhibit “biased pluralism,” a system in which the demands of organizations representing economic elites—especially large corporations—predominate. A more inclusive model of representation would not only require a more encompassing and empowered set of institutions to represent workers, but would also feature spaces for non-eliteproducers—such as farmers and small-business owners to have a say in sectoral economic policies. With analysis drawing on over 100 interviews, an original survey, and official government data, this book focuses on such organizations and develops an account of biased pluralism in developing countries typified by the centrality of patronage—discretionarily allocated state benefits. Rather than serving as conduits for demand-making about development models, political parties and interest organizations often broker state subsidies or social programs, augmenting the short-term income of beneficiaries, but doing little to improve their long-term economic prospects. When organizations become diverted into patronage politics, the economic demands of the masses go unheard in the policies that most affect their lives, and along the way, their economic interests go unrepresented.

This study analyzes the participation of Mexican agricultural and small-business organizations in policymaking. Despite the recent focus in the literature on representation of individual citizens--either through party linkages or participatory institutions--the present focus is on the organizations that exist to represent collective interests of small-scale farmers and small-business owners. I analyze the factors that lead some of these organizations to lend voice to the sectors that they represent in the programmatic policies that shape sectoral competitiveness, others to focus their efforts on extracting distributive benefits from the state, and others to be excluded from policymaking processes entirely. While existing research stresses the effect of poverty on demand for patronage, I identify two factors--membership conditions and electoral competition--that can supersede class pressures, permitting organizations to evade clientelistic linkages with political parties and garner effective policy voice. First, the ability of organizations to independently recruit, retain and mobilize members frees organizations from pressure to enter into dependent linkages with political parties. While such linkages offer particularistic benefits that organization leaders can repurpose as selective benefits to spur member participation, they route organizations into the patronage trap, a self-reproducing cycle in which organizations become specialized for distributive demand making. These linkages convert leaders into electoral brokers and force organizations to forgo protest, lobbying, and other forms of political participation in favor of electoral mobilization, making them ill suited for programmatic demand making. I develop this argument using case studies of economic interest organizations in three Mexican states. Survey analysis of organizations in all Mexican states confirms that independent resource flows and the capacity to generate selective benefits--indicators of member recruitment capacity--are positively associated with organizations' breadth of mobilization strategies and ability to levy programmatic policy demands. Second, I show that the dynamics of electoral competition help explain the degree to which ruling politicians incorporate organizations into the programmatic and distributive policymaking arenas. In the presence of electoral competition, interest organizations can credibly threaten to support an opposition party if the ruling party fails to respond to their policy demands. Thus, electoral competition has two effects on organizational participation: First, it affords organizations leverage to pressure politicians for access to the exclusive programmatic policy arena, when state actors may otherwise prefer to limit organizational participation to the distributive arena. Second, competition incentivizes ruling politicians to incorporate organizations from their non-core constituencies (such as peasant organizations for a right-wing party or business organizations for a left-wing party) into policymaking. I build this theory through case studies of state governments under the control of three different political parties with different relationships to peasant and small-business organizations. I then test the argument in the distributive realm with an analysis of distribution data for state-level small-business subsidies across all 32 Mexican states, allowing me to exploit subnational variation in ruling parties and electoral competition.

Examines how public water service becomes a political tool in Mexican cities and uncovers the politics of water provision in developing democracies

The first large-scale study of political participation in eighteen Latin American democracies, focusing on the political participation of the region's poorest citizens. Political regimes in Latin America have a long history of excluding poor people from politics. Today, the region's democracies survive in contexts that are still marked by deep poverty and some of the world's most severe socioeconomic inequalities. Keeping socioeconomic inequality from spilling over into political inequality is one of the core challenges facing these young democracies. In Voice and Inequality, Carew Boulding and Claudio Holzner offer the first large-scale empirical analysis of political participation in Latin America. They find that in recent years, most (but not all) countries in the region have achieved near equality of participation across wealth groups, and in some cases poor people participate more than wealthier individuals. How can this be, given the long history of excluding poor people from the political arena in Latin America? Boulding and Holzner argue that key institutions of democracy, namely civil society, political parties, and competitive elections, have an enormous impact on whether or not poor people turn out to vote, protest, and contact government officials. Far from being politically inert, under certain conditions the poorest citizens can act and speak for themselves with an intensity that far exceeds their modest socioeconomic resources. When voluntary organizations thrive in poor communities and when political parties focus their mobilization efforts on poor individuals, they respond with high levels of political activism. Poor people's activism also benefits from strong parties, robust electoral competition and well-functioning democratic institutions. Where electoral competition is robust and where the power of incumbents is constrained, the authors find higher levels of participation by poor individuals and more political equality. Precisely because the individual resource constraints that poor people face are daunting obstacles to political activism, Voice and Inequality focuses on the features of democratic politics that create opportunities for participation that have the strongest impact on poor people's political behavior. Ultimately, Voice and Inequality provides important insights about how the elusive goal of political equality can be achieved even in contexts of elevated poverty and inequality.

Latin American states took dramatic steps toward greater inclusion during the late twentieth and early twenty-first Centuries. Bringing together an accomplished group of scholars, this volume examines this shift by introducing three dimensions of inclusion: official recognition of historically excluded groups, access to policymaking, and resource redistribution. Tracing the movement along these dimensions since the 1990s, the editors argue that the endurance of democratic politics, combined with longstanding social inequalities, create the impetus for inclusionary reforms. Diverse chapters explore how factors such as the role of partisanship and electoral clientelism, constitutional design, state capacity, social protest, populism, commodity rents, international diffusion, and historical legacies encouraged or inhibited inclusionary reform during the late 1990s and early 2000s. Featuring original empirical evidence and a strong theoretical framework, the book considers cross-national variation, delves into the surprising paradoxes of inclusion, and identifies the obstacles hindering further fundamental change.

"The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic marks the most significant, singular global disruption since World War II, with health, economic, political, and security implications that will ripple for years to come." -Global Trends 2040 (2021) Global Trends 2040-A More Contested World (2021), released by the US National Intelligence Council, is the latest report in its series of reports starting in 1997 about megatrends and the world's future. This report, strongly influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic, paints a bleak picture of the future and describes a contested, fragmented and turbulent world. It specifically discusses the four main trends that will shape tomorrow's world: - Demographics-by 2040, 1.4 billion people will be added mostly in Africa and South Asia. - Economics-increased government debt and concentrated economic power will escalate problems for the poor and middleclass. - Climate-a hotter world will increase water, food, and health insecurity. - Technology-the emergence of new technologies could both solve and cause problems for human life. Students of trends, policymakers, entrepreneurs, academics, journalists and anyone eager for a glimpse into the next decades, will find this report, with colored graphs, essential reading.