The 2016 peace agreement between the Colombian government and the FARC-EP, and the demobilization of the latter, dismantled the governance structures in regions formerly under rebel control. Drawing from a relational security framework, this article explores how, across three case-studies, communities use their former experience of rebel governance as a framework through which they could express expectations and dissatisfaction with new types of order. This blueprint is also used to make specific demands to new or reconstituted armed groups and to take direct action to address governance gaps, reproducing and co-constructing order post-demobilization. However, we observe that both the organization of the community and the capacity and ideology of armed groups could also be limiting factors to the community’s reproduction of order post-demobilization. From a peacebuilding perspective, this means that there can be pressure from below in favor of remobilization, as a predictable insurgent order may be preferable to uncertainty.

The traditional narrative of Europe’s first wave of democratization is that elites extended the franchise in response to revolutionary threats and reformed majoritarian electoral systems to limit rising working-class parties. This stylized account does not fit early twentieth-century South America, where democratization was driven by internal competition within incumbent parties, without strong working-class parties to contain. I study Argentina’s 1912 electoral reform that introduced elements of democracy (secret and compulsory voting) and simultaneously changed the electoral system from multi-member plurality to the limited vote. To study the motivations behind the electoral system change component of the reform package, I analyze expert surveys, legislative debates, and a 1911 public opinion poll. Granting representation to political minorities was regarded not as an electoral containment strategy to benefit incumbents, but a progressive measure to make opposition parties more competitive. An analysis of roll-call votes shows that legislators who supported the reform were those expecting to not be adversely affected.

Under what conditions do South American states create regional institutions that consolidate or undermine the liberal international order (LIO)? To address this question, we compare two cases of contestation of the LIO through counter-institutionalization in the domains of migration and election monitoring, both of which are closely related to the LIO’s core political principles. We argue that the variation in the effects of counter-institutionalization—LIO-consolidating in the case of migration and LIO-undermining in the case of election monitoring—results from the interaction of two explanatory factors: the source of dissatisfaction with the LIO’s norms and institutions in a specific domain, and the preferences of the state that exercises regional leadership in support of counter-institutionalization. The article sheds light on the coexistence of liberal and illiberal tendencies in South America’s regionalism and contributes to the debate on the determinants and effects of contestations of the LIO in the Global South.

We analyze how new technologies can be used to foster individual engagement that limits deliberation and reduces people’s capacity for political action within parties. We present the results of an analysis of the case of the Argentinean Propuesta Republicana (PRO). Using data from in-depth interviews with key actors—party elites and political consultants—we show that new technologies helped to mobilize almost 1 million volunteers in presidential elections, without transforming them into party stakeholders. This incorporation, though successful for organization and mobilization, reinforced the existing distribution of power within the party, by activating new adherents without engaging them in a collective organizational structure.

This article explores the underlying causes of vigilantism, moving beyond existing explanations to propose a novel perspective: state absenteeism. Drawing upon an original dataset collected at the subnational level in Guatemala, the study utilizes police station data as a proxy measure of state presence. This research article sheds light on the intricate dynamics driving vigilantism by analyzing the interplay between state actions, security provision, and the emergence of extralegal justice mechanisms. Empirical findings suggest that existing theories do not fully explain the surge in vigilantism, underscoring the importance of considering state provision of security at the subnational level. This theoretical and empirical contribution highlights the role of uneven state presence in shaping responses to insecurity and calls for more equitable and locally responsive security provision to address the root causes of extralegal justice.

The transition to democracy in Chile, which took place under the rules established in the authoritarian constitution, led political parties and voters to align along an authoritarian/democratic divide. In the campaign for the constitutional plebiscite in 2022, some of those in favor of a new constitution linked their position to democratic values and labeled those opposed to the new draft as lacking democratic values. Many of those opposed to the new constitution purposely distanced themselves from the authoritarian legacy. We rely on a pre-electoral poll to explore democratic values in the vote choice in the plebiscite. When factoring for economic perceptions, ideological identification, and sociodemographic traits, while holding authoritarian values was positively associated with voting Reject, expressing democratic values had a weak association with voting Approve. The authoritarian/democratic divide in the party system in the early 1990s was not a relevant determinant of vote choice in the 2022 plebiscite.

The article examines the patterns of turnover of Latin American legislators. It contributes (1) by introducing a large original dataset of turnover rates in 204 elections between 1985 and 2023 based on manually coded lists of all Latin American legislators elected since 1985, (2) by describing the cross-national and temporal patterns of turnover in Latin America, and (3) by examining empirically the relationship between turnover rates and temporal institutional arrangements designed to regulate the time horizons of legislators. The data reveals that turnover rates in Latin America are extremely high on average (around 70%) compared to democracies in other regions, although with significant variation. Institutional determinants governing time horizons of politicians are associated with turnover, with term limits, the presence of staggered elections and term length being positively associated with elevated turnover rates.