J Polga-Hecimovich
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 38561 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | J Polga-Hecimovich |
| NOMBRES | J |
| APELLIDO | Polga-Hecimovich |
| FIRMA | POLGA-HECIMOVICH J |
| AFILIACIONES | University of Pittsburgh |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0711-6255 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 25 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 272 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 25 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2006 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2025 |
| ÍNDICE H | 9 |
Presidential Failure—or Party Failure? A Review Article
Why Presidents Fail: Political Parties and Government Survival in Latin America by Christopher A. Martínez is a rigorous and innovative contribution to the study of presidential instability. In it, Martínez argues that the institutionalization and relative strength of political parties, particularly the president's own party, are central to understanding why some presidents are removed from office whereas others survive political crises. Drawing …
Tracing bilateral security cooperation
The logic of ambitious legislators in fluid party systems
Classic theories of political ambition assume relatively stable and programmatic party systems. However, in many parts of the world, ‘fluid’ or ‘inchoate’ party systems do not provide ambitious legislators with the electoral benefits associated with stable party brands. In this paper, we examine ambition in fluid party systems: What is the frequency of party switching for legislators who seek re‐election, and what are their characteristics? What …
Venezuelan regional elections, democratic backsliding, and autocratization in the 2010s
While explanations of democratic backsliding in Venezuela have focused on a host of national-level processes, few scholars have considered subnational drivers of democratic decay. This paper explains how Venezuelan leaders used electoral manipulation in regional elections, targeted punishment of subnational authorities, and creation of parallel subnational political-administrative bodies to undermine democracy and aid in the consolidation of auth…
Student Attitudes Toward Campus Diversity at the U.S. Naval Academy
Although the value of diversity—in terms of race, ethnicity, gender, and socioeconomic status—to the U.S. military has been subject to debate, preferences for diversity at educational institutions for the military officers are rarely examined systematically. To address this, we investigate whether midshipmen at the U.S. Naval Academy favor prioritizing diversity in student admissions and faculty recruitment using conjoint analysis, a method suite…
Latin America Erupts
The election of Guillermo Lasso in Ecuador may indicate a return to the neoliberalism, fiscal austerity, and minority government that marked the contentious politics of the 1990s and 2000s. This" return to the past" is the result of successive governments' inability to resolve longstanding structural deficiencies. Despite overt attempts to forge a new trajectory, Rafael Correa's Citizens' Revolution reflected an illusory stability that depended o…
Party, candidate, and voter incentives under free list proportional representation
Under free list proportional representation voters can: (a) cast preference votes for candidates; (b) cast multiple preferences; and (c) distribute preferences across multiple lists. Alternatively, they can cast a list vote. Our theory shows that office-seeking candidates face incentives to pursue the personal vote, while non-candidate partisans seek the party vote. Voters are in the cross-currents of these forces. Also, since preference voting i…
Bureaucratic Politicization, Partisan Attachments, and the Limits of Public Agency Legitimacy
Which factors determine support for the armed forces? What is the effect of agency politicization on confidence? Existing studies, which draw largely from bureaucratically neutral militaries, find that interpersonal trust and demographic variables play significant roles in determining public confidence in the armed forces. I argue that this is different for a politicized agency. A loss of bureaucratic neutrality activates voters’ partisan attachm…
Bureaucracy and the Failure of Politics
Bureaucratic reforms worldwide seek to improve the quality of governance. In this article, we argue that the major governance failures are political, not bureaucratic, and the first step to better governance is to recognize the underlying political causes. Using illustrations from throughout the world, we contend that political institutions fail to provide clear policy goals, rarely allocate adequate resources to deal with the scope of the proble…
The Tools of Institutional Change under Post-Neoliberalism
How have governments in Latin America been able to counteract two decades of neoliberalism and pursue post-neoliberal developmental reforms, and what tools have they used to do so? We argue that post-neoliberal projects are possible through the use of three necessary conditions in a context of economic bonanza: (1) extensive use of the legal-constitutional framework to facilitate interventionism; (2) an increase in the centrality of public planni…
Measures and votes
Desempeño económico y protesta ciudadana como detonantes de las caídas presidenciales
En este artículo argumentamos que las crisis económicas (X1) a las que siguen movilizaciones sociales en las calles (X2) explican las salidas anticipadas de presidentes (Y). Luego de identificar los puntos de acuerdo y tensión hallados en los trabajos hasta ahora realizados, proponemos que el estudio de las caídas presidenciales puede hallar un espacio fructífero a partir del análisis de causalidad coyuntural múltiple. Mediante dos casos de inest…
Explaining military coups and impeachments in Latin America
We develop a unified theory of presidential instability to explain why presidents are removed from office through military coups or through legal procedures. While some causal factors motivate opponents to overthrow the president irrespective of the specific mechanism employed, other factors expand the relative capabilities of groups inclined to pursue military or civilian action. The first group of variables, including economic recession, protes…
The Organizational Consequences of Politics
The study of the bureaucracy in Latin America, within the study of politics, has long been little more than an afterthought. It is assumed to lie in the realm of public administration, distinct from other regional subfields that have increasingly gained the attention of political scientists. As a result, scholars' understanding of Latin American bureaucratic politics is limited. Here, we conduct a comprehensive survey of peer-reviewed articles to…
Here's the bias! A (Re-)Reassessment of the Chilean electoral system
Ni Chicha ni Limoná
Chile’s parties have been characterized as ‘European’ in their development and institutionalization, but ‘Latin American’ in their high degree of political localism. Yet the specialized literature has not tested these tendencies nor developed a theory as to how they may coexist. Using the concept of party nationalization, we establish the veracity of the claims in the literature and propose a theory of static and dynamic nationalization developme…
Overcoming the Regional Cleavage? Political Party Nationalization in Ecuador since the Return to Democracy
This work analyses the evolution of Ecuadorian political parties’ territorial coverage since the return to democracy. It uses district-level electoral returns from between 1979 and 2013 for three different types of elections (presidential, national deputy, provincial deputy) to evaluate the territorial homogeneity of the parties in each period («static» nationalization) as well as the homogeneity of temporal change («dynamic» nationalization). Th…
The 2013 Ecuadorian general elections
Seven imperatives for improving the measurement of party nationalization with Evidence from Chile
Ecuador
después de seis años en el poder, 2012 marcó el pináculo de la acumulación de poder político para rafael correa.además de una política exterior asertiva y un dominio sobre el poder legislativo, el presidente logró ejercer amplio control sobre la rama judicial y los medios.Bajo el liderazgo de correa, el ecuador se ha beneficiado de un aumento en los gastos sociales, logrando una reducción en la pobreza y el desempleo.sin embargo, estas políticas …
Santiago Basabe Serrano (2011), Jueces sin toga
Cuál es el papel de las cortes en la política latinoamericana?En la última década se ha empezado a explorar esta pregunta en la Ciencia Política, aunque falta mucho por desarrollar.En una revisión de la literatura de la disciplina, Kapiszewski y Taylor (2008) hallan que la mayoría de publicaciones sobre las políticas judiciales en América Latina son narrativas históricas con una metodología cualitativa que limita la replicabilidad de los resultad…
Legislative Coalitions and Judicial Turnover under Political Uncertainty
While judicial turnover in Latin American high courts is often the result of political realignments within the executive branch, the judiciary may also be sensitive to realignments in the legislative branch. The authors use data from the Ecuadorian Constitutional Court to show that under some circumstances, congressional deputies will seek to remove judges further from their own ideal points as the composition of the legislative coalition changes…
Tall, Grande, or Venti
Comparative constitutional studies rank the US president as relatively weak and most Latin American presidents as strong. However, specialized studies suggest that US presidents have great abilities to implement their agendas. We argue that presidents with weak formal powers “reinforce” their ability to impose an agenda (scope), as well as their ability to make those decisions stick (force). These reinforced powers, however, have diminishing retu…
Coalition Erosion and Presidential Instability in Ecuador
This article advances the idea that coalition formation and maintenance in highly fragmented presidential regimes is not only crucial to overcoming policy deadlock, but in some cases, critical to ensuring government survival. To advance this argument, the article looks at the formation and demise of legislative coalitions in Ecuador between 1979 and 2006. The empirical data suggest that paradoxically, government coalitions became more difficult t…
Primary Elections and Candidate Strength in Latin America
Political parties throughout Latin America rely increasingly on primary elections to select candidates for public office. Where they are adopted, primaries are generally touted as moves toward openness and internal party democracy. Yet politicians and party leaders are concerned with winning elections, and there are reasons to expect that primaries select candidates who are weaker in general election competition than other methods. Using data fro…
Primary Elections and Candidate Strength in Latin America
Political parties throughout Latin America rely increasingly on primary elections to select candidates for public office. Where they are adopted, primaries are generally touted as moves toward openness and internal party democracy. Yet politicians and party leaders are concerned with winning elections, and there are reasons to expect that primaries select candidates who are weaker in general election competition than other methods. Using data fro…
Explaining military coups and impeachments in Latin America
We develop a unified theory of presidential instability to explain why presidents are removed from office through military coups or through legal procedures. While some causal factors motivate opponents to overthrow the president irrespective of the specific mechanism employed, other factors expand the relative capabilities of groups inclined to pursue military or civilian action. The first group of variables, including economic recession, protes…
Seven imperatives for improving the measurement of party nationalization with Evidence from Chile
Tall, Grande, or Venti
Comparative constitutional studies rank the US president as relatively weak and most Latin American presidents as strong. However, specialized studies suggest that US presidents have great abilities to implement their agendas. We argue that presidents with weak formal powers “reinforce” their ability to impose an agenda (scope), as well as their ability to make those decisions stick (force). These reinforced powers, however, have diminishing retu…
Coalition Erosion and Presidential Instability in Ecuador
This article advances the idea that coalition formation and maintenance in highly fragmented presidential regimes is not only crucial to overcoming policy deadlock, but in some cases, critical to ensuring government survival. To advance this argument, the article looks at the formation and demise of legislative coalitions in Ecuador between 1979 and 2006. The empirical data suggest that paradoxically, government coalitions became more difficult t…
Party, candidate, and voter incentives under free list proportional representation
Under free list proportional representation voters can: (a) cast preference votes for candidates; (b) cast multiple preferences; and (c) distribute preferences across multiple lists. Alternatively, they can cast a list vote. Our theory shows that office-seeking candidates face incentives to pursue the personal vote, while non-candidate partisans seek the party vote. Voters are in the cross-currents of these forces. Also, since preference voting i…
Bureaucracy and the Failure of Politics
Bureaucratic reforms worldwide seek to improve the quality of governance. In this article, we argue that the major governance failures are political, not bureaucratic, and the first step to better governance is to recognize the underlying political causes. Using illustrations from throughout the world, we contend that political institutions fail to provide clear policy goals, rarely allocate adequate resources to deal with the scope of the proble…
Here's the bias! A (Re-)Reassessment of the Chilean electoral system
Legislative Coalitions and Judicial Turnover under Political Uncertainty
While judicial turnover in Latin American high courts is often the result of political realignments within the executive branch, the judiciary may also be sensitive to realignments in the legislative branch. The authors use data from the Ecuadorian Constitutional Court to show that under some circumstances, congressional deputies will seek to remove judges further from their own ideal points as the composition of the legislative coalition changes…
Latin America Erupts
The election of Guillermo Lasso in Ecuador may indicate a return to the neoliberalism, fiscal austerity, and minority government that marked the contentious politics of the 1990s and 2000s. This" return to the past" is the result of successive governments' inability to resolve longstanding structural deficiencies. Despite overt attempts to forge a new trajectory, Rafael Correa's Citizens' Revolution reflected an illusory stability that depended o…
Measures and votes
The 2013 Ecuadorian general elections
Ecuador
después de seis años en el poder, 2012 marcó el pináculo de la acumulación de poder político para rafael correa.además de una política exterior asertiva y un dominio sobre el poder legislativo, el presidente logró ejercer amplio control sobre la rama judicial y los medios.Bajo el liderazgo de correa, el ecuador se ha beneficiado de un aumento en los gastos sociales, logrando una reducción en la pobreza y el desempleo.sin embargo, estas políticas …
Venezuelan regional elections, democratic backsliding, and autocratization in the 2010s
While explanations of democratic backsliding in Venezuela have focused on a host of national-level processes, few scholars have considered subnational drivers of democratic decay. This paper explains how Venezuelan leaders used electoral manipulation in regional elections, targeted punishment of subnational authorities, and creation of parallel subnational political-administrative bodies to undermine democracy and aid in the consolidation of auth…
The Tools of Institutional Change under Post-Neoliberalism
How have governments in Latin America been able to counteract two decades of neoliberalism and pursue post-neoliberal developmental reforms, and what tools have they used to do so? We argue that post-neoliberal projects are possible through the use of three necessary conditions in a context of economic bonanza: (1) extensive use of the legal-constitutional framework to facilitate interventionism; (2) an increase in the centrality of public planni…
The Organizational Consequences of Politics
The study of the bureaucracy in Latin America, within the study of politics, has long been little more than an afterthought. It is assumed to lie in the realm of public administration, distinct from other regional subfields that have increasingly gained the attention of political scientists. As a result, scholars' understanding of Latin American bureaucratic politics is limited. Here, we conduct a comprehensive survey of peer-reviewed articles to…
Ni Chicha ni Limoná
Chile’s parties have been characterized as ‘European’ in their development and institutionalization, but ‘Latin American’ in their high degree of political localism. Yet the specialized literature has not tested these tendencies nor developed a theory as to how they may coexist. Using the concept of party nationalization, we establish the veracity of the claims in the literature and propose a theory of static and dynamic nationalization developme…
Overcoming the Regional Cleavage? Political Party Nationalization in Ecuador since the Return to Democracy
This work analyses the evolution of Ecuadorian political parties’ territorial coverage since the return to democracy. It uses district-level electoral returns from between 1979 and 2013 for three different types of elections (presidential, national deputy, provincial deputy) to evaluate the territorial homogeneity of the parties in each period («static» nationalization) as well as the homogeneity of temporal change («dynamic» nationalization). Th…
Desempeño económico y protesta ciudadana como detonantes de las caídas presidenciales
En este artículo argumentamos que las crisis económicas (X1) a las que siguen movilizaciones sociales en las calles (X2) explican las salidas anticipadas de presidentes (Y). Luego de identificar los puntos de acuerdo y tensión hallados en los trabajos hasta ahora realizados, proponemos que el estudio de las caídas presidenciales puede hallar un espacio fructífero a partir del análisis de causalidad coyuntural múltiple. Mediante dos casos de inest…
The logic of ambitious legislators in fluid party systems
Classic theories of political ambition assume relatively stable and programmatic party systems. However, in many parts of the world, ‘fluid’ or ‘inchoate’ party systems do not provide ambitious legislators with the electoral benefits associated with stable party brands. In this paper, we examine ambition in fluid party systems: What is the frequency of party switching for legislators who seek re‐election, and what are their characteristics? What …
Primary Elections and Candidate Strength in Latin America
Political parties throughout Latin America rely increasingly on primary elections to select candidates for public office. Where they are adopted, primaries are generally touted as moves toward openness and internal party democracy. Yet politicians and party leaders are concerned with winning elections, and there are reasons to expect that primaries select candidates who are weaker in general election competition than other methods. Using data fro…
Coalition Erosion and Presidential Instability in Ecuador
This article advances the idea that coalition formation and maintenance in highly fragmented presidential regimes is not only crucial to overcoming policy deadlock, but in some cases, critical to ensuring government survival. To advance this argument, the article looks at the formation and demise of legislative coalitions in Ecuador between 1979 and 2006. The empirical data suggest that paradoxically, government coalitions became more difficult t…
Ecuador
después de seis años en el poder, 2012 marcó el pináculo de la acumulación de poder político para rafael correa.además de una política exterior asertiva y un dominio sobre el poder legislativo, el presidente logró ejercer amplio control sobre la rama judicial y los medios.Bajo el liderazgo de correa, el ecuador se ha beneficiado de un aumento en los gastos sociales, logrando una reducción en la pobreza y el desempleo.sin embargo, estas políticas …
Santiago Basabe Serrano (2011), Jueces sin toga
Cuál es el papel de las cortes en la política latinoamericana?En la última década se ha empezado a explorar esta pregunta en la Ciencia Política, aunque falta mucho por desarrollar.En una revisión de la literatura de la disciplina, Kapiszewski y Taylor (2008) hallan que la mayoría de publicaciones sobre las políticas judiciales en América Latina son narrativas históricas con una metodología cualitativa que limita la replicabilidad de los resultad…
Legislative Coalitions and Judicial Turnover under Political Uncertainty
While judicial turnover in Latin American high courts is often the result of political realignments within the executive branch, the judiciary may also be sensitive to realignments in the legislative branch. The authors use data from the Ecuadorian Constitutional Court to show that under some circumstances, congressional deputies will seek to remove judges further from their own ideal points as the composition of the legislative coalition changes…
Tall, Grande, or Venti
Comparative constitutional studies rank the US president as relatively weak and most Latin American presidents as strong. However, specialized studies suggest that US presidents have great abilities to implement their agendas. We argue that presidents with weak formal powers “reinforce” their ability to impose an agenda (scope), as well as their ability to make those decisions stick (force). These reinforced powers, however, have diminishing retu…
Ni Chicha ni Limoná
Chile’s parties have been characterized as ‘European’ in their development and institutionalization, but ‘Latin American’ in their high degree of political localism. Yet the specialized literature has not tested these tendencies nor developed a theory as to how they may coexist. Using the concept of party nationalization, we establish the veracity of the claims in the literature and propose a theory of static and dynamic nationalization developme…
Overcoming the Regional Cleavage? Political Party Nationalization in Ecuador since the Return to Democracy
This work analyses the evolution of Ecuadorian political parties’ territorial coverage since the return to democracy. It uses district-level electoral returns from between 1979 and 2013 for three different types of elections (presidential, national deputy, provincial deputy) to evaluate the territorial homogeneity of the parties in each period («static» nationalization) as well as the homogeneity of temporal change («dynamic» nationalization). Th…
The 2013 Ecuadorian general elections
Seven imperatives for improving the measurement of party nationalization with Evidence from Chile
Here's the bias! A (Re-)Reassessment of the Chilean electoral system
The Organizational Consequences of Politics
The study of the bureaucracy in Latin America, within the study of politics, has long been little more than an afterthought. It is assumed to lie in the realm of public administration, distinct from other regional subfields that have increasingly gained the attention of political scientists. As a result, scholars' understanding of Latin American bureaucratic politics is limited. Here, we conduct a comprehensive survey of peer-reviewed articles to…
Desempeño económico y protesta ciudadana como detonantes de las caídas presidenciales
En este artículo argumentamos que las crisis económicas (X1) a las que siguen movilizaciones sociales en las calles (X2) explican las salidas anticipadas de presidentes (Y). Luego de identificar los puntos de acuerdo y tensión hallados en los trabajos hasta ahora realizados, proponemos que el estudio de las caídas presidenciales puede hallar un espacio fructífero a partir del análisis de causalidad coyuntural múltiple. Mediante dos casos de inest…
Explaining military coups and impeachments in Latin America
We develop a unified theory of presidential instability to explain why presidents are removed from office through military coups or through legal procedures. While some causal factors motivate opponents to overthrow the president irrespective of the specific mechanism employed, other factors expand the relative capabilities of groups inclined to pursue military or civilian action. The first group of variables, including economic recession, protes…
Measures and votes
Bureaucratic Politicization, Partisan Attachments, and the Limits of Public Agency Legitimacy
Which factors determine support for the armed forces? What is the effect of agency politicization on confidence? Existing studies, which draw largely from bureaucratically neutral militaries, find that interpersonal trust and demographic variables play significant roles in determining public confidence in the armed forces. I argue that this is different for a politicized agency. A loss of bureaucratic neutrality activates voters’ partisan attachm…
Bureaucracy and the Failure of Politics
Bureaucratic reforms worldwide seek to improve the quality of governance. In this article, we argue that the major governance failures are political, not bureaucratic, and the first step to better governance is to recognize the underlying political causes. Using illustrations from throughout the world, we contend that political institutions fail to provide clear policy goals, rarely allocate adequate resources to deal with the scope of the proble…
The Tools of Institutional Change under Post-Neoliberalism
How have governments in Latin America been able to counteract two decades of neoliberalism and pursue post-neoliberal developmental reforms, and what tools have they used to do so? We argue that post-neoliberal projects are possible through the use of three necessary conditions in a context of economic bonanza: (1) extensive use of the legal-constitutional framework to facilitate interventionism; (2) an increase in the centrality of public planni…
Party, candidate, and voter incentives under free list proportional representation
Under free list proportional representation voters can: (a) cast preference votes for candidates; (b) cast multiple preferences; and (c) distribute preferences across multiple lists. Alternatively, they can cast a list vote. Our theory shows that office-seeking candidates face incentives to pursue the personal vote, while non-candidate partisans seek the party vote. Voters are in the cross-currents of these forces. Also, since preference voting i…
Student Attitudes Toward Campus Diversity at the U.S. Naval Academy
Although the value of diversity—in terms of race, ethnicity, gender, and socioeconomic status—to the U.S. military has been subject to debate, preferences for diversity at educational institutions for the military officers are rarely examined systematically. To address this, we investigate whether midshipmen at the U.S. Naval Academy favor prioritizing diversity in student admissions and faculty recruitment using conjoint analysis, a method suite…
Latin America Erupts
The election of Guillermo Lasso in Ecuador may indicate a return to the neoliberalism, fiscal austerity, and minority government that marked the contentious politics of the 1990s and 2000s. This" return to the past" is the result of successive governments' inability to resolve longstanding structural deficiencies. Despite overt attempts to forge a new trajectory, Rafael Correa's Citizens' Revolution reflected an illusory stability that depended o…
Venezuelan regional elections, democratic backsliding, and autocratization in the 2010s
While explanations of democratic backsliding in Venezuela have focused on a host of national-level processes, few scholars have considered subnational drivers of democratic decay. This paper explains how Venezuelan leaders used electoral manipulation in regional elections, targeted punishment of subnational authorities, and creation of parallel subnational political-administrative bodies to undermine democracy and aid in the consolidation of auth…
Tracing bilateral security cooperation
The logic of ambitious legislators in fluid party systems
Classic theories of political ambition assume relatively stable and programmatic party systems. However, in many parts of the world, ‘fluid’ or ‘inchoate’ party systems do not provide ambitious legislators with the electoral benefits associated with stable party brands. In this paper, we examine ambition in fluid party systems: What is the frequency of party switching for legislators who seek re‐election, and what are their characteristics? What …
Presidential Failure—or Party Failure? A Review Article
Why Presidents Fail: Political Parties and Government Survival in Latin America by Christopher A. Martínez is a rigorous and innovative contribution to the study of presidential instability. In it, Martínez argues that the institutionalization and relative strength of political parties, particularly the president's own party, are central to understanding why some presidents are removed from office whereas others survive political crises. Drawing …
Political science (24 obras) · Law (20 obras) · Politics (17 obras) · Law (16 obras) · Politics and Society in Latin America (15 obras) · Economics (13 obras) · Political economy (13 obras) · Democracy (11 obras) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (10 obras) · Public Administration (10 obras)