Kenneth M Roberts
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 785651 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Kenneth M Roberts |
| NOMBRES | Kenneth M |
| APELLIDO | Roberts |
| FIRMA | ROBERTS K M |
| AFILIACIONES | Cornell University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6325-6351 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 50 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 1182 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 47 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 3 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 1971 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2025 |
| ÍNDICE H | 16 |
Democratic Backsliding, Resilience, and Resistance
This article assesses two next-level questions in the study of democratic backsliding: democratic resilience and political polarization. It first advances a set of methodological decision points to improve clarity in contemporary debates surrounding democratic backsliding measurement and the possibility of identifying moments of democratic recovery. It then moves to a theoretical and empirical assessment of pathways by which democratic backslidin…
Pathways of Democratic Backsliding, Resistance, and (Partial) Recoveries
We provide an analytical framework that identifies three distinct institutional pathways for democratic backsliding that culminate in executive aggrandizement: legislative capture, plebiscitary override, and executive power grabs. We also identify a fourth pathway of elite collusion that erodes democracy without necessarily concentrating powers in the executive. These four pathways reflect different combinations of ruling and opposition party str…
Performing Crisis? Trump, Populism and the GOP in the Age of Covid-19
Although populist figures are often thought to thrive during crises that allow them to ‘perform’ decisive leadership, the US experience under Donald Trump during the COVID-19 crisis demonstrates that the opposite may sometimes occur. Despite its scientific and medical prowess, the US suffered more coronavirus cases and deaths than any other country in the world during the first year of the pandemic, and this abysmal performance was largely attrib…
Introduction
Mounting evidence suggests that Latin American democracies are characterized by politics and societies becoming more divisive, confrontational, and polarized. This process, which we define here as the "new polarization" in Latin America, seems to weaken the ability of democratic institutions to manage and resolve social and political conflicts. Although recent scholarship suggests that polarization is integral to contemporary patterns of democrat…
Populism and Polarization in Comparative Perspective
Polarization may be the most consistent effect of populism, as it is integral to the logic of constructing populist subjects. This article distinguishes between constitutive, spatial and institutional dimensions of polarization, adopting a cross-regional comparative perspective on different subtypes of populism in Europe, Latin America and the US. It explains why populism typically arises in contexts of low political polarization (the US being a …
Democratic Vulnerabilities and Pathways for Reform
democracy; backsliding; political development; institutions; reform
Tenuous Pacts and Multiparty Coalitions
When and why do legislatures impeach presidents? We analyse six cases of attempted impeachment in Paraguay, Brazil and Peru to argue that intra-coalitional politics is central to impeachment outcomes. Presidents in Latin America often govern with multiparty, ideologically heterogeneous coalitions sustained by tenuous pacts. Coalitions are tested when crises, scandals or mass protests emerge, but presidents can withstand these threats if they tend…
Democratic Resilience
Politics in the United States has become increasingly polarized in recent decades. Both political elites and everyday citizens are divided into rival and mutually antagonistic partisan camps, with each camp questioning the political legitimacy and democratic commitments of the other side. Does this polarization pose threats to democracy itself? What can make some democratic institutions resilient in the face of such challenges? Democratic Resilie…
Crises of Representation and Populist Challenges to Liberal Democracy
Bipolar Disorders
The Trump Presidency and American Democracy
To many observers across the political spectrum, American democracy appears under threat. What does the Trump presidency portend for American politics? How much confidence should we have in the capacity of American institutions to withstand this threat? We argue that understanding what is uniquely threatening to democracy requires looking beyond the particulars of Trump and his presidency. Instead, it demands a historical and comparative perspect…
Democratization in Unlikely Places
The Latin American experience at the end of the 20 th century demonstrates that democratic regimes can be established and stabilized in “unlikely” places that would not appear to have the requisite “preconditions” for democracy as conventionally theorized. The region may thus provide insights into the prospects for democracy in other parts of the world, such as the MENA region, that also lack the traditional correlates of democracy. An understand…
Populism and Political Parties
Populism and party politics are often studied separately, yet neither can be understood in isolation from the other. Any explanation for the rise of populism must inevitably address the deficiencies of party-based modes of political representation for which populism claims to offer a corrective. Indeed, populism thrives where mainstream parties are in crisis, or at least where they exclude or ignore major currents of opinion in the body politic. …
Periodization and Party System Institutionalization in Latin America
The study of party system institutionalization in Latin America is complicated by the fact that political development in the region has been indelibly marked by period-specific stages and challenges of capitalist development. These periods are associated with distinct patterns of social mobilization, class conflict and political incorporation or exclusion of labour and popular constituencies. These patterns heavily condition the programmatic stru…
State of the Field
Although scholars of West European politics have long debated whether the region's highly institutionalised party systems were becoming de‐aligned and electorally unstable, the political fallout from the post‐2008 financial crisis has lent a new sense of urgency to the debate. The threats posed to party systems by economic crises are hardly unique to Europe, however. The Latin American experience with the debt crisis of the 1980s and 1990s sugges…
Democracy in the Developing World
(Re)Politicizing Inequalities
For 20 years following the 1989–1990 democratic transition, Chilean politics was characterized by stable forms of party-based political representation, relatively low levels of social mobilization, and a technocratic consensus around a neoliberal development model that generated rapid and sustained, albeit highly unequal, patterns of economic growth. This sociopolitical matrix was challenged, however, when hundreds of thousands of students and th…
Changing Course in Latin America
This book explores the impact of economic crises and free-market reforms on party systems and political representation in contemporary Latin America. It explains why some patterns of market reform align and stabilize party systems, whereas other patterns of reform leave party systems vulnerable to widespread social protest and electoral instability. In contrast to other works on the topic, this book accounts for both the institutionalization and …
The Politics of Inequality and Redistribution in Latin America's Post-Adjustment Era
Declining social and economic inequalities since the late 1990s coincided with several basic shifts in Latin America’s political landscape, including an electoral turn to the left and a revival of social mobilization from below. These shifts helped to ‘repoliticize’ inequality and return redistributive policies to a central place on the political agenda in the aftermath to the structural adjustment policies of the 1980s and 1990s. Equity gains, h…
Substance and Methods of a Grounded Political Economy
The plea by Murillo, Shrank, and Luna (MSL) for a more "grounded" political economy approach to the study of Latin America is much welcome, and it merits a serious debate among scholars of the region. To help advance that debate, this essay raises several issues regarding the substance and methods of the political economy they advocate
Reforma de mercado, (des)alineamiento programático y estabilidad del sistema de partidos en América Latina
Aunque los regímenes democráticos en América Latina desde la década de 1980 han sido estables, los sistemas de partidos en la región continúan experimentando altos niveles de inestabilidad electoral. Un enfoque de las coyunturas críticas sobre el cambio institucional sugiere que la variación en la estabilidad de los sistemas de partidos está relacionada con el impacto de la liberalización del mercado en el alineamiento o (des)alineamiento program…
Market Reform, Programmatic (De)alignment, and Party System Stability in Latin America
Although democratic regimes in Latin America since the early 1980s have been surprisingly durable, party systems in much of the region continue to experience very high levels of electoral instability. A critical juncture approach to institutional change suggests that variation in party system stability is related to the impact of market liberalization in the 1980s and 1990s on the programmatic alignment-or dealignment-of partisan competition. Mar…
The Resurgence of the Latin American Left
Latin America experienced an unprecedented wave of left-leaning governments between 1998 and 2010. This volume examines the causes of this leftward turn and the consequences it carries for the region in the twenty-first century. The Resurgence of the Latin American Left asks three central questions: Why have left-wing parties and candidates flourished in Latin America? How have these leftist parties governed, particularly in terms of social and e…
The Diffusion of Social Movements
It is widely recognized that social movements may spread - or 'diffuse' - from one site to another. Such diffusion, however, is a complex and multidimensional process that involves different actors, networks, and mechanisms. This complexity has spawned a large body of literature on different aspects of the diffusion process, yet a comprehensive framework remains an elusive target. This book is a response to that need, and its framework focuses on…
The Politics of Economic Crisis in Latin America
Neoliberalism and the Transformation of Populism in Latin America
Latin American populism is generally associated with the developmental stage of import substitution industrialization; it is thus widely presumed to have been eclipsed by the debt crisis of the 1980s and the free market reforms of the neoliberal era. However, the leadership of Alberto Fujimori in Peru suggests that new forms of populism may be emerging despite the fiscal constraints of neoliberal austerity. This new variant of populism thrives in…
Party Systems and Electoral Volatility in Latin America
Three different theoretical explanations are tested for the exceptionally high level of electoral volatility found in contemporary Latin America: economic voting, institutional characteristics of political regimes and party systems, and the structure and organization of class cleavages. A pooled cross-sectional time-series regression analysis is conducted on 58 congressional elections and 43 presidential elections in 16 Latin American countries d…
Populism, Political Conflict, and Grass-Roots Organization in Latin America
Populism remains a widely used but heavily contested concept in the field of com parative politics. It is especially controversial in the study of Latin America, where debates continue over its definitional attributes and empirical referents.' In recent years some scholars have emphasized the intrinsically political character of pop ulism, distancing the concept from any particular stage or model of economic devel opment while arguing that it is …
Social inequalities without class cleavages in Latin America’s neoliberal era
The Trump Presidency and American Democracy
To many observers across the political spectrum, American democracy appears under threat. What does the Trump presidency portend for American politics? How much confidence should we have in the capacity of American institutions to withstand this threat? We argue that understanding what is uniquely threatening to democracy requires looking beyond the particulars of Trump and his presidency. Instead, it demands a historical and comparative perspect…
Market Reform, Programmatic (De)alignment, and Party System Stability in Latin America
Although democratic regimes in Latin America since the early 1980s have been surprisingly durable, party systems in much of the region continue to experience very high levels of electoral instability. A critical juncture approach to institutional change suggests that variation in party system stability is related to the impact of market liberalization in the 1980s and 1990s on the programmatic alignment-or dealignment-of partisan competition. Mar…
Populism and Polarization in Comparative Perspective
Polarization may be the most consistent effect of populism, as it is integral to the logic of constructing populist subjects. This article distinguishes between constitutive, spatial and institutional dimensions of polarization, adopting a cross-regional comparative perspective on different subtypes of populism in Europe, Latin America and the US. It explains why populism typically arises in contexts of low political polarization (the US being a …
The Mobilization of Opposition to Economic Liberalization
Opposition to economic liberalization has intensified since the late 1990s, with Latin America often standing at the forefront of new social and political movements that challenge market globalization. The revival of social protest and populist or leftist political alternatives has shattered the technocratic consensus around neoliberal policies in the region. By demanding an expanded set of social citizenship rights, these movements are also cont…
Party-Society Linkages and Democratic Representation in Latin America
Although it is often said that there is a crisis of party systems and political representation in Latin America, it may be more accurate to assert that a transition is underway from some types of partisan representation to others. This transition is best understood by exploring party-society linkages and their transformation over time. Five types of party-society linkage are identified, along with the social and economic changes that have undermi…
State of the Field
Although scholars of West European politics have long debated whether the region's highly institutionalised party systems were becoming de‐aligned and electorally unstable, the political fallout from the post‐2008 financial crisis has lent a new sense of urgency to the debate. The threats posed to party systems by economic crises are hardly unique to Europe, however. The Latin American experience with the debt crisis of the 1980s and 1990s sugges…
(Re)Politicizing Inequalities
For 20 years following the 1989–1990 democratic transition, Chilean politics was characterized by stable forms of party-based political representation, relatively low levels of social mobilization, and a technocratic consensus around a neoliberal development model that generated rapid and sustained, albeit highly unequal, patterns of economic growth. This sociopolitical matrix was challenged, however, when hundreds of thousands of students and th…
Democratic Backsliding, Resilience, and Resistance
This article assesses two next-level questions in the study of democratic backsliding: democratic resilience and political polarization. It first advances a set of methodological decision points to improve clarity in contemporary debates surrounding democratic backsliding measurement and the possibility of identifying moments of democratic recovery. It then moves to a theoretical and empirical assessment of pathways by which democratic backslidin…
Neoliberalism and Lower-Class Voting Behavior in Peru
It is often assumed that lower classes will resist market-oriented neoliberal reforms that impose economic austerity on popular sectors and exacerbate social inequalities. However, the Peruvian case suggests that there are contexts in which political leaders can implement market reforms while sustaining lower-class political support. Survey data and the electoral results of a 1993 constitutional referendum indicate that President Alberto Fujimori…
Bipolar Disorders
Economic Crisis and the Demise of the Legal Left in Peru
Neoliberal reforms have swept across Latin America with seemingly inexorable force in response to the collapse of state-led capitalist development in the 1980s. The breadth and depth of the free market revolution remain puzzling, however. As Przeworski has argued, the neoliberal prescription is neither so theoretically compelling nor empirically successful as to warrant such irresistible force.' In fact, it is not immediately apparent why the col…
Social Correlates of Party System Demise and Populist Resurgence in Venezuela
Considering its strong, highly institutionalized two-party system, Venezuela was surely one of the least likely countries in Latin America to experience a party system breakdown and populist resurgence. That traditional party system nevertheless was founded on a mixture of corporatist and clientelist linkages to social actors that were unable to withstand the secular decline of the oil economy and several aborted attempts at market liberalization…
Performing Crisis? Trump, Populism and the GOP in the Age of Covid-19
Although populist figures are often thought to thrive during crises that allow them to ‘perform’ decisive leadership, the US experience under Donald Trump during the COVID-19 crisis demonstrates that the opposite may sometimes occur. Despite its scientific and medical prowess, the US suffered more coronavirus cases and deaths than any other country in the world during the first year of the pandemic, and this abysmal performance was largely attrib…
Crises of Representation and Populist Challenges to Liberal Democracy
From the Barricades to the Ballot Box
Pathways of Democratic Backsliding, Resistance, and (Partial) Recoveries
We provide an analytical framework that identifies three distinct institutional pathways for democratic backsliding that culminate in executive aggrandizement: legislative capture, plebiscitary override, and executive power grabs. We also identify a fourth pathway of elite collusion that erodes democracy without necessarily concentrating powers in the executive. These four pathways reflect different combinations of ruling and opposition party str…
Introduction
Mounting evidence suggests that Latin American democracies are characterized by politics and societies becoming more divisive, confrontational, and polarized. This process, which we define here as the "new polarization" in Latin America, seems to weaken the ability of democratic institutions to manage and resolve social and political conflicts. Although recent scholarship suggests that polarization is integral to contemporary patterns of democrat…
Democracy, Counterinsurgency, and Human Rights
The wave of authoritarianism that swept over Latin America in the 1960s and 1970s focused international attention on the human rights violations committed by military dictatorships. As most Latin American nations experienced transitions to democratic rule in the 1980s, hopes were raised that human rights would be more widely respected. Nevertheless, it is questionable whether a regime change from dictatorship to democracy necessarily entails rene…
Democratic Vulnerabilities and Pathways for Reform
democracy; backsliding; political development; institutions; reform
Democracy in the Developing World
The Politics of Economic Crisis in Latin America
Economy and Education
It has become commonplace to acknowledge that there exists a close inter-dependence between educational and economic systems in advanced industrial societies. In what follows I intend to clarify the nature of this inter-dependence by modifying what has become a conventional view in sociology: that basically the relationship between the economy and education is one in which the needs of the economy for particular types of skills and knowledge call…
Leisure And Life Styles Under Welfare Capitalism
The passage from a rural to an urban society is one of the characteristics of modern times. With urbanization and industrialization has developed the concept of the “quality of life”, a concept which is at times adopted by a corporatist ideology preaching economic liberalism and the protection of democratic rights and at other times by a collectivist ideology favoring the defence of collective rights and a state system. Kenneth Roberts calls this…
Sources of Instability in Nuclear Deterrence
Democracy and the Dependent Capitalist State in Latin America
It is an intriguing paradox of Latin American political systems that instability often appears to be their most enduring and dependable feature. Regimes that legitimize their authority—or even consolidate it to the extent of institutionalizing political structures and procedures—are aberrations in Latin America. Historically, alternations between democratic and authoritarian forms of government have occurred not only within nations, but within th…
The Changing Structure of Youth Labour Markets
Democracy, Counterinsurgency, and Human Rights
The wave of authoritarianism that swept over Latin America in the 1960s and 1970s focused international attention on the human rights violations committed by military dictatorships. As most Latin American nations experienced transitions to democratic rule in the 1980s, hopes were raised that human rights would be more widely respected. Nevertheless, it is questionable whether a regime change from dictatorship to democracy necessarily entails rene…
Bullying and Bargaining
Unemployment and Young people's Leisure in Liverpool and Swindon
This article arises from surveys between 1987 and 1989 among representative samples of 16–20 year olds in Swindon and Liverpool. The young people in the former town ran the lower risk of unemployment, had the higher paying jobs and higher personal incomes on average, and, therefore, the higher levels of leisure spending. Overall, however, the young people in Liverpool had the higher rates of participation in leisure activities. Within each area t…
Neoliberalism and the Transformation of Populism in Latin America
Latin American populism is generally associated with the developmental stage of import substitution industrialization; it is thus widely presumed to have been eclipsed by the debt crisis of the 1980s and the free market reforms of the neoliberal era. However, the leadership of Alberto Fujimori in Peru suggests that new forms of populism may be emerging despite the fiscal constraints of neoliberal austerity. This new variant of populism thrives in…
From the Barricades to the Ballot Box
Economic Crisis and the Demise of the Legal Left in Peru
Neoliberal reforms have swept across Latin America with seemingly inexorable force in response to the collapse of state-led capitalist development in the 1980s. The breadth and depth of the free market revolution remain puzzling, however. As Przeworski has argued, the neoliberal prescription is neither so theoretically compelling nor empirically successful as to warrant such irresistible force.' In fact, it is not immediately apparent why the col…
Beyond Romanticism
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Neoliberalism and Lower-Class Voting Behavior in Peru
It is often assumed that lower classes will resist market-oriented neoliberal reforms that impose economic austerity on popular sectors and exacerbate social inequalities. However, the Peruvian case suggests that there are contexts in which political leaders can implement market reforms while sustaining lower-class political support. Survey data and the electoral results of a 1993 constitutional referendum indicate that President Alberto Fujimori…
Labor and Capital in Latin America's Changing Social Landscape
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Party Systems and Electoral Volatility in Latin America
Three different theoretical explanations are tested for the exceptionally high level of electoral volatility found in contemporary Latin America: economic voting, institutional characteristics of political regimes and party systems, and the structure and organization of class cleavages. A pooled cross-sectional time-series regression analysis is conducted on 58 congressional elections and 43 presidential elections in 16 Latin American countries d…
Social inequalities without class cleavages in Latin America’s neoliberal era
Party-Society Linkages and Democratic Representation in Latin America
Although it is often said that there is a crisis of party systems and political representation in Latin America, it may be more accurate to assert that a transition is underway from some types of partisan representation to others. This transition is best understood by exploring party-society linkages and their transformation over time. Five types of party-society linkage are identified, along with the social and economic changes that have undermi…
Social Correlates of Party System Demise and Populist Resurgence in Venezuela
Considering its strong, highly institutionalized two-party system, Venezuela was surely one of the least likely countries in Latin America to experience a party system breakdown and populist resurgence. That traditional party system nevertheless was founded on a mixture of corporatist and clientelist linkages to social actors that were unable to withstand the secular decline of the oil economy and several aborted attempts at market liberalization…
Do Parties Matter?
Populism, Political Conflict, and Grass-Roots Organization in Latin America
Populism remains a widely used but heavily contested concept in the field of com parative politics. It is especially controversial in the study of Latin America, where debates continue over its definitional attributes and empirical referents.' In recent years some scholars have emphasized the intrinsically political character of pop ulism, distancing the concept from any particular stage or model of economic devel opment while arguing that it is …
Latin America's Populist Revival
Latin American populism was widely thought to have run its course by the 1980's as the region embraced far-reaching market reforms. In recent years, however, new and strikingly diverse populist movements have returned to political prominence, reopening historic debates about the meaning of populism and its political and economic correlates. This article suggests that populism should be understood as a top-down process of political mobilization th…
The Crisis of Labor Politics in Latin America
Following the onset of mass politics in early twentieth-century Latin America, party systems were distinguished by different patterns of labor incorporation. In some countries, political competition was realigned by the emergence of a mass-based, labor-mobilizing populist or leftist party. In other countries, party systems remained under the control of traditional oligarchic parties or elite personalities who provided little impetus for labor mob…
The Mobilization of Opposition to Economic Liberalization
Opposition to economic liberalization has intensified since the late 1990s, with Latin America often standing at the forefront of new social and political movements that challenge market globalization. The revival of social protest and populist or leftist political alternatives has shattered the technocratic consensus around neoliberal policies in the region. By demanding an expanded set of social citizenship rights, these movements are also cont…
Beyond Neoliberalism in Latin America?
While the neoliberal model continues to dominate economic and political life in Latin America, people throughout the region have begun to strategize about how to move beyond this model. Twelve cutting
The Contribution of the Icty to the Grave Breaches Regime
This article considers the contribution of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) to the grave breaches regime as the first body to systematically apply these provisions, and argues that the jurisprudence has breathed life into the regime. It has clarified when grave breaches may apply, through the elucidation of the ‘overall control’ test in establishing the internationality of a conflict; how the regime may be appl…
Political science (47 obras) · Law (37 obras) · Politics (37 obras) · Political economy (35 obras) · Economics (27 obras) · Sociology (27 obras) · Law (25 obras) · Latin Americans (23 obras) · Politics and Society in Latin America (22 obras) · Democracy (20 obras)