Why are some legislators more effective than others in fragmented presidential systems? I argue that in Brazil’s fractionalized party system, legislative member organizations (LMOs) supply policy and political information that parties often lack, enabling lawmakers to advance bills. I test this claim using novel legislative effectiveness scores (LESs) for sponsors and rapporteurs in Brazil’s lower chamber. Quantitative results show that LMO affiliation is associated with higher effectiveness, but only in highly structured organizations. Public security LMOs boost both sponsorship and rapporteurship, while agribusiness LMOs increase rapporteurship effectiveness. Weakly organized LMOs show null effects. Party affiliation matters, but parties do not consistently provide information and coordination. Qualitative data identify two mechanisms by which strong LMOs operate: placing aligned members in key positions and leveraging expertise to shape agendas and voting cues. These findings recast effectiveness in Brazil as a function of cross-party informational networks rather than parties alone and identify scope conditions under which LMOs matter in other multiparty presidential democracies.

This response memo offers a critical reassessment of the claim that ideological self-placement in Chile reflects a form of social identity. While the article under discussion provides compelling evidence of ideological stability, it risks conflating political linkage with social identity formation. In contexts of partisan decline, such as Chile’s post-authoritarian landscape, ideological categories may persist not as thick communal identities but as affective rejection fields. Drawing on insights from political psychology and Latin American party system research, this memo proposes an alternative hypothesis: ideological stability is structured by negative partisan identities—emotionally charged, ideologically coherent rejections that shape voter behavior without requiring strong organizational anchors. A stylized conceptual map illustrates the geometry of rejection in Chile’s political space. These affective coordinates help explain voter alignment in the absence of coherent in-groups or traditional parties. While preliminary, this framework underscores the importance of moving beyond ideological self-placement as a proxy for social identity and calls for renewed attention to the emotional architecture of opposition. In doing so, it invites a broader research agenda on how negative partisanship operates across fragmented democracies in Latin America.

This rebuttal responds to the argument that negative partisan identities, such as opposition to past regimes or to specific political parties, provide the primary explanation for political stability in contexts of partisan decline. While rejection dynamics do shape some voting behavior, especially in second-round contests, we contend that they cannot account for the persistence of structured electoral competition over time. Our evidence shows that many voters are defined not only by whom they reject, but also by the ideological families they belong to. We provide survey evidence demonstrating that, when ideology and negative partisanship are measured on comparable terms, the apparent advantage of the latter in explaining vote choice disappears. Recent electoral cycles further illustrate that candidates with clear ideological identities consistently capture the majority of electoral support, whereas alternatives lacking a defined ideological anchor struggle to gain traction. We conclude that ideology, understood as a social identity, is the central force generating long-term stability in electoral competition, while negative partisanship intensifies conflict in short-term, high-stakes contests.

How can electoral competition remain stable despite a weak party system? We argue that ideological identification can stabilize electoral behavior, serving as a substitute for weak or delegitimized political parties. Focusing on Chile, we combine repeated cross-sectional surveys, a conjoint experiment, and text analysis. We find that while partisanship has declined sharply over the past three decades, ideological self-placement remains remarkably stable. Conjoint results show that ideological alignment outweighs issue alignment in shaping vote choice. Drawing on survey questions and topic modeling of open-ended responses, we uncover emotionally charged and moralized language tied to ideological groups, suggesting that ideology in Chile displays features of a social identity, including intergenerational transmission, symbolic boundaries, and in-group affect. We also examine how intense political events, such as a plebiscite to end a dictatorship, shape long-term ideological attachments. Our findings offer insight into how electoral competition can remain ideologically structured even in the absence of strong parties, a pattern increasingly relevant in contemporary democracies.

This article examines the national and international context within which Colombian immigration policy developed in the mid-twentieth century. Focussing on Republican refugees from the Spanish Civil War, it traces how and why policymakers and public opinion began to see these groups as potentially harmful to society. It argues that Colombian immigration policy emerged at the intersection of multiple, evolving discourses of race which both helped frame and were shaped by anxieties over a mass influx from Spain. By exploring the stories of several Republicans who tried to come to Colombia, the article also reveals how they helped shape immigration policy.

Organized crime generates violence, economic instability, and institutional challenges, forcing millions of citizens worldwide to change their place of residence annually. While the experiences of those fleeing violence are well-documented, less attention has been given to frontline workers assisting them. This study addresses this gap by examining the types of coping mechanisms that frontline officials use to protect women escaping organized crime in Mexico. Drawing on 24 in-depth interviews with key actors from governmental and non-governmental organizations, we identify three types of coping mechanisms: individual, institutional, and social. These strategies demonstrate the resilience and ingenuity of workers navigating resource shortages, legal constraints, and personal safety risks. Our findings contribute to the literature on organized crime by illuminating how those working on the ground adapt to systemic deficiencies and protect victims. By understanding these strategies, we hope to inform more effective policies to support frontline officials and mitigate the societal harms of organized crime.

What happens when scientists, dedicated to basic scientific research, are called forth to participate in politically fraught scenarios? We explore this question through a qualitative study of the intimate experiences of scientists who developed the first Argentine National Glacier Inventory (2010–2018). This inventory was entrusted to IANIGLA, a state-funded scientific institute. It arose from the world’s first glacier protection law, drafted to protect all glacier and periglacial environments as hydrological reserves as mining megaprojects encroached on them. This article examines the failed attempts to turn periglacial environments into “governable objects” (Hellgren 2022). Interviews and an auto-ethnography among scientists involved reveal that these failures can be attributed to unresolved tensions in upscaling and downscaling practices that are needed to simultaneously produce world-class climate science and locally relevant policy science. The failure to anticipate or resolve those tensions, in the context of grassroots opposition to mining, undermined trust in science and government, pointing to the local limits of global climate science.

In Indigenous Lenca communities of western Honduras, craft production is a central livelihood that has economically supported artisan households for generations. In some communities, crafts like pottery are regarded as cultural patrimony, with socioeconomic and spiritual value that reflects Lenca identity. However, perceptions of which crafts are “Lenca tradition” and what it means to be a Lenca person in Honduras today vary greatly among the general public. Narratives of indigeneity are heavily shaped by the state and national tourism industry. Promotion of Lenca crafts, considered most commercially appealing, dominates national tourism marketing but often misaligns with how Lenca artisans define themselves and their craft practices. Constructions of “national identity” distance artisans from directly interacting with tourists and disconnect them from controlling the promotion of their respective identities and livelihoods. Through a comparative analysis of craft practices in five Lenca communities that are variably defined as “traditional” either in the tourism industry or by artisans themselves, this work asks: How have state-constructed definitions of “tradition” shaped public understanding of Indigenous Lenca identity in Honduras, from the colonial period to the present? How do these misconceptions impact Lenca artisans participating in the national tourism industry? How do Lenca artisans themselves define their contemporary craft practices and react against inaccurate identity narratives affecting their livelihoods? Drawing on neoliberal multiculturalism, this project explores complex and changing definitions of “tradition” and reactive strategies artisans use to maintain craft livelihoods and reclaim ownership of what it means to be an Indigenous Lenca artisan in Honduras today.

El Consejo Comunitario Eladio Ariza, en los Montes de María, concibe su territorio como un espacio de vida que preserva sus costumbres afrodescendientes y prácticas colectivas. Como autoridad étnica, organiza y regula el uso del territorio, priorizando lo comunitario. Sin embargo, su territorialidad ha sido impactada por políticas estatales de ordenamiento que, lejos de conciliar con las visiones locales, han generado tensiones entre las lógicas comunitarias y estatales. A ello se suman las consecuencias del conflicto armado interno y las presiones territoriales derivadas de planes de desarrollo que no corresponden a su visión propia. El Programa de Desarrollo con Enfoque Territorial (PDET), surgido del Acuerdo de Paz, representó una esperanza de transformación, pero no se ha implementado en su totalidad. Así, el territorio de Eladio Ariza se ha visto reconfigurado por estas dinámicas externas, consolidando “territorios de diferencia” donde confluyen intereses y visiones contrastantes.

This collection of articles focuses on some instruments that served to finance the expansion of private European trade and enabled the European intermediation of global commerce in the early modern period. Because they were distinct from those featured by the financial modernization of northern European economies -i.e. banks, bills and bonds, they have been conventionally assumed as archaic and lacking the efficiency and productivity gains of the modern vehicles and institutions. However, they coexisted, completed the financial architecture of Europe, and allowed a substantial extra-European commerce whose expansion was at the core of the Smithian growth of the period. Their persistence, scope and geographical reach were central for the expansion and integration of markets in the early modern globalization. Yet, their understanding is confined to micro-case studies of trades that reliant in cash payments and remittances were lagging in the innovations that revolutionized financial markets and long-distance commerce. This view also ignores their relevance even for the very European economy. Whilst the origins preceded the commercial expansion of Europe, research of the European trade finance has mostly focused on institutions of corporate models of trade finance and their institutional spillovers to bonds markets and banking infrastructure that developed exceptionally in some European economies. The alternative instrument common to these contribution was probably more ubiquitous than others more “modern” and persisted despite the flaws associated with its relative “archaism”.

En el marco de la Comisión para el Acceso a la Verdad, el Esclarecimiento Histórico y el Impulso a la Justicia de las Violaciones Graves a los Derechos Humanos Cometidas de 1965 a 1990, creada en 2021 en México por decreto presidencial, entre los años 2022 y 2024 se organizaron foros regionales donde se presentaron diversos testimonios sobre la violencia política infringida durante dicho período histórico. Desde un enfoque que comprende a los mismos como prácticas narrativas de memoria y resistencia que son significadas desde el presente, este artículo aborda los testimonios narrados durante el Diálogo por la Verdad en el Estado de Chiapas. El análisis muestra formas de visibilización de la agencia política indígena en contexto contrainsurgente.