Introducción Número Especial: OUTLIERS OF PRESIDENTIAL APPROVAL: DYNAMICS, LEVELS, AND RATES

Abstract

Presidential approval tends to exhibit the dynamics of honeymoon, decline, and a rebound as elections near. But several presidential administrations and, indeed, some countries themselves, do not conform to this pattern. This introduction to the special issue identifies and classifies outliers to the typical dynamics of approval using a 12-category taxonomy and data on 140 presidential administrations in 18 Latin American countries from the Executive Approval Project 1.0. Contributors to this special issue use this taxonomy to select outlier cases to explain in their respective articles. This combination of cross-national and case-study approaches suggest a more general theory of presidential approval can be constructed by systematically testing new hypotheses generated in this special issue concerning the role of governing style, political communication, security, policy choice, and institutional context. 1 The authors are grateful to Mariano Torcal and the editorial board of RLOP for their encouragement and support of this special issue. We thank Peter Enns, Gregg Johnson, Aníbal Pérez-Liñán, Sarah Shair-Rosenfield, James Stimson, Christopher Wlezien, Elizabeth Zechmeister, and the other core members of the Executive Approval Project (Jonathan Hartlyn, Timothy Hellwig, Gregory Love, and Matthew Singer) for their feedback on previous drafts of this manuscript and on the structure of the special issue. Additionally, we thank all Executive Approval Project Country Team Leaders and all others who contributed the data that make these analyses possible. Finally, we greatly appreciate the work of two anonymous reviewers who provided excellent comments on all articles in this special issue. 2 Professor, Department of Political Science and Director of the Center for Human Rights and Democracy, Georgia State University; Core Member, Executive Approval Project; rcarlin@gsu.edu. 3 Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Core Member, Executive Approval Project; cmg@unc.edu. 8 REVISTA LATINOAMERICANA DE OPINIÓN PÚBLICA / NÚMERO 9