Assessing current trends in the region: Democracy, authoritarianism, migration, employment, climate change, and foreign policy

Our current issue of Latin American Policy (LAP) contains six pieces of state-of-the-art research on trendy topics covering a myriad of riveting subjects. We also include four excellent essays in our Perspectives section dealing with the most pressing problems affecting key countries.

Jaroslav Bílek's article explores the relationship between electoral manipulation and postelection protests in Latin America. By reviewing 221 elections in the region between 1980 and 2020, he suggests that preelection manipulation does not increase the likelihood of postelection protests. Furthermore, contrary to findings from previous studies, he concludes that intimidation and vote buying have no effect.

Ana Marcela Paredes Encalada's research offers the use of a new construct—the so-called Plebiscitary Electoral Democracy Index. To validate her index proposal, she conducts an empirical test focusing on the Andean Community countries over the past two decades, comparing the existing Electoral Democracy Index with the new proposed index from 2003 to 2022. The findings reveal that her proposed index reflects a consistently lower level of democracy than that measured by the Electoral Democracy Index across all Andean cases.

Joana Castro Pereira and Eduardo Viola identify the factors that hindered the achievement of Brazil's climate goals from the early 2010s to 2022 and investigate how Lula's new mandate is reversing this situation. Brazil currently shows renewed pro-climate momentum, the authors say, especially in Amazon deforestation control. However, hurdles persist, including resistance from Congress, financial frailties, a focus on fossil fuels, and an uncertain foreign policy.

Feliciano Sá Guimarães and Ivan Filipe Fernandes analyze the levels of discrimination against immigrants in Brazil, focusing on housing, health care, and job training policies for four groups—Haitians, Germans, Venezuelans, and internal migrants known as nordestinos. Their results reveal a widespread negative perception of all groups across all scenarios, except the local group of migrants. The findings suggest that the Brazilian public's discrimination against foreigners is linked to a pervasive misperception of the social and economic threat immigrants allegedly pose to the nation.

Oscar A. Martínez-Martínez and Javier Reyes-Martínez's contribution shows that in the first 2 years of the Covid-19 pandemic in Mexico, and especially during the time of confinement, labor informality was not a means to maintain household income, as had happened in the country during other times of economic crisis. Likewise, important sectoral effects were found, with the most affected industries being nonessential ones. Their study also suggests that gender gaps widened, with women being the most affected in the formal and informal labor market due to pre-existing conditions that were aggravated by the pandemic.

Alejandro Monsiváis argues that López Obrador is a populist leader who also features prominent illiberal and anti-pluralist attributes. His article examines the political process that led to the legal modifications he introduced to Mexico's electoral system. The reform, he says, was supposed to democratize the regime, eliminate electoral fraud, and reduce the cost of elections, though, in fact, it represented a step forward in establishing what the author calls “competitive authoritarianism.”

In our Perspectives section, we include four essays dealing with hot-button topics currently affecting the region. Ignacio Labaqui offers us a fresh and thorough assessment of Javier Milei's controversial new administration in Argentina. Alejandro Espinosa Herrera argues that Mexico's recent federal election points to a regression to single-party government, erosion of democracy, and authoritarianism. He explores the reasons that led to the reversal and proposes a further exploration of three mechanisms—parties and party system institutionalization, clientelism and party-voters' linkages, and role of elites. His goal is to define a research agenda for Mexico as a case study to improve the comparative politics literature in the areas of democratic transitions, reversals, and populism.

Fernanda Bárcia de Mattos, Gabriela Dutrénit, Valeria Esquivel, and Juan Carlos Moreno-Brid offer us a comprehensive survey on how processes of technological upgrading, particularly automation, interact with local social structures and institutional systems in the apparel and footwear industries to affect women's and men's employment. In-depth case studies in two apparel and two footwear manufacturing plants, based on interviews with employers and workers, were conducted in Mexico. They conclude that in all factories, technological upgrading was implemented in moments of production expansion, and the expansion of demand has more than compensated the expected labor substitution effect of automation. They also conclude that the absence of labor-saving effects means there has been no defeminization of the industry's workforce.

Finally, Ambassador Olga Pellicer, who has had a long and brilliant career as a Mexican diplomat and academic, and who was a member of the Advisory Group to the Secretary General of the United Nations for Disarmament Affairs, highlights the importance of the maintenance of nuclear-free zones in Latin America, such as the one incepted by the Tlatelolco Agreement, at a time when Russia's invasion of Ukraine increases the threat of a new wave of nuclear arms escalation.

Finally, our readers will find a book review on a subject that has not been sufficiently explored—the effects of Arab–Latin American business elites on the region's imageries and identities.

Isidro Morales, Editor-in-Chief, is retired professor of the School of Social Sciences and Government at Tecnológico de Monterrey and an external fellow of the Mexico–United States Center and the Energy Center at Rice University's Baker Institute.