Pathways to Power

Political Recruitment and Candidate Selection in Latin America Edited by Peter M. Siavelis and Scott Morgenstern

Publish Date: 7/9/2008
Dimensions: 6.125 x 9.25
Page Count: 496 pages

Illustrations:

Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-271-03375-4

Hardcover Edition: $65.00Add to Cart

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“A heavily documented and scholarly sophisticated text, it will find its main audience with comparative politics scholars and advanced graduate students in the area of Latin American politics.” —J.A. Rhodes, Choice

“Pathways to Power represents an enormous undertaking by an illustrious team of scholars, and the rewards of this effort are substantial. The book opens a research agenda that previous studies have often acknowledged but less often pursued, because of the empirical demands of doing thorough comparative work on candidate selection. Siavelis and Morgenstern harness the resources, both conceptual and in the form of raw labor, to advance this agenda. The book is a major achievement, and those of us with an interest in political institutions and democracy in Latin America are the beneficiaries.” —John M. Carey, Latin American Politics and Society

Analyses of formal governmental institutions and electoral laws have considerably advanced our understanding of how politics works in Latin America. However, these analyses largely overlook the process of candidate recruitment and selection, an issue intricately tied to political outcomes and the functioning of democracy.

In this volume, a team of experts uses a common analytic framework developed by the editors to analyze the recruitment and selection of executive and legislative candidates in six major countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Uruguay. It does so from two perspectives. First, as a dependent variable, the volume explores the party and legal factors that drive the recruitment and selection process, thus producing particular types of candidates. It then considers candidate type as an independent variable, analyzing the impact of candidate type on campaigns, political parties, and the behavior of legislators and presidents once elected. The result is the first fully comparative inquiry into a central, but largely neglected, determinant of politics in Latin America.

Peter M. Siavelis is Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation Fellow and Associate Professor of Political Science at Wake Forest University.

Scott Morgenstern is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Pittsburgh.

Contents

Part I        Theoretical Framework
1.     Political Recruitment and Candidate Selection in Latin America:
        A Framework for Analysis
        Peter M. Siavelis and Scott Morgenstern

Part II     Political Recruitment and Candidate Selection for the Legislative Branch

2.     Legislative Candidates in Argentina
        Mark P.Jones

3.    Political Ambition, Candidate Recruitment, and Legislative Politics in Brazil
        David Samuels

4.    Legislative Candidate Selection in Chile
        Patricio Navia

5.     Mejor Solo Que Mal Acompañado: Political Entrepreneurs
        and List Proliferation in Colombia
        Erika Moreno and Maria Escobar-Lemmon

6.     Legislative Recruitment in Mexico
        Joy Langston

7.    Why Factions? Candidate Selection and Legislative Politics in Uruguay
        Juan Andres Moraes

Part III        Political Recruitment and Candidate Selection for the Executive Branch

8.     Political Recruitment and Candidate Selection in Argentina:
        Presidents and Governors, 1983 to 2006
        Miguel De Luca

9.    Political Recruitment in an Executive-Centric System:
        Presidents, Ministers, and Governors in Brazil
        Timothy J. Power and Marilia G. Mochel

10.     Political Recruitment and Candidate Selection in Chile, 1990–2006:
        The Executive Branch
        David Altman

11.    Precandidates, Candidates, and Presidents:
        Paths to the Colombian Presidency
        Steven L. Taylor, Felipe Botero, and Brian F. Crisp

12.    Political Recruitment, Governance, and Leadership:
        How Democracy Has Made a Difference in Mexico
        Roderic Ai Camp

13.    Presidential Candidate Selection in Uruguay, 1942 to 2004
        Daniel Buquet and Daniel Chasquetti

Part III     Gender and Political Recruitment

14.     How Do Candidate Recruitment and Selection Processes Affect                     Representation of Women?
            Maria Escobar-Lemmon and Michelle Taylor Robinson

Part IV        Summary and Conclusions

15.     Pathways to Power and Democracy in Latin America
            Scott Morgenstern and Peter M. Siavelis

References
Index
About the Contributors

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