We analyze the social protection policy response to COVID-19 and its impact on household incomes in Uruguay during 2020 and 2021, using static microsimulation methods. From the onset of the crisis, the Uruguayan government implemented adjustments to existing social protection policies as well as a new transfer and an emergency tax. Our results indicate that Uruguay’s enhanced social protection system prevented poverty from increasing by 2.8 and 3.7 percentage points in 2020 and 2021, respectively. The COVID-19 enhancements contributed 1.3 and 1.6 percentage points of this total protective effect. The effects were bigger among households with children. The most important instruments were unemployment insurance in 2020 and the conditional cash transfer directed at households with children in 2021. Taken together, these modifications to the social protection system prevented the Gini index from increasing by around 0.7 additional percentage points.

This article estimates separate individual and partisan incumbencyeffects in Uruguay’s regional elections (1971–2020). It contributes tothe limited evidence on incumbency effects in developing countries andto the emerging Differences-in-Discontinuities (Diff-in-Disc)literature, which addresses endogeneity and disentangles candidatefrom party effects within the same institutional setting. Exploitingconstitutionally mandated term limits and strong electoralenforcement, we identify clean causal effects using close electionsunder open and closed races. Results show a large and statisticallysignificant individual incumbency effect of approximately 74%,alongside non-significant partisan effects. These findings suggestthat incumbency in Uruguay is primarily personal rather thanparty-based. The results contribute to debates on personalization ofpolitics, proportional representation, and institutional developmentin Latin America, highlighting how strong democratic institutions cancoexist with highly individualized electoral dynamics.

Durante la Primera Globalización en América Latina, el Estado uruguayo fue un caso excepcional en la región debido a sus elevados niveles de recaudación y gasto público per cápita. Este artículo examina la construcción histórica de capacidades fiscales en Uruguay entre 1852 y 1913 a través de la reconstrucción de series de ingresos y gastos estatales, basadas en fuentes primarias oficiales. Sobre la base de una estructura tributaria reducida, el Estado encontró en el comercio exterior su principal sustento económico, lo cual posibilitó el establecimiento de una oferta de bienes públicos concentrada en funciones estatales primarias. A partir del último cuarto del siglo xix, logró incrementar la recaudación directa y expandir el gasto público en funciones secundarias.

This article analyzes the political process leading to the recent legalization of abortion in Uruguay, underlying the multiple strategies resorted to by the women’s movement to create a social consensus around women’s rights—and, more generally, around sexual and reproductive rights—as belonging to the realm of human rights. It seeks to identify the main reasons accounting for the movement’s success, which appear to be connected to the breadth of its repertoire of actions, progressively expanded to include various (and sometimes innovative) strategies operating in both the realm of civil society and public opinion and the sphere of political institutions and political representation. Focusing on the dyad speech action, the article examines the movement’s broadened repertoire of actions as well as its discourse setting human rights as a horizon of legitimacy in the context of a cultural war against a countermovement organized in defense of the status quo. Last but not least, it analyzes the issues pertaining to political representation brought to the forefront by the clashes, discrepancies, and disconnections between social movement and political institutions.

Amidst a global turn towards authoritarianism and populism, there are few contemporary examples of state-led democratization. This article discusses how Uruguay's Frente Amplio (FA) party has drawn on a unique national democratic cultural heritage to encourage a coupling of participatory and representative institutions in “a politics of closeness.” The FA has reinvigorated Batllismo, a discourse associated with social justice, civic republicanism, and the rise of Uruguayan social democracy in the early twentieth century. At the same time, the FA's emphasis on egalitarian participation is inspired by the thought of Uruguay's independence hero José Artigas. I argue that the cross-weave of party and movement, and of democratic citizenship and national heritage, encourages the emergence of new figures of the citizen and new permutations for connecting citizens with representative institutions. The FA's “politics of closeness” is an example of how state-driven democratization remains possible in an age described by some as “post-democratic.”

In recent years, Uruguay has experienced a growing increase in service work that is typical of informational and digital capitalism. The case of work on digital platforms is a paradigmatic example of the changes in work modalities in the country. These platforms present informal, flexible work modalities that must meet goals or objectives within a work process measured and controlled by algorithms. This work aims to contribute to the understanding of union experiences developed in a service platform company. We focus on the collective experience of the Union of PedidosYa Workers to shed light on the strategies employed within the union movement in relation to these non-traditional workers. Our research enabled us to identify an array of difficulties for union organisation in these sectors, ranging from the institutional framework in which forms of collective action are developed to the specific characteristics of the forms of work organisation.

Gelman v. Uruguay (2011) was a watershed moment in Uruguayan civil society’s quest for accountability, prompting official repeal of the country’s 1986 Amnesty Law. Much scholarship about the case centres around the immediate aftermath of the decision, largely on initial compliance and cautious optimism for accountability. Yet the analysis of a longer timeframe reveals mixed results. The article examines how initial momentum unravelled as conditions for compliance weakened amid backlash against the judgment. It reveals the challenges with implementing criminal accountability measures, even in established democracies with otherwise strong human rights records, and argues for the importance of understanding compliance as a non-linear process.

What is the origin of the Frente Amplio? While most contributions focus on party-building strategies and the electoral success of the Left, scholars have overlooked the previous process of party formation. This paper studies the Frente Amplio's formation in 1971 as a case of complete electoral coordination between extant parties, factions and individual left-wing politicians who understood the electoral inefficiencies of competing with each other. Making use of a historical narrative, our account complements other approaches, suggesting the critical role of electoral coordination, favoured by two systemic conditions (electoral stability and programmatic politics) that eased the process of party formation.

Based on declassified documents from the archives of the Czechoslovak intelligence agency (StB) and the contemporary press, this article delves into the working mechanisms of the Communist secret services in Latin America in the 1960s. Specifically, focusing on the case of the newspaper Época, it deals with the production of articles aimed at discrediting the capitalist states and their publication in the press through local collaborators. The link between the StB and the Uruguayan newspaper, which claimed to be politically and economically independent, was pragmatic and, for a time, helped both parties to achieve their political ends. While the StB managed to obtain a space where it could carry out its operations, Época's motivations were not only ideological but also economic and related to the urgent desire of the non-Communist Left to get funding for its political activities.

Generalizability of extant findings about media treatment of women in politics is uncertain because most research examines candidates for the legislature or heads of government, and little work moves beyond Anglo-American countries. We examine six presidential cabinets in Costa Rica, Uruguay, and the United States, which provide differing levels of women’s incorporation into government. These cases permit us to test hypotheses arguing that differences in media treatment of men and women cabinet ministers will decrease as women’s inclusion in government expands, and that media treatment of women is more critical when women head departments associated with masculine gender stereotypes. Results show that greater incorporation of women into government is associated with fewer gendered differences in media coverage, tone of minister coverage is more favorable for women who hold masculine stereotyped portfolios, and that the media does present qualifications of women cabinet ministers.

The historiography on Uruguay during the Cold War has identified the period 1959–62 as a key juncture in the process of political polarisation that culminated in the fall of democracy in 1973. Based on the analysis of press articles and other documentary sources, I describe the role played by the main fraction of the Partido Colorado (Red Party) led by Luis Batlle Berres in promoting polarisation of the Uruguayan political system in those years. My findings contradict the conventional depiction of Batlle Berres as a moderate who tried to prevent the polarisation provoked by other agents.