Continually confronted with myriad threats, transnational drug-trafficking organizations (TDTOs) employ different strategies to mitigate risk. In this article, we focus on the political consequences of these risk-mitigation strategies, and offer a theoretical framework through which to understand them. We start from the premise that TDTOs are not inherently political actors. Nonetheless, as illegal enterprises with access to considerable financial resources, TDTOs are (if often inadvertently) capable of shaping politics in important ways if and when they invest in protection, provided by both state and nonstate actors. When these trafficking groups invest in protection, they are capable, firstly, of determining who is able to access political power and, secondly, of affecting how political power is exercised, reshaping the institutions used to govern society—though above all at the subnational level. We provide illustrative evidence for our framework from the Colombian city of Medellín.

The increase in the mobilization power of public sector unions is one of the most puzzling features of twenty-first-century labor politics in both advanced and emerging market democracies. We posit that public labor mobilization is driven by economic, institutional, and political factors. Mobilization decreases during the expansionary phase of the economic cycle, when incumbents can placate public unions with state resources; when collective bargaining is mandatory; and when governments share a common partisan identity with a unified labor leadership, facilitating a “political exchange” in which union moderation is traded for wage and non-wage concessions. Based on a qualitative, subnational comparative case-study approach, we trace union organizational dynamics and coalition building process in Argentina’s education sector, and seek to identify their effects on teacher union militancy or moderation across the country’s provinces between 2006 and 2019. We illuminate the causal mechanisms and temporal sequences of union mobilization/moderation by examining both “typical” and “deviant” cases of our general theory

One of the most persistent challenges in the study of regional politics in Italy is the lack of systematized data and information about the composition of regional legislatures and governments and the profiles of elected officials. In this paper, we describe the ITREGPARL dataset, a new comprehensive dataset of Italian regional politics comprising 6077 regional politicians from 1993 to 2020. It includes information about regional councillors, regional ministers, presidents and vice-presidents of the regional council, regional presidents and vice-presidents. Along with socio-demographic characteristics – gender, age, previous profession, education – it includes data such as experience and incumbency, number of mandates, length of service and partisanship. It also includes region-level variables, such as geographical area, type of gender quotas and the regional authority index.

This article investigates the pattern of economic voting at the regional level in Italy. It focuses on the elections held in 18 out of 20 Italian regions from 1995 to 2020. Retrospective voting is examined by using the theory of economic voting, measured at the subnational level. By providing some inferential models and controlling for the impact of phases of recession, this article tests the hypothesis whereby the incumbent regional government is rewarded (or punished) by voters in the event of a good (or poor) state of the regional economy. It mainly considers macroeconomic variables, focusing on the relationship between the unemployment rate (at both national and regional levels) and the electoral performance of the incumbent executive. The empirical analysis shows that, particularly during periods of ‘quiet politics’, economic voting also occurs at the local level and thus the regional unemployment rate affects regional rulers' electoral outcomes.

Mitigating climate change requires a global transition from fossil fuels to a “green economy” driven by renewable energies. This shift has fostered massive investments in mining resources, notably lithium in South America, needed to store renewable energies. These mining ventures often produce harmful externalities where lithium is located. In Argentina, a major producer, striking variation has occurred in the fortunes of lithium-mining projects. In some instances, mining companies offered concessions that mitigated environmental damage and improved local socioeconomic conditions. In others, companies made minimal concessions, and in a third set they halted projects in response to local resistance. Why do mining ventures result alternatively in negotiated, unnegotiated, or aborted extraction? The article proposes a new typology of modes of extraction together with a multilevel explanatory framework that centers on the strengths and strategies of transnational mining companies, subnational governments, and local communities in setting the terms for extracting lithium.

High commodity prices have led to the proliferation of informal gold mining in the Andes. Despite their limited financial capacity, informal gold miners have proved capable of influencing national-level policy outcomes. Why are they able to do so? This study puts forward a comparative study of Bolivia, where informal miners have been politically incorporated, and Peru, where they have been traditionally excluded. It shows how, despite the very different institutional contexts, informal miners are similarly capable of leveraging their contribution to the local economy and the fracture between the central state and its peripheral branches to form pressure groups with local authorities. Based on 120 interviews with politicians and leaders from the largest gold-mining communities in Bolivia and Peru, this study contributes to the scholarship on state-society relations, resource politics, and decentralization by outlining the conditions and mechanism through which informal groups contest exclusionary resource governance in fragmented states.

Open political debate on immigration and integration policies (IIP) among Canadian political parties has been relatively limited. As Canada's immigration and integration systems become more decentralized, what about political debates about IIP in Canadian provinces? This article examines how IIP evolved across time by focusing on political parties’ claims, frames and pledges in party platforms and newspapers, using the cases of Ontario and Quebec. In Ontario, IIP were primarily framed as an economic and social resource. However, following the event of 9/11, new frames began to be introduced, contributing to a heightened salience and polarization. In contrast to Quebec, however, this politicization was not sustained. In Quebec, IIP were only marginally a matter of debate until the mid-2000s. This changed following the Hérouxville event, as these topics became salient, and dominant frames of immigration as economic and social resources were challenged by those of immigration as economic and cultural threats.

The objective of this article is to explain the territorial variation in indigenous political representation at the subnational level in Peru. The Peruvian state introduced a weak indigenous electoral quota, and its effects have varied across provinces. This article presents a typology that combines descriptive and substantive dimensions of political representation. Using a subnational comparative method, the four cases studied illustrate distinct dynamics. The article argues that these differing dynamics are explained by a combination of sociostructural variables (i.e., political articulation and cohesion of indigenous organizations as a result of a conflict) and individual variables (i.e., candidates’ political capital). This article demonstrates how, even in an institutionally adverse environment that does not feature ethnic parties, both descriptive and substantive indigenous political representation can be achieved, and that these two dimensions are not necessarily related. The article is based on fieldwork and interviews with key provincial political actors.

Does foreign direct investment (FDI) promote or hinder good governance in a host state? In this article, I analyze the effects of FDI on subnational-level corruption across 63 provinces in Vietnam and find that FDI has both promoted and hindered control of corruption. Initially, FDI creates resources and incentives to improve governance and reduce corruption for early winner provinces. Yet, once FDI begins to pour in, different dynamics start to take effect. While the resources and incentives accrued to FDI-recipient provinces become less effective in further curbing corruption as more FDI flows in, FDI provides leaders of those provinces with growing opportunities and increased abilities to seek and pursue rents, leading to a prevalence of corruption. Using both qualitative and quantitative data, I find strong evidence that the control of corruption is weakest at the extremes: in provinces with the least and the most FDI.

This article investigates the effect of local economic conditions on voting behavior by focusing on the export-oriented agricultural areas of Argentina during the commodities boom. It assesses the marginal effect of export wealth on electoral outcomes by studying the impact of soybean production, the main Argentine export product during this period. The combination of rising agricultural prices and a salient national tax on exports allows us to evaluate how wealth and tax policy shape local electoral behavior. This study relies on a spatial econometric analysis of the vote across Argentine departments for the 2007–15 period, along with qualitative evidence from interviews and a descriptive analysis of government appointments.

The year 2010 saw five gubernatorial elections in Mexico in which the PAN and the left built electoral alliances. These alliances were made in states with authoritarian features, where the PRI had never lost the governor’s office. In Oaxaca, Puebla, and Sinaloa the PRI lost, while in Durango and Hidalgo it did not. Why did the electoral outcome differ in similar cases? This article argues that the outcome of each election, turnover or no turnover, depended on the behavior of the elites, both authoritarian and opposition. The PRI lost when the authoritarian elite fractured while the opposition was unified, including the groups that had defected from the established elite.