Latin America's New Research Articles

Impact Evaluation of Cash-For-Care in Latin America's New Long-Term Care Policies: A Randomized Controlled Trial Pilot Study in Costa Rica.

Latin America is aging rapidly. Thus, governments in the region are reformulating their social protection policies. In 2022, Costa Rica passed a national long-term care law. A discussion developed on how to provide such care, whether through public or private in-kind benefits or cash-for-care (CfC) to beneficiaries. CfC has been used in developed countries with various outcomes. However, there are still no evaluations of its effects in middle-income countries. The objective of this study was to evaluate the impact of CfC pilot study on female caregivers in a middle-income country. The expectations of the program were to find positive effects of CfC on caregivers. After conducting a literature review, we developed four domains of analysis: labor market participation, time for personal activities, use of CfC, and caregiver burnout. The results indicate that CfC has no significant impact on caregivers' integration into the labor market, or ability to have leisure time. However, there was a positive effect on the funding of basic needs and mitigation of factors predicting burnout.

Understanding the Expansion of Latin America's New Social Welfare Regimes

Latin American countries have been described as truncated welfare states. However, the recent expansion of innovative social welfare programs have brought millions of excluded citizens access to social benefits. This review article examines a new body of scholarship that studies how democratic political competition has created the institutional context for social welfare expansion. This literature makes several important contributions to the study of distributive politics. It moves beyond regime type and party ideology and focuses on the nature of domestic political institutions and citizen-state linkages within Latin American democracies. Countries with robust political competition and denser ties to constituents have had the most extensive welfare expansion, and non-partisan programs have undermined clientelism. In single party dominated settings, the political incentives for informal and clientelist provision remains significant.

The Paradox of Adversity: The Contrasting Fates of Latin America's New Left Parties

The Paradox of Adversity: The Contrasting Fates of Latin America's New Left Parties

Latin America's New Regional Architecture: A Cooperative or Segmented Regional Governance Complex?

In Latin America the repercussions of the proliferation and overlapping of regional organizations are discussed widely. This article examines the opposing views on this process. Some authors postulate that an exhaustion of integration in Latin America will end up in segmented regionalism and hemispheric disintegration. Others endorse a variable geometry of integration that facilitates intraregional cooperation and minimizes the risk of veto players and zero-sum politics. The article takes Latin America as a vantage point to analyse the topic of interacting and overlapping regional organizations from a more general perspective. It asks about the conditions under which the proliferation and overlapping of regional organizations might have positive or negative effects (on regional integration and cooperation). Additionally, it advocates broadening the analytical focus and replacing the analytical concepts of regional integration and cooperation with the analytical concept of regional governance. Regional governance more adequately captures and integrates different patterns of regional cooperation and different regional projects that result in overlapping regional organizations. Instead of looking at the proliferation of regional organizations from a perspective of fragmentation, this article contends that the focus should be redirected to analysing how different regional organizations interact. Regional interaction patterns can vary between synergistic, cooperative, conflictive, or segmented regional governance (complexes). In an initial application of this analytical scheme, the article summarizes the changing regional cooperation patterns in South America since 1990. In the conclusions it outlines some preliminary ideas for a future research agenda on regional governance (complexes).

Latin America's New World of Work: Changing Traits of Work and Problem Sovling

Transitions to market models have had an important impact on the structure of the labor market and on structures of interest representation of the working classes in Latin America. They have produced pressure for a more flexibiized labor market and a shift within the working classes from the formal to the informal sector. This study analyzes the way conditions of informality affect the capacity of informal workers to engage in problem-solving activities around both materialist issues and political problems.

Beyond Orthodoxy: Asserting Latin America's New Strategic Options Toward the United States

Abstract This essay explores the possibility that Latin America may deploy new strategic options in its relations with Washington at the beginning of the twenty-first century. It starts by evaluating what have been the five major foreign policy models of the region with regard to Washington since the end of the Cold War. It proceeds by evaluating the recent dynamics of Latin American insertion into world affairs. Then it introduces three new alternatives for handling U.S. Latin American relations in the coming years. It concludes by pointing out the importance of understanding the scope of the hemispheric challenges for both the region and Washington.

Gilbert Joseph and Daniela Spenser, eds., In from the Cold: Latin America's New Encounter with the Cold War

Gilbert Joseph and Daniela Spenser, eds., In from the Cold: Latin America's New Encounter with the Cold War

Employment, Inequality and Globalization: A Continuous Concern

1. Introduction: Employment, Inequality and Globalization: A Continuous Concern Rolph van der Hoeven 2. Employment, Basic Needs and Human Development: Elements for a New International Paradigm in Response to Crisis Richard Jolly 3. How the New Poverty Agenda Neglected Social and Employment Policies in Africa Thandika Mkandawire 4. Say's Law, Poverty Persistence, and Employment Neglect Alice H. Amsden 5. Income Inequality and Employment Revisited: Can One Make Sense of Economic Policy? Rolph van der Hoeven 6. Income Distribution under Latin America's New Left Regimes Giovanni Andrea Cornia 7. Does Fast Growth in India and China Help or Harm US Workers? Alex Izurieta and Ajit Singh 8. The Crisis of Globalization as an Opportunity to Create a Fairer World Rob Vos

Conservative Christian Competitors: Pentecostals and Charismatic Catholics in Latin America's New Religious Economy

In Latin America's religious economy, the most remarkable trend over the past several decades has been the rise in popularity of two Christian denominations—Pentecostalism and, more recently, the Catholic Charismatic Renewal. Both groups offer their adherents pneumacentric worship, which involves direct communion with the Holy Spirit and intervention to heal suffering. Their success points to the decline of the traditional Catholic Church from its hegemony in the Latin American religious marketplace, and in increasing demand among the region's religious consumers for a conservative brand of Christian worship.

In from the Cold: Latin America's New Encounter with the Cold War

In from the Cold: Latin America's New Encounter with the Cold War

In from the Cold: Latin America's New Encounter with the Cold War by Gilbert M. Joseph and Daniela Spenser, eds.

In from the Cold: Latin America's New Encounter with the Cold War by Gilbert M. Joseph and Daniela Spenser, eds.

In from the Cold: Latin America's New Encounter with the Cold War ‐ Edited by Joseph, Gilbert M. and Spenser, Daniela (eds.)

In from the Cold: Latin America's New Encounter with the Cold War ‐ Edited by Joseph, Gilbert M. and Spenser, Daniela (eds.)

Gilbert M. Joseph and Daniela Spenser (eds.), In from the Cold: Latin America's New Encounter with the Cold War (Durham NC and London: Duke University Press, 2008), pp. ix+439, £64.00, £14.99 pb.

Gilbert M. Joseph and Daniela Spenser (eds.), In from the Cold: Latin America's New Encounter with the Cold War (Durham NC and London: Duke University Press, 2008), pp. ix+439, £64.00, £14.99 pb. - Volume 41 Issue 3

In from the Cold: Latin America's New Encounter with the Cold War. Edited by Gilbert M. Joseph. and Spenser Daniela. Durham: Duke University Press, 2008. Pp. ix 439. Bibliography. Index. $99.95 cloth; $26.95 paper.

In from the Cold: Latin America's New Encounter with the Cold War. Edited by Gilbert M. Joseph. and Spenser Daniela. Durham: Duke University Press, 2008. Pp. ix 439. Bibliography. Index. 26.95 paper. - Volume 65 Issue 2

Gilbert M. Joseph and Daniela Spenser, editors.In from the Cold: Latin America's New Encounter with the Cold War.:In from the Cold: Latin America's New Encounter with the Cold War

Gilbert M. Joseph and Daniela Spenser, editors.<i>In from the Cold: Latin America's New Encounter with the Cold War</i>.:In from the Cold: Latin America's New Encounter with the Cold War

Competitive Spirits: Latin America's New Religious Economy

Competitive Spirits: Latin America's New Religious Economy

Reviews of Books:Competitive Spirits: Latin America's New Religious Economy R. Andrew Chesnut

Reviews of Books:Competitive Spirits: Latin America's New Religious Economy R. Andrew Chesnut

The Third Church in Latin America: Religion and Globalization in Contemporary Latin America

Competitive Spirits: Latin America's New Religious Economy. By R. Andrew Chesnut. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Pp. 170. $50.00 cloth, $19.95 paper.) Between Babel And Pentecost: Transnational Pentecostalism In Africa and Latin America. Edited by André Corten and Ruth Marshall-Fratani. (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 2001. Pp. 312. $49.95 cloth, $22.95 paper.) Reinventing Religions: Syncretism and Transformation In Africa And The Americas. Edited by Sidney M. Greenfield and André Droogers. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001. Pp. 232. $65.00 cloth, $24.95 paper.) Religions/Globalizations: Theories And Cases. Edited by Dwight N. Hopkins, Lois Ann Lorentzen, Eduardo Mendieta and David Batstone. (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001. Pp. 259. $64.95 cloth, $19.95 paper.) The Next Christendom: The Coming Of Global Christianity. By Philip Jenkins. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. Pp. 270. $28.00 cloth, 14.95 paper.) Christianity, Social Change, and Globalization In The Americas. By Anna A. Peterson, Manuel Vásquez and Philip J. Williams. (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2001. Pp. 259. $60.00 cloth, $22.00 paper.) All the works reviewed in this essay, to one degree or another, examine how religion and globalization are intertwined within transnationalized societies. Most of these works lie on the cutting edge of new research on religion in Latin America. Several of the studies invite us to try out new models (such as the idea of a "religious supermarket") [End Page 256] for understanding the variety of roles that religion can play in hypermodern, or globalized, societies. Others are notable for their general willingness to move beyond some of the weary clichés that have weighted down the study of religious change in Latin America, such as the much-ballyhooed North American association with Protestantism. All of the studies reviewed here accept the premise that Roman Catholicism no longer enjoys a religious monopoly in Latin America, but most also point out that Catholicism, particularly in its syncretic and in its charismatic forms, continues to be a vigorous competitor in the de-regulated religious marketplace. Several of these works also suggest not long into this century, Christianity will not longer be considered so much a "Western" religion associated with colonialism and domination, but a polycentric, transnational force that, increasingly, has its two main centers in Latin America and Africa. Both regions, where Christianity's numbers swell from both rising birthrates and increasing numbers of conversion from nominalism or non-Christian beliefs, may well be home to four out of every five Christians in the world by the year 2050. This "Third Church"—continuous with the "Third World"—suggests a new tradition of Christianity that will be as transformed by the culture, traditions, and worldview of the South, as Christianity (which had its origins in the Middle East) was once influenced by Europe and the rest of the North. Clearly, such a drastic reconfiguration of what one author calls the "New Christendom" calls for a reexamination of the ways in which we as scholars try to measure the interstices of religion, identity, and culture in Latin America. The works under review here fall into roughly three categories: (1) works concerned with Christianity and globalization; (2) studies of the application of rational-choice theory to religious behavior; and (3) an examination of the expansion of the "Third Church," which draws heavily from the first two categories. In writing this review, unless otherwise noted, I will use the term "religion" nearly interchangeably with "Christianity," because, with a few exceptions, the vast majority of people who identify themselves as religious in Latin America also self-identify as Christians, and I take this at face value. I also elect to use the terms "Christian" and "Christianity" as some defiance of scholarly convention, since both terms within popular discourse in recent decades have...

Pragmatic Consumers and Practical Products: The Success of Pneumacentric Religion among Women in Latin America's New Religious Economy

The development of a free-market religious economy in Latin America over the past half-century has resulted in a profileration of new spiritual enterprises. In the highly competitive popular religious marketplace where spiritual goods are produced, offered, and consumed by the region 's impoverished majority pneumacentric or spirit-centered groups have prospered like no others. Pentecostalism, the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, and African diasporan faiths have been successful in their appeal to popular religious consumers to the point that they have cornered the market of faith among the disprivileged of the region. Since the great majority of Latin American religious consumers are women, any religious enterprise interested in growing must produce and market spiritual goods and services that meet the specific tastes and preferences of those who constitute the majority of the market. Thus, employing the theoretical tools of religious economy, this article analyzes the success of the three major pneumacentric enterprises among Latin American women of the popular classes.

Latin America's New Political Leaders: Walking on a Wire

Today's underlying political currents in Latin America are less about ideology and more about a public desire to find leaders who can effectively address everyday problems, and who do so honestly. The formulas of the past—whether ‘socialism’ in the 1970s or ‘neoliberalism’ in the 1990s#x2014;have been widely questioned, and largely dismissed. With traditional ideas and structures breaking apart, new leaders are being called on to produce results.