Matthew Carnes (Georgetown University) and Isabela Mares (Columbia University)’s paper awarded best paper from the 2014 REPAL annual conference

Matthew Carnes (Georgetown University) and Isabela Mares (Columbia University) ’s paper has been awarded “best paper” from the 2014 REPAL annual conference.

The prize committee was Ken Shadlen (LSE), Daniela Campello (FGV-Rio), and Eduardo Dargent (PUC Perú).

Best Paper

Matthew Carnes (Georgetown University) and Isabela Mares (Columbia University) Redefining who’s “in” and who’s “out”: Explaining Preferences for Redistribution in Bolivia

This paper revisits and challenges a dominant hypothesis in political economy about the preferences and power of “insiders.” The expectation that beneficiaries under a given set of arrangements will push for continuity and against measures that might dilute their gains is central, implicitly if not always explicitly, in many political economy explanations. Carnes and Mares suggest an alternative scenario, based on instability of the status quo arrangements, which is a common if not prevailing condition in developing countries, and they use original data from a survey to show how instability may affect preferences for redistribution. The panel found the paper to address an important topic of great relevance, with an excellent research design and data analysis, and to be nicely written.

 

Honorable Mention

Renato Lima de Oliveira (MIT) and Martin Liby Alonso (MIT) Fueling development? Assessing the Impact of Oil and Soybean Wealth on Municipalities in Brazil

The Lima-de-Oliveira and Alonso paper contributes to the emerging literature devoted to understanding how politics mediate the impact of the recent commodity boom experienced by Latin American countries. Taking advantage of the large variation in resource wealth among Brazilian municipalities, they test the hypothesis that natural resource revenues channelled through the state (oil) are more subject to the dynamics associated with a resource curse than those channeled directly through the market (soybean). They find empirical support for this hypothesis; in comparable municipalities, soybean wealth is positively associated with development outcomes, whereas these effects are negative in oil-rich municipalities.

 

New Series at Palgrave Macmillan

REPAL is glad to inform about Latin American Political Economy, a new series from Palgrave Macmillan.

Latin American Political Economy publishes new, relevant, and empirically-grounded scholarship that deepens our understanding of contemporary Latin American political economy and contributes to the formulation and evaluation of new theories that are both context-sensitive and subject to broader comparisons. Inspired by the need to provide new analytical perspectives for understanding the massive social, political, and economic transformations underway in Latin America, the series is directed at researchers and practitioners interested in resurrecting political economy as a primary research area in the developing world. In thematic terms, the series seeks to promote vital debate on the interactions between economic, political, and social processes; it is especially concerned with how findings may further our understanding of development models, the sociopolitical institutions that sustain them, and the practical problems they confront. In methodological terms, the series showcases cross-disciplinary research that is empirically rich and sensitive to context and that leads to new forms of description, concept formation, causal inference, and theoretical innovation. The series editors welcome submissions that address patterns of democratic politics, dependency and development, state formation and the rule of law, inequality and identity, and global linkages.

The series is affiliated with REPAL.

Click here for more information.

Latin American Political Economy – Palsgrave Macmillan