In this paper we analyze the effect of criminal violence on electoral participation in Mexico. Many scholars have studied the origins of criminal violence, as well as the success or failure of contemporary regimes in dealing with it. However, few have studied how it affects voter turnout. Following recent findings in the behavioral subfield, we hypothesize that as criminal violence increases, citizens abandon public channels of participation and take refuge in their private spheres. Using longitudinal and geostatistical tools to analyze Mexican municipalities in the last decade, we find that the level of electoral turnout is lower in the most violent regions of the country. In the final section, we use survey data to confirm that citizens exposed to high levels of criminal violence are less likely to vote.
The study of the bureaucracy in Latin America, within the study of politics, has long been little more than an afterthought. It is assumed to lie in the realm of public administration, distinct from other regional subfields that have increasingly gained the attention of political scientists. As a result, scholars' understanding of Latin American bureaucratic politics is limited. Here, we conduct a comprehensive survey of peer‐reviewed articles to evaluate the state of this subfield. We find a thematically, analytically, and methodologically splintered discipline, but a prime one for exploitation and new avenues of research. This article summarizes salient trends in the literature, describes advances in the study of bureaucracy in Latin America, and discusses limitations in this scholarship. It suggests a roadmap for scholars by proposing a series of research questions and recommends a series of analytical and methodological approaches to address those questions.
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