Since 1979, one in every six South American presidents has failed to complete his constitutional term. These ‘presidential failures’ occur when elected presidents are forced out of office but without compromising the democratic order. This article seeks to discover the factors that underlie presidential failures through a survival analysis of 65 South American presidencies between 1979 and 2012. We argue that ‘democratic stock’, assessed by taking a historical perspective on democracy, significantly affects presidential survival, a finding which has not been observed in previous studies. It is found that partisan support and democratic stock reduce the hazard of presidential failure. Surprisingly, inflation, executive–legislative power imbalances, party system fragmentation and presidential scandals have no significant effects. These findings offer new evidence for the ‘institutions vs. street’ debate by showing that, when institutional variables are accounted for, the effect of social mobilisations significantly weakens.

Pedro P. Kuczynski (Peru 2018) and Evo Morales (Bolivia 2019) are the most recent cases in a long list of Latin American presidents who have been forced out of office. We seek to contribute to understanding why some presidents fail to fulfil their terms by analysing the role of an actor overlooked by the extant literature on presidential failures: political parties. We hypothesize a non-linear relation between party institutionalization and the risk of presidential failure. That is, when parties are weakly or highly institutionalized, the hazard of presidential failure is lower than when parties are moderately institutionalized. We test this and other hypotheses with a survival analysis of 157 Latin American administrations (1979–2018). We also qualitatively explore how the occurrence (or non-occurrence) of certain events affects the risk of failure in three countries with different levels of party institutionalization. We find that party institutionalization – as well as legislative support, anti-government demonstrations, presidential scandals and economic growth – significantly affects the risk of presidential failure.

Radionuclides find widespread use in medical technologies for treating and diagnosing disease. Among successful and emerging radiotherapeutics, 119 Sb has unique potential in targeted therapeutic applications for low-energy electron-emitting isotopes. Unfortunately, developing 119 Sb-based drugs has been slow in comparison to other radionuclides, primarily due to limited accessibility. Herein is a production method that overcomes this challenge and expands the available time for large-scale distribution and use. Our approach exploits high flux and fluence from high-energy proton sources to produce longer lived 119m Te. This parent isotope slowly decays to 119 Sb, which in turn provides access to 119 Sb for longer time periods (in comparison to direct 119 Sb production routes). We contribute the target design, irradiation conditions, and a rapid procedure for isolating the 119m Te/ 119 Sb pair. To guide process development and to understand why the procedure was successful, we characterized the Te/Sb separation using Te and Sb K-edge X-ray absorption spectroscopy. The procedure provides low-volume aqueous solutions that have high 119m Te—and consequently 119 Sb—specific activity in a chemically pure form. This procedure has been demonstrated at large-scale (production-sized, Ci quantities), and the product has potential to meet stringent Food and Drug Administration requirements for a 119m Te/ 119 Sb active pharmaceutical ingredient.

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In April 2005, Lucio Gutiérrez was removed from office in the context of a fast-growing economy. With no economic hardship to fuel social outrage, the failure of Gutiérrez illustrates how political and institutional factors can be the most important forces determining presidential survival. In this article, we qualitatively analyse the path toward confrontation between Gutiérrez and the congressional opposition which led to his political demise. We find that Ecuador's weak democratic tradition working through more proximate causes -radicalism, normative preference for democratic institutions and a negative institutional equilibrium -coupled with other institutional and political variables accelerated Lucio Gutiérrez's fall from power.