New Release Books by Lehoucq

This book analyzes the origins and consequences of civil war in Central America. Fabrice Lehoucq argues that the inability of autocracies to reform themselves led to protest and rebellion throughout the twentieth century and that civil war triggered unexpected transitions to non-military rule by the 1990s. He explains how armed conflict led to economic stagnation and why weak states limit democratization - outcomes that unaccountable party systems have done little to change. This book also uses comparisons among Central American cases - both between them and other parts of the developing world - to shed light on core debates in comparative politics and comparative political economy. This book suggests that the most progress has been made in understanding the persistence of inequality and the nature of political market failures, while drawing lessons from the Central American cases to improve explanations of regime change and the outbreak of civil war.

What determines the capacity of countries to design, approve and implement effective public policies? To address this question, this book builds on the results of case studies of political institutions, policymaking processes, and policy outcomes in eight Latin American countries. The result is a volume that benefits from both micro detail on the intricacies of policymaking in individual countries and a broad cross-country interdisciplinary analysis of policymaking processes in the region.

Stuffing the Ballot Box is a pioneering study of electoral fraud and reform. It focuses on Costa Rica, a country where parties gradually transformed a fraud-ridden political system into one renowned for its stability and fair elections by the mid-twentieth century. Lehoucq and Molina draw upon a unique database of more than 1,300 accusations of ballot-rigging to show that parties denounced fraud where electoral laws made the struggle for power more competitive. They explain how institutional arrangements generated opportunities for executives to assemble legislative coalitions to enact far-reaching reforms. This book also argues that nonpartisan commissions should run elections and explains why splitting responsibility over election affairs between the executive and the legislature is a recipe for partisan rancour and political conflict. Stuffing the Ballot Box will interest a broad array of political and social scientists, constitutional scholars, historians, election specialists and policy-makers interested in electoral fraud and institutional reform.

This book is a guide to understanding and using the software package ARPACK to solve large algebraic eigenvalue problems. The software described is based on the implicitly restarted Arnoldi method, which has been heralded as one of the three most important advances in large scale eigenanalysis in the past ten years. The book explains the acquisition, installation, capabilities, and detailed use of the software for computing a desired subset of the eigenvalues and eigenvectors of large (sparse) standard or generalized eigenproblems. It also discusses the underlying theory and algorithmic background at a level that is accessible to the general practitioner.

Under what conditions can social movements produce legal changes? Existing studies point to legal opportunities and support structures for legal mobilization as the key explanatory variables, but do not specify how exactly these variables interact. In addition, they have not adequately examined the process or relevance of building support structures. This article leverages variation in the strategies of two factions of the Colombian trans movement to show that, despite the presence of favorable legal opportunities, the determining factor for movements- legal success is the process through which they build support structures for legal mobilization, which in turn affects the kind of resources to which they have access. Particularly, support structures built through brokerage connect movements to a network of lawyers, which increases their chances for successful legal mobilization. This article draws on data gathered through 28 interviews to key actors, one year of participant observation, and documentary review.