Part I. Just Debate: 1. Democratization and just debate 2. Just debate in the public sphere 3. Probing and testing just debate Part II. Just Debate in Democratizing States: 4. Just debate denied: socialist and democratizing Poland 5. Just debate diverges: regime breakdown in Chile and South Africa 6. Just debate prevails: the liberal moment in South Africa 7. Just debate declines: consolidation in South Africa Part III. Gender Justice: 8. Pursuing just debate.

/pdf/women-s-rights-in-democratizing-states-just-debate-and-42127iab7j.pdf

Women's Rights in Democratizing States: Just Debate and Gender Justice in the Public Sphere

Although the number of female leaders worldwide has yet to achieve par with that of male leaders, a growing number of female heads of state and female candidacies for that position signal that transformations are underway. Among them is Chile’s current president, Michelle Bachelet. Her first election generated significant debate since she possessed none of the qualities considered essential for eligibility. Attempts to lend logic to the contradictions imposed by that event are still largely inconclusive. This study investigates a deeper root system in Chilean history for causal factors with trajectories that lead into the twenty-first century. Under consideration are ways in which women attain political power, their management of power, and the role of the body politic in both of those. The latter part of the study establishes correlations between recent developments in the Chilean political landscape of female leadership and similar developments across the globe. 
During Bachelet’s first election, media coined the term—the “Bachelet Phenomenon”—to reference her unprecedented and improbable attainment of the presidency. This research consults a diverse body of resources to offer one interpretation of that. The findings contribute new perspectives to the existing body of literature that can be expanded by future research.

Michelle Bachelet: the rise of the Supra-Madre from the Chilean body politic

How does a change from a compulsory voting system to a voluntary one affect election turnout? It is often argued that an electoral regime under which voting is voluntary reproduces class bias or, in other words, that the rich vote more than the poor. This bias is corrected either by the introduction of compulsory voting or the existence of strong left-wing parties and trade unions able to mobilize poorer segments of the population. In this article, we put forward an alternative argument. We assert that when voting is voluntary, class bias can disappear if an election is very competitive since this affects both turnout and its socio-economic composition. To evaluate this argument, we examine the case of Chile's 2012 municipal election when voting was voluntary for the first time, instead of compulsory.

The return of censitary suffrage? The effects of automatic voter registration and voluntary voting in Chile

In several highly mobilized Third World societies, rising levels of working-class political activism seem to have encouraged the development of political movements which are both popular and authoritarian. This popular authoritarianism melds intensive political mobilization of previously excluded social sectors with political structures which severely limit these groups' ability to affect public policy. Much of the research on popular authoritarianism has attempted to explain the phenomenon by identifying the socioeconomic determinants of popular-authoritarian electoral behavior. In an effort to clarify the relative merit of contending explanations, this study uses data from the prototypic case of Argentine Peronism to test six common hypotheses and then to construct a model which optimizes the explanatory ability of five major socioeconomic variables. The results indicate that an area's rate of industrial growth and the size of its working-class population account for more than four-fifths of the variation in Peronisi electoral behavior that can be attributed to socioeconomic variables.

The Socio-Economic Determinants of Popular-Authoritarian Electoral Behavior: The Case of Peronism

Latin America has elected more female presidents than any other region in the world, yet dominant theories on campaigning tend to ignore gender. In addressing this lacuna, this article argues that the widespread belief that women are better at mobilizing women means that female candidates tend to invest more significant effort into cultivating a core constituency of women on the basis of gender identity. In contrast, male candidates tend to delegate women-mobilization tasks to female surrogates. An analysis of approximately 1,000 newspaper articles reveals that the “most different” female candidates in Chile and Brazil consistently met with female voters early in their campaigns, evoked gender identities and promised pro-women change. The “most different” male candidates enlisted their wives and female politicians to target women, defend their pro-women promises, and deflect accusations of sexism. The theory illuminates multiple ways in which viable female candidates’ entry into the political arena can improve women’s representation.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1866802X1801000103

Women Mobilizing Women: Candidates’ Strategies for Winning the Presidency

Men and women in Chile register and vote at separate polling booths. Election results are also tabulated separately for each sex by the Ministry of Interior, down to commune level. A survey of national elections from 1952 to 1970 shows that women and men have different voting preferences. Moreover, results from the four congressional elections held since democracy was restored in 1989 demonstrate that those preferences persist to the present. By focusing on elections in the capital city of Santiago, which is divided into 52 communes (barrios) whose residents differ in their economic and educational levels, it is possible to see to what extent class and gender affect voting preferences. On the basis of an analysis of this data, this article concludes that women are consistently more likely than men to vote for conservative parties, and that this is true in every social class. Support for the left does rise among both sexes in the lower middle class, proletarian and peasant communes – but less among women than among men. The ‘gender gap’ is not usually very large (although it increases at both ends of the political spectrum), but it is persistent.

The ‘Gender Gap’ in Chile

The Female Vote in Argentina, 1958–1965:

/pdf/nazismo-y-fascismo-en-el-paraguay-los-anos-de-la-guerra-1939-4nntyy8017.pdf

Paul H. Lewis

Papers

The ‘Gender Gap’ in Chile

The Female Vote in Argentina, 1958–1965:

Nazismo y fascismo en el Paraguay: Los años de la guerra, 1939-1945