How Democracy And Party Ideology Shape State Capacity In Latin America

🔎 Why This Study Matters

Many social scientists have either overlooked or insufficiently explored how political factors shape state capacity. Prior work tended to focus on institutional traits of regimes—especially democracy—without fully considering the role of governments and their ideologies. This paper broadens that approach by examining both democratic features and executives’ partisanship as influences on state capacity.

📚 What Was Measured

A composite index of state capacity is analyzed, built from three core dimensions:

• Political order
• Administrative ability
• Extractive capacity

🧭 How the Evidence Was Gathered

• Unit of analysis: 18 Latin American countries
• Time period: 1995–2009
• Method: pooled cross-sectional time-series model
• Key independent variables: measures of democracy and the ideological (partisan) orientation of elected executives

📈 What the Results Show

• In recent years across the region, state capacity was significantly affected by both democratic features and the ideological bearing of elected governments.

⚖️ Why It Matters

These findings indicate that understanding state capacity requires attention not only to institutional characteristics of democracy but also to who governs and their party ideology. Incorporating partisanship offers a fuller account of variation in state capacity across Latin America.