Study guides

Note

This study guide is meant to help you; a student who knows all the below well should do well on the exam. It is not a contract. There is no room to negotiate over whether questions on the exams are perfectly represented in this list.

For the midterm, you should know…

• How to identify Latin American countries on a map
• The broad political and economic context of Latin America (e.g., what kind of governments, what kind of economies, general languages/ethnic groups, etc.)
• How Latin American economies have developed over time, what they typically produce, and related challenges
• How the colonial experience shaped Latin American development, how these experiences differ from North America, how this might unexplain underdevelopment (and why it might not)
• How the Cold War affected Latin America
• The impact of the Cuban Revolution
• The general history of US intervention in the region
• The general history of dictatorship in the region and its legacies
• How racial identity “works” in Latin America, its colonial roots, how its different from the US
• Color elasticity and what it tells us about the relationship between physical appearance and racial identity, how it interacts with status
• The causes and consequences of land invasions
• How Latin American states have managed ethnic groups over time, related controversies, policy reforms that have been tried and related challenges
• Definitions of poverty and controversies, poverty patterns in LA, gradation in poverty and characteristics, importance of human capital and networks
• Inequality as a concept, measurement, its consequences for political and economic development
• Patterns of redistribution “from above” in Peru, why dictators would expropriate, why elites would accept democracy as a bargain
• The broad contours of the drug trade, crime patterns, measurement issues
• The role played by gangs in prisons and the use of protection rackets more generally

Things you should know for the final…

• The drug trade in Mexico + use of protection rackets in the country
• How gangs provide order and protection markets
• how order breaks down and the causes of criminal violence
• The relationship between state capacity and tax revenue, challenges with tax capacity in LAC
• The role of the center and periphery in political development, different paths of state formation
• The goals, uses, and limitations of decentralization
• Informality as a challenge to governance, why its difficult to be informal, informality and regulation
• Davis’ chapters on slums around the world, how and why they form, the state’s approach, challenges to life in slums
• What clientelism is, how it works, how it varies, the role of voting technology in clientelism
• The Odebrecht scandal, corruption in general, how it varies, how people are exposed to it, attempts to curb corruption
• The relationship between corruption and electoral accountability
• Broad concepts from the homeworks
• What the “pink tide” was, key actors, its legacies
• The causes and consequences of party breakdown
• What democratic erosion, distinction from other breakdowns of democracy, what it looks like in LA
• The role of the opposition in democratic erosion