Latin American Political Actors and Regime Preferences, 1944-2010

1460 coded political actors across 290 presidential administrations in 20 Latin American countries. Scott Mainwaring commissioned archival research reports between 2008 and 2013 to measure normative regime preferences and policy radicalism. The data collection covers the period from 1944 to 2010, with Argentina and El Salvador extending back to 1916 and 1927.

Use Cases

• Modeling democratic transitions based on coded normative regime preferences.
• Analyzing the impact of actor radicalism on regime survival.
• Comparing the influence of military factions, parties, and presidents across administrations.
• Studying the role of international conditions alongside domestic actor preferences.

Strengths

• Includes 1460 actors across 290 presidential administrations.
• Covers 20 Latin American countries over a period of up to 94 years.
• Reports were produced by 19 research assistants using archival research and secondary sources.
• Actor list includes presidents, parties, militaries, unions, guerrillas, and business organizations.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data collection ended in 2013; events after 2010 are not covered.

Provenance

Source

Scott Mainwaring, QDR Harvested Dataverse.

Collection Method

Commissioned reports produced by research assistants via archival research and synthesis of existing material.

Time Range

1944-2010 for most countries; Argentina (1916-2010), El Salvador (1927-2010).

Freshness

Last updated 2025-10-20 19:58:31; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, Venezuela.