Special Issue

Call for Papers - Special Issue

Political Stability, Democracy, and Economic Growth: Prospects for the 2026 general elections in Latin American countries

Guest Editor: Cesar Martinelli

Political stability, democratic governance, and economic development are deeply interconnected forces shaping national trajectories. The general elections scheduled for 2026 in Peru, Colombia, Brazil, and Costa Rica present a timely opportunity to examine the interplay between these elements within national, regional, and global contexts.

This Special Issue of Economía invites original contributions that explore the mechanisms through which democratic institutions influence economic outcomes, drawing from institutional theory, political economy, and recent empirical advancements.

Under the guest editorship of César Martinelli—a leading scholar in the political economy of elections—this issue will emphasize dynamic models of electoral accountability, electoral conflict, and voter behavior. Martinelli’s work (e.g., Duggan & Martinelli, 2015; Levine, Martinelli & Stoelinga, 2025) demonstrates how repeated elections can discipline politicians and foster “responsive democracy,” even under conditions of adverse selection and moral hazard. His research also investigates the substitutability between voting and conflict as mechanisms of power allocation, offering a theoretical and empirical framework to analyze how economic fundamentals (such as income inequality or distance from the productivity frontier) shape the likelihood of peaceful versus violent transitions of power.

The goal of this Special Issue is to promote rigorous, policy-relevant research on the conditions under which democratic processes contribute to political stability and long-term development—particularly in the context of Latin American democracies facing electoral uncertainty and institutional fragility.

 

Topics of Interest

We invite conceptual, methodological, and empirical papers addressing, but not limited to, the following questions:

  • How do repeated elections, term limits, and political accountability influence economic policymaking and voter welfare in developing democracies?
  • What are the mechanisms linking democracy and economic growth? How do these vary across institutional settings and income levels?
  • Under what conditions does voting effectively substitute for conflict as a method of political competition? How are these trade-offs shaped by economic fundamentals?
  • What role do electoral incentives, party polarization, and incumbent advantage play in shaping democratic responsiveness?
  • How can dynamic political economy models inform our understanding of electoral competition in fragile democracies?
  • What are the empirical challenges in identifying causal effects between political institutions and economic development?
  • How can new tools like NLP and ML techniques allow researchers to quantify previously unobserved variables like internal conflict, stability, insecurity, etc.?

Keywords

Political Stability; Democracy; Economic Growth; Institutional Development; Policy Uncertainty; Electoral Accountability; Dynamic Elections; Political Transitions; Latin America; Institutional Development; Governance; Machine Learning.

Important Deadlines

  • Submissions open: May 30th, 2025
  • Submissions close: November 30th, 2025
  • You can submit your paper here. 
  • To download this announcement PDF version, please click here.

Submission Guidelines

Papers should include a title page, an abstract, introduction, methodology, results, discussion, and conclusion sections. Papers will undergo a double-blind peer review process, and they should adhere to the formatting guidelines of the Economía Journal.

About the Guest Editor

César Martinelli is Professor of Economics at George Mason University and a leading researcher in political economy, electoral competition, and theory of democracy. His recent work (Levine, Martinelli & Stoelinga, 2025) demonstrates that diminishing global inequality through economic development is essential to reducing conflict and increasing democracy. 

He has published numerous articles in professional  journals, including The Review of Economic Studies, The Economic Journal, Theoretical Economics, The Journal of Economic Theory, American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, The Journal of the European Economic Association, The International Economic Review, Economic Theory, The Journal of Public Economics, Social Choice and Welfare, Public Choice, and others. Martinelli is currently a consulting editor for Games and Economic Behavior and an associate editor for the European Economic Review.

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This Special Issue seeks to foster rigorous and policy-relevant research on the interplay between democracy, political stability, and economic growth, particularly in the context of the multiple general elections occurring in Latin America in 2026. We look forward to your contributions.

References

  • Alesina, A., Özler, S., Roubini, N., & Swagel, P. (1996). Political Instability and Economic Growth. Journal of Economic Growth, 1(2), 189-211.
  • Duggan, J. & Martinelli, C. (2017). The Political Economy of Dynamic Elections: A Survey and Some New Results. Journal of Economic Literature, 55(3), 916-984.
  • Feng, Y. (1997). Democracy, Political Stability and Economic Growth. British Journal of Political Science, 27(3), 391-418.
  • Levine, D.K., Martinelli, C., & Stoelinga, N. (2025). Vote or Fight? Working Paper.

For further inquiries, please contact revistaeconomia@pucp.edu.pe