Ernesto Calvo

Since 2012, scoring algorithms created to manage risks in the United States penal system have been adopted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agencies across the United States. First developed as a mechanism to reduce anti-immigrant biases and to ensure the humane treatment of detainees, scoring algorithms suffered constant revisions to accommodate DHS enforcement priorities as well as the preferences and punitive biases of ICE agents. With the arrival of the Trump administration, a technology created to ensure the humane treatment of undocumented immigrants became central to the policy of criminalization of the immigration process. This book provides historical, qualitative, and quantitative evidence of the process that placed risk assessment technologies at the forefront of the anti-immigration battle. Using very large data sets on immigration and detention proceedings obtained from DHS through multiple FOIA requests, this Brief reveals the inner workings of the risk classification algorithms (RCA) used to process tens of thousands of immigrants each day. Chapters examine the tension between risk algorithms and end users and explain how ICE officers’ preferences shape the scoring properties of RCA used in immigration enforcement. Illustrating how scoring algorithms oppress immigrants of color, this book is interest policymakers, immigration scholars, lawyers, criminologists, political scientists, and university professors, graduate students, and undergraduate students in the behavioral sciences.

Calvo and Murillo consider the non-policy benefits that voters consider when deciding their vote. While parties advertise policies, they also deliver non-policy benefits in the form of competent economic management, constituency service, and patronage jobs. Different from much of the existing research, which focuses on the implementation of policy or on the delivery of clientelistic benefits, this book provides a unified view of how politicians deliver broad portfolios of policy and non-policy benefits to their constituency. The authors' theory shows how these non-policy resources also shape parties' ideological positions and which type of electoral offers they target to poorer or richer voters. With exhaustive empirical work, both qualitative and quantitative, the research documents how linkages between parties and voters shape the delivery of non-policy benefits in Argentina and Chile.

Calvo and Murillo consider the non-policy benefits that voters consider when deciding their vote. While parties advertise policies, they also deliver non-policy benefits in the form of competent economic management, constituency service, and patronage jobs. Different from much of the existing research, which focuses on the implementation of policy or on the delivery of clientelistic benefits, this book provides a unified view of how politicians deliver broad portfolios of policy and non-policy benefits to their constituency. The authors' theory shows how these non-policy resources also shape parties' ideological positions and which type of electoral offers they target to poorer or richer voters. With exhaustive empirical work, both qualitative and quantitative, the research documents how linkages between parties and voters shape the delivery of non-policy benefits in Argentina and Chile.

Plurality-led congresses are among the most pervasive and least studied phenomena in presidential systems around the world. Often conflated with divided government, where an organized opposition controls a majority of seats in congress, plurality-led congresses are characterized by a party with fewer than fifty percent of the seats still in control of the legislative gates. Extensive gatekeeping authority without plenary majorities, this book shows, leads to policy outcomes that are substantially different from those observed in majority-led congresses. Through detailed analyses of legislative success in Argentina and Uruguay, this book explores the determinants of law enactment in fragmented congresses. It describes in detail how the lack of majority support explains legislative success in standing committees, the chamber directorate, and on the plenary floor.

Plurality-led congresses are among the most pervasive and least studied phenomena in presidential systems around the world. Often conflated with divided government, where an organized opposition controls a majority of seats in congress, plurality-led congresses are characterized by a party with fewer than fifty percent of the seats still in control of the legislative gates. Extensive gatekeeping authority without plenary majorities, this book shows, leads to policy outcomes that are substantially different from those observed in majority-led congresses. Through detailed analyses of legislative success in Argentina and Uruguay, this book explores the determinants of law enactment in fragmented congresses. It describes in detail how the lack of majority support explains legislative success in standing committees, the chamber directorate, and on the plenary floor.