Election observation has grown exponentially over the past three decades and has become a tool for legitimizing elections on a global scale. These missions have played different roles that have overlapped over time: observers are seen as doctors, police officers, judges and election experts. A great diversity of national and international actors is involved in the organization of the missions, in what has become a real professional environment. However, little is known about the concrete operation of these missions and the factors that determine how the observer’s eye is shaped. A pioneer in election observation, Latin America offers a prime field to study them. Participatory and comparative observation of the practices adopted by three types of actors (international organizations, regional organizations of electoral authorities and NGOs) in three different countries (Ecuador, Colombia and Mexico) makes it possible to show to what extent objectives, methodologies and results of these organizations differ. Contrary to the rhetoric displayed by governments, rather than a unique election observation mission, there are many points of view that depend on the role adopted by the organization and the many constraints on its work.

Amérique latine - L’Année politique is a publication by CERI-Sciences Po’s Political Observatory of Latin America and the Caribbean (OPALC). The study extends the work presented on the Observatory’s website (www.sciencespo.fr/opalc) by offering tools for understanding a continent that is in the grip of deep transformations.

In Latin America, as elsewhere in the world, regional and subregional organizations have multiplied recently. Scholars tend to focus on the variety of regionalisms or their ever changing nature (post-liberal, post-hegemonic...). This study, through a political sociology of regionalism approach, examines Latin American regions and their actors and goes beyond the first set of questions. In this perspective, scrutinizing the regional General Secretaries of the sub-continent is particularly useful to understand how regional powers emerge. With a specific focus on the Southern Common Market (UNSUR), the Common Market of the South (MERCOSUR), the Andean Community of Nations (CAN) and the Central American Integration System (SICA), this research offers a more precise answer to the question of the configuration of power within Latin American regionalisms.

Latin America's national oil companies, created at various times during the twentieth century, have each evolved in a different way. The two main companies – Petroleos de Mexico (Pemex) and Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) – provide excellent illustrations of the rich diversity of organizational and industrial development. Many factors – such as the importance of earth quakes – explain the diversity.
Nevertheless, the role of governments during the period of nationalizations is key. It was then that the relationships between the owners of natural resources, public operators, regulators, the finance ministries, and international operators were defined. This process shaped the companies' institutional structures (path dependency) and set the parameters for future entrepreneurial dynamism. The path by which each of these enterprises developed continues to affect their culture as evidenced by the recent reforms which attempted to restructure Pemex and PDVSA.