The ECPR Standing Group on Internet and Politics has awarded Ronald Sáenz-Leandro the 2025 Best Early Career Scholars Paper Prize for his article “The Long and Winding Road: Policy Frictions and the Governance of Ride-Hailing Platforms in Latin America”, published earlier this year in Latin American Policy.
The article examines the regulatory trajectories of ride-hailing platforms in Chile, Colombia and Costa Rica. Focusing on companies such as Uber, DiDi, Cabify and others, the study analyses why, more than a decade after these platforms entered the region, regulatory outcomes remain highly uneven across Latin America.
From a comparative perspective, the article shows that platform regulation is not simply a matter of governments deciding whether or not to intervene. Instead, regulatory outcomes are shaped by political negotiations, institutional capacities, stakeholder strategies and the ability of platforms to operate while formal rules remain uncertain or incomplete.
The article introduces the concept of the “De Facto Deregulation Trap” to explain how institutional fragmentation, political stalemate and competing interests can produce prolonged regulatory uncertainty. In this situation, platforms are neither fully regulated nor entirely outside public debate; rather, they continue to expand and adapt while regulation remains suspended in a grey zone.
The study also contributes to debates on platform governance by highlighting the importance of analysing cases from the Global South. Chile, Colombia and Costa Rica offer valuable insights into how digital platforms interact with local institutions, transport systems, labour markets and political conflicts. These cases show that platform regulation cannot be understood only through experiences from Europe, North America or other more frequently studied contexts.
During its development, the draft also benefited from discussions in several academic spaces and conferences in Europe and Latin America, where earlier versions of the argument, findings and empirical material were presented and refined.
The recognition by the ECPR Standing Group on Internet and Politics is especially relevant because the group brings together an international community of scholars working on the political dimensions of the internet, digital technologies, platforms, data and online governance within the broader framework of the European Consortium for Political Research.
The article contributes to current debates on digital governance, urban mobility, regulatory politics and platform capitalism, showing how frictions between global platform models and local political environments can become both barriers to regulation and arenas for contestation and adaptation.
The article is available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/lamp.70039