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This paper seeks to explain why exchange rate crises of rather similar causes and magnitudes can be so much harder for one emerging market country to absorb and bounce back from than for its neighbour. Brazil was able to recover readily from its recent forced devaluation and associated domestic financial/political crisis, which looked quite bad in January 1999, but was virtually over by April of that year. Argentina's superficially similar crisis, which pushed the country off its strict Currency Board and let the peso float in December 2001, has been extraordinarily prolonged and debilitating. We conclude that most of the difference resulted from the structure of domestic political institutions and the incentives for cooperation and conflict that they created for political incumbents and other players.