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This book shows how political parties in Latin America can survive and even revive after electoral crises.
This book presents a new and conflict-centered theory of successful party-building, drawing on diverse cases from across Latin America.
After more than a century of assorted dictatorships and innumerable fiscal crises, the majority of Latin America's states are governed today by constitutional democratic regimes. Some analysts and scholars argue that Latin America weathered the 2008 fiscal crisis much better than the United States. How did this happen? Jorge I. Domínguez and Michael Shifter asked area specialists to examine the electoral and governance factors that shed light on this transformation and the region's prospects. They gather their findings in the fourth edition of Constructing Democratic Governance in Latin America. This new edition is completely updated. Part I is thematic, covering issues of media, constitutionalism, the commodities boom, and fiscal management vis-à-vis governance. Part II focuses on eight important countries in the region—Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, and Venezuela. Already widely used in courses, Constructing Democratic Governance in Latin America will continue to interest students of Latin American politics, democratization studies, and comparative politics as well as policymakers.
The recent global wave of populist governments, which culminated in Donald Trump's victory in 2016, has convinced many observers that populism is a grave threat to democracy. In his new book, Kurt Weyland critiques recent scholarship for focusing too closely on cases where populist leaders have crushed democracy, and instead turns to the many cases where would populist-authoritarians have failed to overthrow democracy. Through a systematic comparative analysis of thirty populist chief executives in Latin America and Europe over the last four decades, Weyland reveals that populist leaders can only destroy democracy under special, restrictive conditions. Left-wing populists suffocate democracy only when benefitting from huge revenue windfalls, whereas right-wing populists must perform the heroic feat of resolving acute, severe crises. Because many populist chief executives do not face these propitious conditions, Weyland proves that despite populism's threat, democracy remains resilient.
"Mahoney's starting point is the problem of essentialism in social science. Essentialism--the belief that the members of a category possess hidden properties ("essences") that make them members of the category and that endow them with a certain nature--is appropriate for scientific categories ("atoms", for instance) but not for human ones ("revolutions," for instance). Despite this, much social science research takes place from within an essentialist orientation; those who reject this assumption goes so far in the other direction as to reject the idea of an external reality, independent of human beings, altogether. Mahoney proposes an alternative approach that aspires to bridge this enduring...
"This book offers a hands-on introduction and teaching resource for students, users, and teachers of Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA; Ragin, 1987, 2000, 2008b). Given its superior ability to model certain aspects of complexity, QCA has made inroads into virtually every social science discipline and beyond. Software solutions for QCA have also been developing at a fast pace. This book seeks to reduce the time and effort required when we first encounter the logic of not just a new method but also new software. It offers a genuinely simple, intuitive, and hands-on resource for implementing the state-of-the-art protocol of QCA using R, the most advanced software environment for QCA. Our book has an applied and practical focus"--
This book provides an in-depth look into key political dynamics that obtain in a democracy without parties, offering a window into political undercurrents increasingly in evidence throughout the Latin American region, where political parties are withering. For the past three decades, Peru has showcased a political universe populated by amateur politicians and the dominance of personalism as the main party–voter linkage form. The study peruses the post-2000 evolution of some of the key Peruvian electoral vehicles and classifies the partisan universe as a party non-system. There are several elements endogenous to personalist electoral vehicles that perpetuate partylessness, contributing to t...
Explores why indigenous movements have recently won elections for the first time in the history of Latin America.
Provides guidance for Bayesian updating in case study, process-tracing, and comparative research, in order to refine intuition and improve inferences from qualitative evidence.
Despite democratization at the national level, local political bosses still govern many municipalities in Latin America. Caudillos and clans often use informal political practices—ranging from clientelism and patronage to harassment of political opposition—to control local political dynamics. These arbitrary and, at times, abusive practices pose important challenges to how Latin American democracy works and how power is exercised after the decentralization reforms in the region. These reforms promised to bring the government closer to the people and to promote popular participation. In many cases, these ideals are unmet, and newly empowered local politicians have been able to turn municipalities into personal fiefdoms. This book explores how local caudillos stay in power and why some are more successful than others in retaining office. Tomáš Došek provides an in-depth analysis of six cases from Chile, Paraguay, and Peru to show the strategies that caudillos pursue to secure power and the mistakes they commit that drive them out.