You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Building the Fourth Estate reveals the crucial part played by the Mexican media in the country's remarkable recent political transformation. Based on an in-depth examination of Mexico's print and broadcast media over the last twenty-five years, Chappell Lawson traces the role of the media in that country's move toward democracy, demonstrating the reciprocal relationship between changes in the press and changes in the political system. In addition to illuminating the nature of political change in Mexico, Lawson's findings have broad implications for understanding the role of the mass media in democratization around the world. -- from back cover.
The 2000 Mexican presidential race culminated in the election of opposition candidate Vicente Fox and the end of seven decades of one-party rule. This book, which traces changes in public opinion and voter preferences over the course of the race, represents the most comprehensive treatment of campaigning and voting behavior in an emerging democracy. It challenges the "modest effects paradigm of national election campaigns that has dominated scholarly research in the field. Chapters cover authoritarian mobilization of voters, turnout patterns, electoral cleavages, party strategies, television news coverage, candidate debates, negative campaigning, strategic voting, issue-based voting, and the role of the 2000 election in Mexico's political transition. Theoretically-oriented introductory and concluding chapters situate Mexico's 2000 election in the larger context of Mexican politics and of cross-national research on campaigns. Collectively, these contributions provide crucial insights into Mexico's new politics, with important implications for elections in other countries.
Over a decade ago, Jorge Castañeda wrote the classic Utopia Unarmed, which offered a penetrating and comprehensive account of the Latin American left’s fate at the end of the Cold War. Since then, the left across Latin America has travelled in paths no one could have predicted. Latin American nations from Mexico to Argentina wavered for years between leftism and American-supported neoliberalism, but in recent years the left has experienced a tremendous resurgence throughout the region. However, the left is not unified, and as Castañeda, Morales, and their contributors show, it has followed two distinct paths – a more cosmopolitan style leftism, exemplified by Brazil and Chile, and a left fuelled by populist nationalism that has clear debts to Perón or Cárdenas, and is most evident in Venezuela, Mexico’s PRD, Bolivia, and Argentina. Leftovers comprehensively updates this very important story, with country and area specialists contributing.
The explosive spread of democracy has radically transformed the international political landscape and captured the attention of academics, policy makers, and activists alike. With interest in democratization still growing, Nathan J. Brown and other leading political scientists assess the current state of the field, reflecting on the causes and diffusion of democracy over the past two decades. The volume focuses on three issues very much at the heart of discussions about democracy today: dictatorship, development, and diffusion. The essays first explore the surprising but necessary relationship between democracy and authoritarianism; they next analyze the introduction of democracy in developi...
Recent elections in Mexico have seen dramatic changes in public opinion toward political parties. Focusing on the elections of 1994 and 1997, the book evaluates campaign strategies, voting habits, party loyalty and the decline of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). It begins by situating the transformation of Mexico's parties in historical context, then goes on to consider the role of gender and the resurgence of the Mexican left. The contributors, drawn from the U.S. and Mexico, focus on both the strategies of political parties to woo voters, and how voters actually respond. They also develop several methodological innovations for studying public opinion that can be applied beyond the case of Mexico.
This book explains how the rule of law emerges and how it survives in nascent democracies. The question of how nascent democracies construct and fortify the rule of law is fundamentally about power. By focusing on judicial autonomy, a key component of the rule of law, this book demonstrates that the fragmentation of political power is a necessary condition for the rule of law. In particular, it shows how party competition sets the stage for independent courts. Using case studies of Argentina at the national level and of two neighboring Argentine provinces, San Luis and Mendoza, this book also addresses patterns of power in the economic and societal realms. The distribution of economic resources among members of a divided elite fosters competitive politics and is therefore one path to the requisite political fragmentation. Where institutional power and economic power converge, a reform coalition of civil society actors can overcome monopolies in the political realm.
Students and scholars of both Latin American politics and comparative politics will find The Resilience of the Latin American Right of vital interest.
Even as several Latin American countries have regressed to authoritarian rule in the first two decades of the twenty-first century, elections remain permanent and vital features of the region’s political life. Kevin Pallister provides an accessible overview of elections throughout Latin America, including formal electoral institutions, informal practices, and the behavior of voters and candidates. Through a wide-ranging synthesis of scholarly literature and sources, it offers a descriptive and analytical look at how elections in the region work, from the legal rules of the game to the final counting of the votes, and provides an even-handed discussion of its complexities such as electoral ...
In this comparative work, Dorothy J. Solinger examines the effects of global markets on the domestic politics of major states, emphasizing the tensions and compromises between the working class and their political leaders in the face globalization.
This book presents a new and conflict-centered theory of successful party-building, drawing on diverse cases from across Latin America.