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Since the first edition of the acclaimed Constructing Democratic Governance was published in 1996, the democracies of Latin America and the Caribbean have undergone significant change. This new, one-volume edition, edited by Jorge I. DomA-nguez and Michael Shifter, offers a concise update to current scholarship in this important area of international studies. The book is divided into two parts: Themes and Issues, and Country Studies. Countries not covered by individual studies are discussed in the introduction, conclusion, and thematic chapters. In the introduction, Michael Shifter provides an overview of new developments in Latin America and the Caribbean, with particular emphasis on civil ...
Constitutional law in Latin America embodies a mosaic of national histories, political experiments, and institutional transitions. No matter how distinctive these histories and transitions might be, there are still commonalities that transcend the mere geographical contiguity of these countries. This Handbook depicts the constitutional landscape of Latin America by shedding light on its most important differences and affinities, qualities and drawbacks, and by assessing its overall standing in the global enterprise of democratic constitutionalism. It engages with substantive and methodological conundrums of comparative constitutional law in the region, drawing meaningful comparisons between ...
Latin America has a long tradition of constitutional reform. Since the democratic transitions of the 1980s, most countries have amended their constitutions at least once, and some have even undergone constitutional reform several times. The global phenomenon of a new constitutionalism, with enhanced rights provisions, finds expression in the region, but the new constitutions, such as those of Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela, also have some peculiar characteristics which are discussed in this important book. Authors from a number of different disciplines offer a general overview of constitutional reforms in Latin America since 1990. They explore the historical, philosophical and doct...
Latin America was one of the earliest and most enthusiastic adopters of what has come to be known as the judicialization of politics - the use of law and legal institutions as tools of social contestation to curb the abuse of power in government, resolve policy disputes, and enforce and expand civil, political, and socio-economic rights. Almost forty years into this experiment, The Limits of Judicialization brings together a cross-disciplinary group of scholars to assess the role that law and courts play in Latin American politics. Featuring studies of hot-button topics including abortion, state violence, judicial corruption, and corruption prosecutions, this volume argues that the institutional and cultural changes that empowered courts, what the editors call the 'judicialization superstructure,' often fall short of the promise of greater accountability and rights protection. Illustrative and expansive, this volume offers a truly interdisciplinary analysis of the limits of judicialized politics.
Brazil has undergone transformative change since the 1980s, from an authoritarian regime to a democratic society advancing on all fronts—political, social, economic, and diplomatic. In Starting Over, Albert Fishlow traces the evolution of this member of the BRICS group over the last twenty-five years and looks toward the future as the newly elected president, Dilma Rousseff, follows her very popular predecessor, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, or “Lula.” The transformation of the country began with the founding of the Nova República and the Constitution of 1988, which established a strong executive and encased key social principles such as a citizen’s right to education and health care....
Introduction : the accountability function of courts in new democracies / Siri Gloppen, Roberto Gargarella, and Elin Skaar Judicial review in developed democracies / Martin Shapiro How some reflections on the United States' experience may inform African efforts to build court systems and the rule of law / Jennifer Widner The constitutional court and control of presidential extraordinary powers in Colombia / Rodrigo Uprimny The politics of judicial review in Chile in the era of domestic transition, 1990-2002 / Javier A. Couso Legitimating transformation : political resource allocation in the South African constitutional court / Theunis Roux The accountability function of courts in Tanzania and Zambia / Siri Gloppen Renegotiating "law and order" : judicial reform and citizen responses in post-war Guatemala / Rachel Sieder Economic reform and judicial governance in Brazil : balancing independence with accountability / Carlos Santiso In search of a democratic justice what courts should not do : Argentina, 1983-2002 / Roberto Gargarella Lessons learned and the way forward / Irwin P. Stotzky.
Complementarities between political and economic institutions have kept Brazil in a low-level economic equilibrium since 1985.
This groundbreaking work is the first volume in English to examine Brazil's historic policy reforms of the 1990s and the political, economic, and social results. For years the large and ineffective government of Brazil could neither improve the country's greatly uneven distribution of wealth nor maintain inflation at reasonable levels. In the 1990s, long overdue changes bettered the government's fiscal performance, tamed inflation, and addressed chronic social ills stemming from the imbalance of wealth. But many problems, and many questions, remain. Why is Brazil still so poor, and why is inequality so intransigent? Were some of the reforms counterproductive, or could they have been implemented in a more effective way? Collecting essays by top Brazilianist scholars from various disciplines and intellectual traditions, Reforming Brazil provides new insights for international policy makers, economists, and scholars of Brazil.
Legislatures, the judiciary and civil society are important actors in representative democracies. In what ways and how well do they represent? And how effectively do they carry out their institutional and social roles? Both questions refer to the key dimensions of democracy analyzed in this book: representativeness and effectiveness, respectively. While they have been developed separately in scholarly work on institutions and regimes, there is little work considering them simultaneously, and on their interaction. Using quantitative and/or qualitative methods, contributions from top scholars in the field of legislatures, the judiciary and civil society examine these two concepts and their rel...
This book presents a new theory for why political regimes emerge, and why they subsequently survive or break down. It then analyzes the emergence, survival and fall of democracies and dictatorships in Latin America since 1900. Scott Mainwaring and Aníbal Pérez-Liñán argue for a theoretical approach situated between long-term structural and cultural explanations and short-term explanations that look at the decisions of specific leaders. They focus on the political preferences of powerful actors - the degree to which they embrace democracy as an intrinsically desirable end and their policy radicalism - to explain regime outcomes. They also demonstrate that transnational forces and influences are crucial to understand regional waves of democratization. Based on extensive research into the political histories of all twenty Latin American countries, this book offers the first extended analysis of regime emergence, survival and failure for all of Latin America over a long period of time.