Free Market Democracy and the Chilean and Mexican Countryside

Free Market Democracy and the Chilean and Mexican Countryside
Author: Marcus J. Kurtz
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2004-04-05
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1139451804

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This book examines the relationship between free markets and democracy. It demonstrates how the implementation of even very painful free-market economic reforms in Chile and Mexico have helped to consolidate democratic politics without engendering a backlash against either reform or democratization. This national-level compatibility between free markets and democracy, however, is founded on their rural incompatibility. In the countryside, free-market reforms socially isolate peasants to such a degree that they become unable to organize independently, and are vulnerable to the pressures of local economic elites. This helps to create an electoral coalition behind free-market reforms that is critically based in some of the market's biggest victims: the peasantry. The book concludes that the comparatively stable free-market democracy in Latin America hinges critically on its defects in the countryside; conservative, free-market elites may consent to open politics only if they have a rural electoral redoubt.

Latin American Democratic Transformations

Latin American Democratic Transformations
Author: William C. Smith
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 397
Release: 2009-08-24
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1405197587

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Latin American Democratic Transformations explores the manner in which Latin American societies seek to consolidate and deepen their democracies in adverse domestic and international circumstances. The contributors engage recent debates on liberal and illiberal democracy and probe the complex connections between democratic politics and neoliberal, market-oriented reforms.

State, Market, and Democracy in Chile

State, Market, and Democracy in Chile
Author: P. Posner
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2008-05-12
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0230611966

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Through an in-depth analysis of the Chilean labour market, social welfare, and state reforms, this book reveals the manner in which neoliberal reform in Chile has undermined the urban poor's incentives and ability to hold public officials accountable, negatively affecting the quality of Chilean democracy.

The State And Capital In Chile

The State And Capital In Chile
Author: Eduardo Silva
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 244
Release: 2019-07-11
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1000306038

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Chile emerged from military rule in the 1990s as a leader of free market economic reform and democratic stability, and other countries now look to it for lessons in policy design, sequencing, and timing. Explanations for economic change in Chile generally focus on strong authoritarianism under General Augusto Pinochet and the insulation of policymakers from the influence of social groups, especially business and landowners. In this book Eduardo Silva argues that such a view underplays the role of entrepreneurs and landowners in Chile's neoliberal transformation and, hence, their potential effect on economic reform elsewhere. He shows how shifting coalitions of businesspeople and landowners with varying power resources influenced policy formulation and affected policy outcomes. He then examines the consequences of coalitional shifts for Chile's transition to democracy, arguing that the absence of a multiclass opposition that included captialists facilitated a political transition based on the authoritarian constitution of 1980 and inhibited its alternative. This situation helped to define the current style of consensual politics that, with respect to the question of social equity, has deepened a neoliberal model of welfare statism, rather than advanced a social democratic one.

The Paradox of Democracy in Latin America

The Paradox of Democracy in Latin America
Author: Katherine Isbester
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 417
Release: 2011-01-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1442601965

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What becomes clear throughout is that there is a paradox at the heart of Latin America's democracies. Despite decades of struggle to replace authoritarian dictatorships with electoral democracies, solid economic growth (leading up to the global credit crisis), and increased efforts by the state to extend the benefits of peace and prosperity to the poor, democracy - as a political system - is experiencing declining support, and support for authoritarianism is on the rise.

Reorganizing Popular Politics

Reorganizing Popular Politics
Author: Ruth Berins Collier
Publisher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2015-10-29
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0271075686

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A historic shift has occurred in the organizational structures through which the lower classes in Latin America express voice and find political representation. With the political and economic reforms of the 1980s and 1990s, networks of community-based associations and nongovernmental organizations replaced party-affiliated labor unions as the predominant organizations to which the lower classes turned. This volume examines the new “interest regime” in Argentina, Chile, Peru, and Venezuela through two extensive surveys—one of individuals and one of associations—undertaken in those nations’ capital cities. Contrary to common perceptions, the new interest regime is neither a vibrant, autonomous civil society nor a set of weak, atomized organizations. Participation in associations is generally high, compared to “direct action” as a strategy for pursuing collective interests, and associations more frequently coordinate and engage the state than has sometimes been assumed. However, various forms of interaction with the state pose a classic trade-off between representation and state control, and the new interest regime is marked by representational distortion, in that the lower classes are less likely to use the new structures than the middle classes. Within these general patterns, distinct national models are emerging. This volume represents the most ambitious and systematic effort to date to examine individual participation and associational life in Latin America and to carry out a cross-national analysis of new forms of political representation.

The Resilience of the Latin American Right

The Resilience of the Latin American Right
Author: Juan Pablo Luna
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 392
Release: 2014-09-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1421413914

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This comparative study of Latin American conservative politics over the past twenty years analyzes right-of-center actors, electoral movements, parties, and economic policy dynamics. Since the late 1990s, when Latin American countries began making a “turn to the left,” political parties and candidates on the right end of the partisan spectrum have had a difficult time achieving electoral success. Although the left turn can be seen as a natural reaction to the public’s general dissatisfaction with the conservative modernization policies of the 1980s and 1990s, left-of-center politics are by no means permanent. In The Resilience of the Latin American Right, Juan Pablo Luna and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser seek to “right” this view by explaining the strategies conservative political parties have used to maintain a foothold in the region’s electoral and governance processes. The editors provide an analytical framework for conceptualizing the right that works for both historic and contemporary politics, and the volume’s contributors use the framework to evaluate right-of-center political activity across the continent. They find that conservative forces are pursuing a range of adaptive strategies, including nonelectroral and nonpartisan tactics. The book’s four thematic sections include an analysis of parties and elections in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Mexico, Peru, and Venezuela. Students and scholars of both Latin American politics and comparative politics will find The Resilience of the Latin American Right of vital interest.

Routledge Handbook of Latin American Politics

Routledge Handbook of Latin American Politics
Author: Peter Kingstone
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 624
Release: 2013-03-05
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1135280290

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Latin America has been one of the critical areas in the study of comparative politics. The region’s experiments with installing and deepening democracy and promoting alternative modes of economic development have generated intriguing and enduring empirical puzzles. In turn, Latin America’s challenges continue to spawn original and vital work on central questions in comparative politics: about the origins of democracy; about the relationship between state and society; about the nature of citizenship; about the balance between state and market. The richness and diversity of the study of Latin American politics makes it hard to stay abreast of the developments in the many sub-literatures of the field. The Routledge Handbook of Latin American Politics offers an intellectually rigorous overview of the state of the field and a thoughtful guide to the direction of future scholarship. Kingstone and Yashar bring together the leading figures in the study of Latin America to present extensive empirical coverage, new original research, and a cutting-edge examination of the central areas of inquiry in the region.

Marketing Democracy

Marketing Democracy
Author: Erin A. Snider
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2022-03-31
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 110884426X

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By focusing on the construction and practice of democracy aid, this book shows how democracy aid can reinforce, rather than challenge authoritarian regimes.