Download or read book Latin American Party Systems written by Herbert Kitschelt and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-02-22 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Political parties provide a crucial link between voters and politicians. This link takes a variety of forms in democratic regimes, from the organization of political machines built around clientelistic networks to the establishment of sophisticated programmatic parties. Latin American Party Systems provides a novel theoretical argument to account for differences in the degree to which political party systems in the region were programmatically structured at the end of the twentieth century. Based on a diverse array of indicators and surveys of party legislators and public opinion, the book argues that learning and adaptation through fundamental policy innovations are the main mechanisms by which politicians build programmatic parties. Marshalling extensive evidence, the book's analysis shows the limits of alternative explanations and substantiates a sanguine view of programmatic competition, nevertheless recognizing that this form of party system organization is far from ubiquitous and enduring in Latin America.

Download or read book Party Systems in Latin America written by Scott Mainwaring and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-02-08 with total page 525 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book generates a wealth of new empirical information about Latin American party systems and contributes richly to major theoretical debates about party systems and democracy.

Download or read book From Movements to Parties in Latin America written by Donna Lee Van Cott and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2007-04-30 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides a detailed treatment of an important topic that has received no scholarly attention: the surprising transformation of indigenous peoples' movements into viable political parties in the 1990s in four Latin American countries (Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela) and their failure to succeed in two others (Argentina, Peru). The parties studied are crucial components of major trends in the region. By providing to voters clear programs for governing, and reaching out in particular to under-represented social groups, they have enhanced the quality of democracy and representative government. Based on extensive original research and detailed historical case studies, the book links historical institutional analysis and social movement theory to a study of the political systems in which the new ethnic cleavages emerged. The book concludes with a discussion of the implications for democracy of the emergence of this phenomenon in the context of declining public support for parties.

Download or read book The Fates of Political Parties written by Jennifer Cyr and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-06-09 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book shows how political parties in Latin America can survive and even revive after electoral crises.

Download or read book Electoral Rules and Democracy in Latin America written by Cynthia McClintock and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During Latin America's third democratic wave, a majority of countries adopted a runoff rule for the election of the president, effectively dampening plurality voting, opening the political arena to new parties, and assuring the public that the president will never have anything less than majority support. In a region in which undemocratic political parties were common and have often been dominated by caudillos, cautious naysayers have voiced concerns about the runoff process, arguing that a proliferation of new political parties vying for power is a sign of inferior democracy. This book is the first rigorous assessment of the implications of runoff versus plurality rules throughout Latin America, and demonstrates that, in contrast to early scholarly skepticism about runoff, it has been positive for democracy in the region. Primarily through qualitative analysis for each country, the author argues that, indeed, an important advantage of runoff is the greater openness of the political arena to new parties--at the same time that measures can be taken to inhibit party proliferation. In this context, it is also the first volume to address whether or not a runoff rule with a reduced threshold (for example, 40% with a 10-point lead) is a felicitous compromise between majority runoff and plurality. The book considers the potential for the superiority of runoff to travel beyond Latin America--in particular, and rather provocatively, to the United States.

Download or read book Welfare and Party Politics in Latin America written by Jennifer Pribble and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-04-22 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the variation in welfare and other social assistance policies in Latin America.

Download or read book Party Brands in Crisis written by Noam Lupu and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-01-15 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Party Brands in Crisis offers a new way of thinking about how the behavior of political parties affects voters' attachments.

Download or read book Democracies and Dictatorships in Latin America written by Scott Mainwaring and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-01-31 with total page 371 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Challenges of Party Building in Latin America written by Steven Levitsky and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-10-13 with total page 573 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a new and conflict-centered theory of successful party-building, drawing on diverse cases from across Latin America.

Download or read book Latin American Politics written by David Close and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2010-02-01 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Highlighting eleven different topics in separate chapters, the thematic approach of Latin American Politics offers students the conceptual tools they need to analyze the political systems of all twenty Latin American nations. Such a structure makes the book self-consciously comparative, allowing students to become stronger analysts of comparative politics and better political scientists in general.

Download or read book The Inclusionary Turn in Latin American Democracies written by Diana Kapiszewski and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-02-04 with total page 587 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Latin American states took dramatic steps toward greater inclusion during the late twentieth and early twenty-first Centuries. Bringing together an accomplished group of scholars, this volume examines this shift by introducing three dimensions of inclusion: official recognition of historically excluded groups, access to policymaking, and resource redistribution. Tracing the movement along these dimensions since the 1990s, the editors argue that the endurance of democratic politics, combined with longstanding social inequalities, create the impetus for inclusionary reforms. Diverse chapters explore how factors such as the role of partisanship and electoral clientelism, constitutional design, state capacity, social protest, populism, commodity rents, international diffusion, and historical legacies encouraged or inhibited inclusionary reform during the late 1990s and early 2000s. Featuring original empirical evidence and a strong theoretical framework, the book considers cross-national variation, delves into the surprising paradoxes of inclusion, and identifies the obstacles hindering further fundamental change.

Download or read book Gender and Representation in Latin America written by Leslie A. Schwindt-Bayer and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-01-04 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the past thirty years, women's representation and gender equality has developed unevenly in Latin America. Some countries have experienced large increases in gender equality in political offices, whereas others have not, and even within countries, some political arenas have become more gender equal whereas others continue to exude intense gender inequality. These patterns are inconsistent with explanations of social and cultural improvements in gender equality leading to improved gender equality in political office. Gender and Representation in Latin America argues instead that gender inequality in political representation in Latin America is rooted in institutions and the democratic challenges and political crises facing Latin American countries and that these challenges matter for the number of women and men elected to office, what they do once there, how much power they gain access to, and how their presence and actions influence democracy and society more broadly. The book draws upon the expertise of top scholars of women, gender, and political institutions in Latin America to analyze the institutional and contextual causes and consequences of women's representation in Latin America. It does this in part 1 with chapters that analyze gender and political representation regionwide in each of five different "arenas of representation"-the presidency, cabinets, national legislatures, political parties, and subnational governments. In part 2, it provides chapters that analyze gender and representation in each of seven different countries-Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, Uruguay, Mexico, Brazil, and Colombia. The authors bring novel insights and impressive new data to their analyses, helping to make this one of the most comprehensive books on gender and political representation in Latin America today.

Download or read book The Resurgence of the Latin American Left written by Steven Levitsky and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2011-09-01 with total page 498 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Latin America experienced an unprecedented wave of left-leaning governments between 1998 and 2010. This volume examines the causes of this leftward turn and the consequences it carries for the region in the twenty-first century. The Resurgence of the Latin American Left asks three central questions: Why have left-wing parties and candidates flourished in Latin America? How have these leftist parties governed, particularly in terms of social and economic policy? What effects has the rise of the Left had on democracy and development in the region? The book addresses these questions through two sections. The first looks at several major themes regarding the contemporary Latin American Left, including whether Latin American public opinion actually shifted leftward in the 2000s, why the Left won in some countries but not in others, and how the left turn has affected market economies, social welfare, popular participation in politics, and citizenship rights. The second section examines social and economic policy and regime trajectories in eight cases: those of leftist governments in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Uruguay, and Venezuela, as well as that of a historically populist party that governed on the right in Peru. Featuring a new typology of Left parties in Latin America, an original framework for identifying and categorizing variation among these governments, and contributions from prominent and influential scholars of Latin American politics, this historical-institutional approach to understanding the region’s left turn—and variation within it—is the most comprehensive explanation to date on the topic.

Download or read book The Politics of Political Science written by Paulo Ravecca and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-02-11 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this thought-provoking book, Paulo Ravecca presents a series of interlocking studies on the politics of political science in the Americas. Focusing mainly on the cases of Chile and Uruguay, Ravecca employs different strands of critical theory to challenge the mainstream narrative about the development of the discipline in the region, emphasizing its ideological aspects and demonstrating how the discipline itself has been shaped by power relations. Ravecca metaphorically charts the (non-linear) transit from “cold” to “warm” to “hot” intellectual temperatures to illustrate his—alternative—narrative. Beginning with a detailed quantitative study of three regional academic journals, moving to the analysis of the role of subjectivity (and political trauma) in academia and its discourse in relation to the dictatorships in Chile and Uruguay, and arriving finally at an intimate meditation on the experience of being a queer scholar in the Latin American academy of the 21st century, Ravecca guides his readers through differing explorations, languages, and methods. The Politics of Political Science: Re-Writing Latin American Experiences offers an essential reflection on both the relationship between knowledges and politics and the political and ethical role of the scholar today, demonstrating how the study of the politics of knowledge deepens our understanding of the politics of our times.

Download or read book Legislative Politics in Latin America written by Scott Morgenstern and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2002-03-04 with total page 532 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This theoretically inspired study explores legislative politics in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico. Instead of beginning with an assumption that these legislatures are either rubber-stamps or obstructionist bodies, the chapters provide new data and a fresh analytical approach to describe and explain the role of these representative bodies in these consolidating democracies. For each country the book provides three chapters dedicated, in turn, to executive-legislative relations, the legislatures' organizational structure, and the policy process.

Download or read book Changing Course in Latin America written by Kenneth M. Roberts and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the impact of economic crises and free-market reforms on party systems and political representation in contemporary Latin America. It explains why some patterns of market reform align and stabilize party systems, whereas other patterns of reform leave party systems vulnerable to widespread social protest and electoral instability. In contrast to other works on the topic, this book accounts for both the institutionalization and the breakdown of party systems, and it explains why Latin America turned to the Left politically in the aftermath of the market-reform process. Ultimately, it explains why this "left turn" was more radical in some countries than others and why it had such varied effects on national party systems.

Download or read book Latin American Politics and Society written by Gerardo L. Munck and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-06-09 with total page 649 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Taking a fresh thematic approach to politics and society in Latin America, this introductory textbook analyzes the region's past and present in an accessible and engaging style well-suited to undergraduate students. The book provides historical insights into modern states and critical issues they are facing, with insightful analyses that are supported by empirical data, maps and timelines. Drawing upon cutting-edge research, the text considers critical topics relevant to all countries within the region such as the expansion of democracy and citizenship rights and responses to human rights abuses, corruption, and violence. Each richly illustrated chapter contains a compelling and cohesive narrative, followed by thought-provoking questions and further reading suggestions, making this text a vital resource for anyone encountering the complexities of Latin American politics for the first time in their studies.