Christian Democracy swept across parts of Latin America, gaining influence in Venezuela in the 1940s, Chile in the 1950s, El Salvador and Guatemala in the 1960s, and Costa Rica and Mexico in the 1980s. This book offers an overview of Christian Democracy in the region— underscoring its remarkable diversity—and examines the Christian Democratic organizations of Chile and Mexico, which are still major parties today. The concluding section analyzes the demise of formerly significant Christian Democratic parties in El Salvador, Guatemala, Peru, and Venezuela. Christian Democracy in Latin America provides the definitive stufy of the nature, rise, and decline of Christian Democracy in Latin America. The book enriches the broader theoretical literature on political parties by highlighting the distinctive strategic dilemmas parties face, and the distinctive objectives they pursue, in contexts of fragile democracy or of authoritarian regimes.

A comprehensive global study of the political ideology of Christian Democracy, from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day.

First published in 1957, this book is a detailed analysis on Christian Democracy, a movement backed by Protestants as well as Catholics, which has become one of the great social forces of Western Europe. It is strong in eight countries. The first half of Fogarty’s book sets out what the many Christian-Democratic movements stand for. The second part of the book shows how these movements began, how they have grown, changed, and consolidated, and how they developed into the mid-20th century. This is a broad and useful survey which delves the history, nature and significance of the Christian Democratic movements in Europe. In Fogarty’s analysis, Christian Democracy may indeed bring about a renewed unity of the Christian tradition in Western society.

This text examines the history, organisation and continuing worldwide influence of the International Christian Democratic movement, which currently has nearly 70 parties on five continents. It demonstrates how a religious political movement has acquired such wide political influence.

This volume focuses on democracy in Latin America, and both assesses the state of current knowledge on the topic and identifies new research frontiers in the study of Latin American politics. It provides an overview of research agendas and strategies used in the literature over the past four decades. It tackles a series of central questions-What is democracy? Is democracy an absolute value? Are current conceptualizations of democracy adequate? How and why does democracy work or fail in Latin America?-and spells out the implications of answers to these questions for current research agendas. It distinguishes between qualitative and quantitative approaches to the conceptualization and measurement of democracy, and presents a dataset on political regimes and democracy that illustrates how the differences between these two standard approaches might be overcome. Finally, it evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of conventional methods used to generate and test explanations of the causes and consequences of democracy, and proposes alternative ways to advance ongoing substantive debates given the current state of theory and data. The contributors are scholars from the United States and Latin America who are experts on Latin America, and who have established reputations as theorists and methodologists. The volume will be of interest to readers seeking to understand debates about democracy in developing societies and to grasp the concepts, theories and methods that are currently being developed to study Latin American politics. Oxford Studies in Democratization is a series for scholars and students of comparative politics and related disciplines. Volumes concentrate on the comparative study of the democratization process that accompanied the decline and termination of the cold war. The geographical focus of the series is primarily Latin America, the Caribbean, Southern and Eastern Europe, and relevant experiences in Africa and Asia. The series editor is Laurence Whitehead, Official Fellow, Nuffield College, University of Oxford.

First published in 1989, The Dictionary of Contemporary Politics of South America provides a guide to the most important organizations, figures, events and themes in the contemporary politics of South America. The countries covered are Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru, Chile, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, Brazil, Suriname and Guyana, as well as the French overseas department of French Guiana. Central American and Caribbean affairs are also touched on when they have implications for South American politics. Taking a broad definition of the term ‘contemporary’, the authors isolate the strands of recent history which have a continual influence on political thinking. Although first published in 1989, this book will be a valuable resource for journalists, students, diplomats, business people, and anyone else who is interested in the politics of this richly diverse continent.

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.

During the 1980s, superpower rivalry and regional conflicts decimated the Central American economies and eroded political systems within the region. Recent years, however, have witnessed remarkable political change, and since 1990 popularly elected presidents have held office in all seven countries. This book offers a comprehensive analysis of the