Inviting in tone and organization but rigorous in its scholarship, this collection focuses on the problems, successes, and multiple forms of democracy in Latin America.

This volume analyzes how enduring democracy amid longstanding inequality engendered inclusionary reform in contemporary Latin America.

In 2009, Ignacio Walker—scholar, politician, and one of Latin America’s leading public intellectuals—published La Democracia en América Latina. Now available in English, with a new prologue, and significantly revised and updated for an English-speaking audience, Democracy in Latin America: Between Hope and Despair contributes to the necessary and urgent task of exploring both the possibilities and difficulties of establishing a stable democracy in Latin America. Walker argues that, throughout the past century, Latin American history has been marked by the search for responses or alternatives to the crisis of oligarchic rule and the struggle to replace the oligarchic order with a democratic one. After reviewing some of the principal theories of democracy based on an analysis of the interactions of political, economic, and social factors, Walker maintains that it is primarily the actors, institutions, and public policies—not structural determinants—that create progress or regression in Latin American democracy.

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.

Drawn from the pages of Sociological Analysis/Sociology of Religion, this collection of original essays demonstrates the complexity of the religious structure of Latin America, discussing interactions among Protestant and Roman Catholic religious movements, and democratic as well as antidemocratic political agendas.

The essays in this text, written by distinguished specialists, examine the different trajectories in Spain and several nations in Latin America, and seek to explain the different outcomes.

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.

Even in Latin America's most socially and economically stable countries, new parties emerge constantly, old parties collapse, and party systems across the region are notoriously fragile. Still, there are also successful stories. There have been a number of parties in Colombia, Chile, and Venezuela that used to be able to operate well beyond electoral cycles and preserve a significant presence in their respective countries for decades. How do such political parties remain vibrant organizations over time? In Party Vibrancy and Democracy in Latin America, Fernando Rosenblatt sheds new light on how party vibrancy is maintained and reproduced over time in three of the region's more stable countries-Chile, Costa Rica, and Uruguay. Referencing these three "consolidated" democracies with records of good governance, Rosenblatt identifies the complex interaction between four causal factors that can explain party vibrancy: Purpose, Trauma, Channels of Ambition, and Moderate Exit Barriers. "Purpose" activates prospective loyalty among party members. "Trauma" refers to a shared traumatic past which engenders retrospective loyalty. "Channels of Ambition" are established routes by which individuals can pursue political careers. Finally, "Moderate Exit Barriers" are rules that set costs of defection at reasonable levels. When these factors work together throughout a party's "Golden Age," they can demonstrate a link between party organizations´ stability and the quality of democratic representation across Latin America. As Rosenblatt finds, when parties remain vibrant organizations, democracies are better able to withstand challenges long-term. A unique qualitative study, Party Vibrancy and Democracy in Latin America demonstrates how the vitality of political parties can directly and indirectly impact how effective they are as intermediaries for their citizens not just in Latin America, but around the world.

This book offers a region-wide overview of the patterns and processes of Latin American history, politics, society, and development. It provides a detailed country-by-country treatment and unique features of all Latin American countries.

For over thirty years, Latin American Politics and Development has kept instructors and students abreast of current affairs and changes in Latin America. Now in its ninth edition, this definitive text has been updated throughout and features contributions from experts in the field, including twenty new and revised chapters on Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean, and South America. The fully updated foundational section includes new chapters on political economy and U.S.-Latin American relations and covers the changing context of Latin American politics, the pattern of historical development, political culture, interest groups and political parties, government machinery, the role of the state and public policy, and the struggle for democracy. In addition to detailed country-by-country chapters, Latin American Politics and Development provides a comprehensive regional overview.