Fault Lines Of Democracy In Post Transition Latin America

Concerns about democratization in Latin America today center not on the threat of authoritarian regression, but on the depth, quality, fairness, and completeness of democratization thus far. Large-scale economic and social reforms, stronger and more complex civil societies, and processes of integration and globalization call for new approaches in order to understand the unfolding of democracy in the region. In this context, the contributors to this volume explore the often disjunctive aspects of Latin American democracy, providing a nuanced understanding of contemporary democratic governance.

The State of Democracy in Latin America presents a critical analysis of the contemporary democratic state in Latin America. In a shift away from the more typical analyses of Latin American political change during the 1990s, this book presents a more state-centric perspective that seeks to explain why transitions to democracy and trends towards better governance have failed to provide more political and social stability in the continent. Through a deeper analysis of underlying social relations and values and how these manifest themselves through institutions, the state is understood not purely as an institutional form but rather as a set of interdependent relations that are shaped by particular collective and individual interests.

This book examines the political evolution of the judiciary – a usually overlooked political actor – and its capacity to contribute to the process of democratic consolidation in Latin America during the 1990s. Calleros analyzes twelve countries in order to assess the independence, impartiality, political strength and efficiency of the judicial branch. The picture that emerges – with the one exception of Costa Rica – is the persistence of weak judicial systems, unable in practice to check other branches of government, including the executive and the military, while not quite effective in fully protecting human rights or in implementing due process of law guarantees. Aggravating issues, such as corruption, heavy case backlogs, overcrowding of prisons, circumvention of laws and personal vulnerability of judges, make the judiciary the least evolved of the three branches of government in the Latin American transitions to democracy.

The State of Democracy in Latin America critically examines the nature of the post-transitional Latin American state, with a more specific engagement with the cases of Argentina and Chile.

During the 1970s and 1980s, many countries with military governments moved to more democratic ones as their citizens uncovered more and more evidence of horrific violations of human rights such as torture and execution. The newly established civilian governments were confronted with the difficult questions of whether military leaders should be prosecuted for their crimes. Often, the threat of military intervention to protect their own hovered in the background. This book focuses on the countries of Argentina, Greece, and South Korea--three countries that have been in this situation--and examines the effects that trying former military leaders have on the transition to democracy. In Argentina, the trials of former military leaders sparked a rebellion by the armed forces. In Greece and South Korea, the trials met with little response from the military.

This book explores the extent and significance of the transformation of the Organisation of American States since 1991: its roots, the reasons for and extent of its emergence, and the role that the organisation currently plays in the promotion of regional governance in the two key issue-areas of security and the defense and promotion of democratic norms and principles of good governance. By assessing where the OAS has succeeded and failed, Horwitz provides an in-depth explanation of how cooperation and consensus works in the Inter-American system.

This volume assesses one of the most important developments in contemporary Latin American women's movements: the engagement with rights-based discourses. Organised women have played a central role in the continued struggle for democracy in the region and with it gender justice. The foregrounding of human rights, and within them the recognition of women's rights, has offered women a strategic advantage in pursuing their goals of an inclusive citizenship. The country-based chapters analyse specific bodies of rights: rights and representation, domestic violence, labour rights, reproductive rights, legal advocacy, socio-economic rights, rights and ethnicity, and rights, the state and autonomy.