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1 - The Political Origins of Institutional Weakness

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 May 2020

Daniel M. Brinks
Affiliation:
University of Texas, Austin
Steven Levitsky
Affiliation:
Harvard University, Massachusetts
María Victoria Murillo
Affiliation:
Columbia University, New York
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Summary

The third wave of democratization transformed Latin America. Across the region, regime transitions triggered a plethora of institutional reforms aimed at enhancing the stability and quality of both the new and the few long-standing democracies. Most states adopted new constitutions. Many of them extended new rights to citizens, including unprecedented social rights, such as the right to health care, housing, and a clean environment (Klug 2000; Yashar 2005; Brinks and Blass 2018). Electoral systems were redesigned – at least once – in every Latin American country except Costa Rica; judicial and central bank reforms spread across the region (Jácome and Vásquez 2008); and governments launched far-reaching decentralization initiatives and experimented with new institutions of direct or participatory democracy (Falleti 2010; Cameron, Hershberg, and Sharpe 2012; Altman 2014; Mayka 2019).

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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