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Crisis and Democracy in Latin America

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Peter H. Smith
Peter H. Smith
Affiliation:
Professor of Political Science and Director of the Center for Iberian and Latin American Studies, and Simón Bolívar Professor of Latin American Studies at the University of California, San Diego
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Abstract

Democratization in Latin America took place throughout the 1980s within a context of acute economic crisis, thus posing a sharp challenge to established theory. This essay examines alternative explanations-economic, political, institutional, international-for this paradoxical outcome. It is argued that the political impact of the debt crisis differs for the short, medium, and long terms. The analysis also devotes considerable attention to the concept of “democratization” and to the quality of Latin American democracies, which tend to contain pervasive authoritarian features. Careful reading of these phenomena can lay the foundation for new and enduring theoretical frameworks about the relationship between macroeco-nomic transformation and political change.

Type
Review Articles
Information
World Politics , Volume 43 , Issue 4 , July 1991 , pp. 608 - 634
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1991

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References

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World Politics 43 (July 1991), 608–34

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