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From Movements to Parties in Latin America: The Evolution of
Ethnic Politics, Donna Lee Van Cott, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2004,pp. 300.During the 1980s and 90s the English literature on Latin American
politics in the Anglo North American and Anglo European academic worlds
roughly evolved from works centrally concerned—and discursively
interconnected—with various models of transitions to democracy to
the necessary processes that the new electoral democracies had to undergo
and the policies they needed to implement to advance in the process of
consolidation of democracy. For scholars who essentially viewed these
processes either as largely completed in institutional terms or on their
way to institutional maturity and stability, the focus of scholarly
attention then shifted to more subtle questions of democratic quality.
Donna Lee Van Cott's From Movements to Parties in Latin America:
The Evolution of Ethnic Politics is a work that not only fits into
the category of works fundamentally concerned with the issues and
challenges associated with either the consolidation of democracy
literature or the quality of democracy literature, but it is also a work
that helps to develop the literature by highlighting a central variable of
Latin American culture and politics, namely, indigenous ethnic movements
and politics.

Once upon a time, pluralist (Dahl 1961) and modernization theories (Lipset 1959) described liberal democracy as a political regime that tended to exclude violence, insurgency, and corruption. A few decades later, Francis Fukuyama (1992) argued that in the long run, liberal democracy would triumph over other political alternatives, and about the same time Samuel Huntington (1991) revealed a massive wave of democratization (or redemocratization) in different parts of the world.

AbstractInstitutional effectiveness varies widely across Chile's 346 municipalities. Whereas some local governments seem to work with impeccable precision, others struggle to deliver basic services and welfare benefits to the population. This article seeks to explain why such variation exists; it combines quantitative and qualitative evidence to show how mayors can play a crucial role in building institutional effectiveness. The study focuses on the administration of Chile's municipal job placement offices. It finds that municipalities where mayors have held office for three or more consecutive terms exhibit stronger institutional capacity than those localities where electoral turnover is the norm. The analysis, therefore, underscores an interesting finding: electoral competition has the potential both to improve and to undermine administrative capacity.

After the close of the 2003 World Trade Organization (WTO) ministerial meeting in Cancun, Mexico, United States Trade Representative Robert Zoellick unleashed a stinging attack on Brazil and its Latin American partners in the G-20 trade negotiating coalition. Lamenting the failure to reach agreement on the US/EU proposal to conclude the Doha round, Zoellick (2003) bemoaned Brazil's 'tactics of confrontation', refusal to compromise, and insistence on a 'massive list of required changes' to the chairperson's discussion text. These tensions between the Brazilian-led G-20 negotiating coalition and the US offer a highly illustrative entry point to understanding the key elements of contemporary Latin American diplomacy, the subject of this chapter. In order to grapple with the practice and precepts of Latin American diplomacy we will draw out five points embedded within post Cancun rhetorical fracas and amplify them through reference to other cases and the conceptual thinking of scholars and analysts based in the region. The approach we take in our analysis of Latin American diplomacy is predominantly at the state level, examining the patterns and habits of interaction exhibited by governments in the region.

"Latin America's Socioeconomic Relationship With China: Is Development Still Possible?" published on by Oxford University Press.

"Agrarian Elites and Democracy in Latin America after the Third Wave" published on by Oxford University Press.