Suchergebnisse

The Chilean party system has been a legacy of three fundamental social and political watersheds in the 19th and 20th centuries. At each watershed, two-sided cleavages generated a tripartite configuration of parties. Thus, two poles emerged representing antagonistic positions with respect to a fundamental axis of cleavage, and a politically significant center occupied the space between them. In a comparative Latin American framework, this political configuration is distinctive, resembling more closely patterns in some Western European party systems.

This article suggests eight lessons regarding democratic governance during the third wave of democratization in Latin America. First, creating effective democratic governance has proven far more difficult than analysts anticipated in the early 1990s. Second, the outcomes in democratic governance in contemporary Latin America have varied widely. Third, effective states are important for successful democratic governance. Fourth, institutionalized party systems facilitate effective democratic governance. Fifth, no set of formal institutions is clearly superior to others for promoting successful democratic governance. Sixth, although historical legacies shape the prospects for the subsequent success of democratic governance, countries have opportunities to break from the past and to establish new regime dynamics. Seventh, in the post-1990 period in Latin America, positive and negative outcomes have tended to go together. Finally, effective democratic governance does not always satisfy popular aspirations.

Examines pre- and post-authoritarian choices, focusing on division of the electorate into Right, center, and Left, explanation for those tendencies, correlations between results of various elections, and consistencies in voting patterns; 1980s and 1990s, chiefly, with historical references. Some focus on the National Party (PN), the Radical Party (PR), the Communist Party (PC), the Christian Democratic Party (PDC), and the Independent Democratic Union (UDI).

In this article, we present measures of democratic governance to give a sense of how Latin American countries have fared since the early 1990s. The rest of the book discusses reasons for success and failure in democratic governance, but first it is necessary to provide a descriptive map of which countries have been more or less successful on which dimensions of democratic governance. óur evaluation is concerned with the extent to which democracies enhance citizen well-being and protect citizen rights. We provide an empirical mapping of how Latin American countries have fared since the early 1990s on a wide array of governance issues that are infrequently brought together to provide a medium time perspective. In addition to providing this descriptive map, we hope to stimulate thinking about how to conceptualize and measure democratic governance. the closest existing measures are of effective governance in general (e.g., Kaufmann, Kraay, and Mastruzzi 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008) rather than specifically democratic governance, and of the quality of democracy based on its procedural ideals (diamond and Morlino 2005; Levine and Molina 2006). Our enterprise is different, and we believe it merits an effort to create a systematic approach to measurement. ; En este artículo introducimos las medidas de la gobernanza democrática, para así analizar cómo los países latinoamericanos se han desenvuelto desde los inicios de los años 90. El resto del libro Democratic Governance in Latin America, discute las razones para el éxito y fracaso en la gobernanza democrática, pero primero es necesario proveer un mapa descriptivo de los países que han tenido mayor o menor éxito en las diferentes dimensiones de la gobernanza democrática. Nuestra evaluación está enfocada en la medida en que las democracias mejoran el bienestar ciudadano y protegen los derechos de los mismos. Así, proveemos un mapeo empírico de la manera cómo los países latinoamericanos se han desempeñado en varios temas de gobernanza, los cuales en conjunto permiten establecer una perspectiva a mediano plazo. Adicionalmente, queremos promover la discusión sobre la forma cómo debería conceptualizarse y medir la gobernanza democrática. Las medidas existentes hacen referencia a la gobernanza en general (e.g., Kaufmann, Kraay, and mastruzzi 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008) en lugar de basarse en la gobernanza democrática en particular y en la calidad de la democracia basada en los ideales de procedimiento (diamond y morlino 2005; Levine y molina 2006). Nuestra iniciativa es diferente y creemos que responde al esfuerzo de crear un acercamiento sistemático para la medición.