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Introduction: Institutions, Actors, and Processes in the Transformation of Latin American Democracy / William C. Smith -- Part I: Debates on Democracy and Performance -- Liberal and Illiberal Democracy in Latin America / Peter H. Smith and Melissa R. Ziegler -- Neoliberalism and Democracy in Latin America: A Mixed Record / Kurt Weyland -- The Uneven Performance of Third Wave Democracies: Electoral Politics and the Imperfect Rule of Law in Latin America / Joe Foweraker and Roman Krznaric -- Part II: Institutions and the Travails of Competitive Politics -- The Reelection Debate in Latin America / John M. Carey -- Decentralization's Nondemocratic Roots: Authoritarianism and Subnational Reform tn Latin America / Kent Eaton -- Institutional Change and Ethnic Parties in South America / Donna Lee Van Cott -- Expanding Accountability Through Participatory Institutions: Mayors, Citizens, and Budgeting in Three Brazilian Municipalities / Brian Wampler -- "For a Few Senators More"? Negotiating Constitutional Cbanges During Chile's Transition to Democracy / Fredrik Uggla -- Judicial Reform as Insurance Policy: Mexico in the 1990s / Jodi S. Finkel -- Part III: Actors, Participation, and Mass Politics -- Indigenous Parties and Democracy in Latin America / Raul L. Madrid -- Defining Rights in Democratization: The Argentine Government and Human Rights Organizations, 1983-2003 / Michelle D. Bonner -- Sources of Mass Partisanship in Brazil / David Samuels -- Brazil's Agrarian Reform: Democratic Innovation or Oligarchic Exclusion Redux? / Anthony W. Pereira -- The Indian Movement and Political Democracy in Ecuador / Leon Zamosc -- Local Democracy and the Transformation of Popular Participation in Chile / Paul W. Posner -- Part IV Challenges of Unstructured Political Mobilization -- Indictments, Myths, and Citizen Mobilization in Argentina: A Discourse Analysis / Ariel C. Armony and Victor Armony -- Democracy Without Parties? Political Parties and Regime Change in Fujimori's Peru / Steven Levitsky and Maxwell A. Cameron -- Social Correlates of Party System Demise and Populist Resurgence in Venezuela / Kenneth M. Roberts

The field of Latin American politics has undeniably achieved major advances in the last several decades. Nevertheless, one detects a growing intellectual unease and a sense that the excitement engendered by the pathbreaking work and heated debates of previous decades—focusing on authoritarianism, democratization, and market restructuring and related structural transformations—has waned and perhaps given way to a certain "normalization" of our intellectual enterprise.

L'auteur rend compte de l'entreprise visant les préoccupations en matière de réforme libérale sur les terrains économique et politique. L'accent est mis sur leur articulation dans "les démocraties de transition" latino-américaines avec les retombées complexes d'un secteur à l'autre sous l'effet des incidences macro et micro-économiques. Les mécanismes des échecs institutionnels sont mis en avant alors que l'État est en permanence au cœur des interrogations.

The regions exeedingly modest economic recovery, plus recent events such as the failed military coup in Venezuela and the imposition of a civil-military dictatorship in Peru, thus raise struggling questions conderning the social and polilical consequences of neoliberal restructuring. Meriting particular attention in comparative analyses of the post-transition period are the sharp erosion of the state's capacity to manage major macroeconomic variables and the problematic tensions between marketplace logic, reinforced by the exegencies of the world-econorny, and pressures to institutionalze and expand popular participation and citizenship rights beyond thc political-institutional arena of elcctoral politics.

In Latin America, free-market policies & neoliberal restructuring have been faced with a wide array of economic problems in recent years, with somewhat problematic results. The consequences for the process of democratic consolidation have become the subject of increasing theorizing. Here, an examination of the diverse paths to neoliberal restructuring followed by different countries is offered to elaborate several scenarios that may eventually prevail, including consideration of variations in posttransition democratic regimes in the 1990s. The policies & developments schematically discussed here support the contention that Latin America is following a developmental trajectory distinct from anything known in its past. 69 References. Adapted from the source document.