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Cover -- Contents -- Preface -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Political Engineering and the US Constitution -- 3. Constitutions -- 4. Federalism and Division of Power -- 5. Elections and Electoral Systems -- 6. Political Parties, Election Campaigns, and Interest Groups -- 7. Legislative Power -- 8. Executive Power -- 9. Judicial Power -- 10. Comparative Conclusions -- References -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Y.

It is impossible to look at contemporary Latin America and not be struck by the prevalence of violence, whether in the form of drug cartels in Mexico, criminal gangs in Central America, the long-term conflict in Colombia, or urban violence in Brazil. Further, the headliners of violence from these locations obscure a more complex set of interactions that include not just traditional criminal elements but also various social actors and the state itself. This plural violence in the region is the focus of Violent Democracies in Latin America, the volume edited by Enrique Desmond Arias and Daniel M. Goldstein.

The fundamental point of contention between the works under review here (in my view) is whether or not the presence of systematic violence is primarily a feature or a bug of the given political system being studied. I do not mean this distinction in a normative sense, but rather an analytical one. In other words, should we view endemic political violence in ostensibly democratic states to be deviations from appropriate democratic behavior (i.e., a bug or flaw in a given system), or is it the case that the violence in question should be understood as an inherent part of the system, perhaps even if it is still to be considered a democracy (i.e., a feature or constituent element thereof)?