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Comparative Politics: Continuity and Breakdown in the Contemporary World is an exciting new core text for introduction to comparative politics courses, focusing on the dynamics of politics: modernization, revolution, coups and democratization. Unlike other texts, Comparative Politics integrates thematic and extensive country-specific material in each chapter, striking a unique balance between discussing a wide range of countries and civilizations in detail, whilst using shorter focused textboxes to clearly illustrate key thematic points. Key features and benefits include:explanations of core con.

The decade of the 1990s saw advances in democratization and civilian control of the armed forces in Latin America, but there are warning signs on the horizon. Civil/military miovements developed in Venezuela and Paraguay and continue to pose a threat to democracy there. Moreover, these later-day versions of military-based populism serve as a warning to the region as a whole. While most scholars have focused on the issue of democratic consolidation in the region, the twin case studies of Venezuela and Paraguay demonstrate the renewed relevance of Juan Linz's breakdown paradigm. Although Venezuela and Paraguay are atypical of the newly emergent democracies in the region. they may, in fact, be leading indicators of likely problems elsewhere.

The past decade marks a watershed in Argentine civil-military relations. The country, an almost classic case of twentieth-century praetorianism, now has an historic opportunity to assert civilian control over the armed forces. This improvement in the prospects for civilian control of the armed forces may not be evident at first since the accession of the current president, Carlos Menem (1989-) was marked by an apparently dramatic retreat in the government's relations with the armed forces. While Menem's predecessor, Raul Alfonsin (1983-1989), pursued a policy which included prosecution of military human rights violators, Menem made an abrupt about-face. He granted a general pardon to those same military officers. However, this trade-off has given the government the freedom to assert a degree of civilian control over the armed forces hitherto lacking in range of important military policies in which the previous government had been largely stalemated by armed forces resistance. The threat of substantial political intervention by the armed forces is now on the wane.

Review.

In the twentieth century, Argentina has been beset with the problem of praetorianism-a condition in which military officers play a principal or predominant role in the political system. For the last 30 years, civilian governments have followed various strategies for establishing civilian control, with uniformly disastrous results. Since 1983, the Alfonsfn government has instituted a new approach, a strategy of "doctrinal change" within the armed forces; the strategy aims at incorporating the norms of Western military professionalism and respect for democracy. Although the present government has done better than its predecessors, the final prognosis is still guarded.