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A dense web of private associations drawn from multiple social classes, interest groups and value communities makes for a firm foundation for strong democracy. In Latin America today, will civil society improve the quality of democracy or will it foster political polarization and reverse recent progress? Distinguished theorists from the United States, Canada and Latin America explore the diverse impact of civil society on economic performance, political parties, and state institutions. In-depth and up-to-date country studies explore the consequences of civil society for the durability of democracy in three highly dynamic, controversial settings: Argentina, Brazil and Venezuela.
"Devoting particular emphasis to Bolivia, Chile, and Mexico, proposes a theory of civil society to explain the economic and political challenges for continuing democratization in Latin America"--Provided by publisher.
A dense web of private associations drawn from multiple social classes, interest groups and value communities makes for a firm foundation for strong democracy. In Latin America today, will civil society improve the quality of democracy or will it foster political polarization and reverse recent progress? Distinguished theorists from the United States, Canada and Latin America explore the diverse impact of civil society on economic performance, political parties, and state institutions. In-depth and up-to-date country studies explore the consequences of civil society for the durability of democracy in three highly dynamic, controversial settings: Argentina, Brazil and Venezuela.
The transition to democracy underway in Latin America since the 1980s has recently witnessed a resurgence of interest in experimenting with new forms of local governance emphasizing more participation by ordinary citizens. The hope is both to foster the spread of democracy and to improve equity in the distribution of resources. While participatory budgeting has been a favorite topic of many scholars studying this new phenomenon, there are many other types of ongoing experiments. In Barrio Democracy in Latin America, Eduardo Canel focuses our attention on the innovative participatory programs launched by the leftist government in Montevideo, Uruguay, in the early 1990s. Based on his extensive ethnographic fieldwork, Canel examines how local activists in three low-income neighborhoods in that city dealt with the opportunities and challenges of implementing democratic practices and building better relationships with sympathetic city officials.
Latin American and Caribbean communities and civil societies are undergoing a rapid process of transformation. Instead of pervasive social atomization, political apathy, and hollowed-out democracies, which have become the norm in some parts of the world, this region is witnessing an emerging collaboration between community, civil society, and government that is revitalizing democracy. This book argues that a key explanation lies in the powerful and positive relationship between community and civil society that exists in the region. The ideas of community and civil society tend to be studied separately, as analytically distinct concepts however, this volume seeks to explore their potential to work together. A unique contribution of the work is the space for dialogue it creates between the social sciences and the humanities. Many of the studies included in the volume are based on primary fieldwork and place-based case studies. Others relate literature, music and film to important theoretical works, providing a new direction in interdisciplinary studies, and highlighting the role that the arts play in community revival and broader processes of social change. A truly multi-disciplinary book bridging established notions of civil society and community through an authentically interdisciplinary approach to the topic.
First published in 2000. Beyond the Barricades explores how a transition to democracy affects civil society by tracing the levels and arenas of organized participation both before and after democratization. The group hardest hit by this transition to democracy is women who are often surprise to discover that democracies do not necessarily yield more gender equality or more opportunities for participation than dictatorships.
Legislatures, the judiciary and civil society are important actors in representative democracies. In what ways and how well do they represent? And how effectively do they carry out their institutional and social roles? Both questions refer to the key dimensions of democracy analyzed in this book: representativeness and effectiveness, respectively. While they have been developed separately in scholarly work on institutions and regimes, there is little work considering them simultaneously, and on their interaction. Using quantitative and/or qualitative methods, contributions from top scholars in the field of legislatures, the judiciary and civil society examine these two concepts and their relationships in four Latin American countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico. Designed to guide the reader through the complexities of this debate, each expert engages in a larger set of theoretical debates about different approaches to representation in each sphere. In doing so, they debate how effectively these spheres carry out their roles in each country: whether a congress is institutionalized, its accountability, and its performance as a lawmaker; whether a judicial system is independent, carries out oversight, and protects citizen rights; and the role of civil society in a representative democracy. Representation and Effectiveness in Latin American Democracies is a timely and welcomed contribution to the to the growing debate about the quality of democracy in Latin America, and the developing world more generally.
*Winner of the AEJMC-Knudson Latin America Prize 2017* Social movements throughout contemporary Latin America are successfully influencing and shaping media policy. In this highly original, detailed, and in-depth study, Silvio Waisbord and María Soledad Segura scrutinize the goals, tactics, and impact of civic media movements across the region, demonstrating the full extent of media activism on domestic policy and politics. Media Movements goes beyond simple conceptions of 'the national' versus 'the global' to reveal the complicated process of media policy-making, and to evaluate the significance of local political elites and citizens, global actors, and legal frameworks. With success rates varying across the region, the authors offer an assessment of the impact of citizens' mobilization on policy-making, as well as the effects of legislation on ownership, funding, community media, non-profit media, and public media.
Civil Society focuses on the processes and politics of dismantling "corporate" (state directed) economies and political systems in the Third World. Howard Wiarda explores how this separation would create a move toward civil societies of free associability and democracy, as well as the limits to and pitfalls of this approach. The book examines case studies from sub-Saharan Africa, East Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East, and includes such critical countries as South Africa, South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, Brazil, Mexico, and Egypt.