Download Free The Politics Of Coalition Rule In Colombia Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online The Politics Of Coalition Rule In Colombia and write the review.

From 1958 to 1986, Colombian politics were characterised by a series of coalition governments. This book analyses the historical antecedents, establishment and subsequent evolution of the political regime created in 1958. For most of this period, the country was governed by a National Front power-sharing system between the Conservatives and the Liberals, the country's two major parties. This system was initially established to prevent a return to the intense violence between the parties that had earlier led to a political breakdown and military rule. In crucial respects, the Colombian governing arrangement was similar to a number of other cases of coalition governments (termed consociational democracies), to which it is compared in the book.
This book generates a wealth of new empirical information about Latin American party systems and contributes richly to major theoretical debates about party systems and democracy.
As the relationship between the United States and Latin America becomes an important focus of world attention, The Politics of Colombia is a welcome study of this South American country. A comprehensive analysis of the international influences on Colombian politics, as well as of the country's policymaking processes, this book will introduce the reader to one of the more important, yet least known, countries of the hemisphere.
7. A Concluding Note
No subject is more central to the study of politics than elections. All across the globe, elections are a focal point for citizens, the media, and politicians long before--and sometimes long after--they occur. Electoral systems, the rules about how voters' preferences are translated into election results, profoundly shape the results not only of individual elections but also of many other important political outcomes, including party systems, candidate selection, and policy choices. Electoral systems have been a hot topic in established democracies from the UK and Italy to New Zealand and Japan. Even in the United States, events like the 2016 presidential election and court decisions such as Citizens United have sparked advocates to promote change in the Electoral College, redistricting, and campaign-finance rules. Elections and electoral systems have also intensified as a field of academic study, with groundbreaking work over the past decade sharpening our understanding of how electoral systems fundamentally shape the connections among citizens, government, and policy. This volume provides an in-depth exploration of the origins and effects of electoral systems.
Under what conditions do political institutions develop that are capable of promoting economic and social elites' accommodation to democracy? The importance of this question for research on regime change and democracy in Latin America lies in two established political facts: alliances between upper-class groups and the armed forces have historically been a major cause of military intervention in the region, and countries with electorally viable national conservative parties have experienced significantly longer periods of democratic governance since the 1920s and 1930s than have countries with weak conservative parties. The contributors to this book examine the relationship between the Right and democracy in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, El Salvador, Peru, and Venezuela during the 1980s and 1990s. The authors focus particularly on the challenges that democratization may pose to upper-class groups; the political role of conservative parties and their electoral performance during these two crucial decades; and the relationships among conservative party strength or weakness, different modes of elite interest representation, and economic and social elites' support for political democracy. The volume includes a statistical appendix with data on conservative parties' electoral performance in national elections during the 1980s and 1990s in these seven countries. Contributors: Atilio A. Borón, Universidad de Buenos Aires • Catherine M. Conaghan, Queen's University • Michael Coppedge, University of Notre Dame • John C. Dugas, Kalamazoo College • Manuel Antonio Garretón, Universidad de Chile • Scott Mainwaring, University of Notre Dame • Rachel Meneguello, Universidade de Campinas • Kevin J. Middlebrook, University of California, San Diego • Timothy J. Power, Florida International University • Elisabeth J. Wood, New York University.
Colombia's status as the fourth largest nation in Latin America and third most populous—as well as its largest exporter of such disparate commodities as emeralds, books, processed cocaine, and cut flowers—makes this, the first history of Colombia written in English, a much-needed book. It tells the remarkable story of a country that has consistently defied modern Latin American stereotypes—a country where military dictators are virtually unknown, where the political left is congenitally weak, and where urbanization and industrialization have spawned no lasting populist movement. There is more to Colombia than the drug trafficking and violence that have recently gripped the world's attention. In the face of both cocaine wars and guerrilla conflict, the country has maintained steady economic growth as well as a relatively open and democratic government based on a two-party system. It has also produced an impressive body of art and literature. David Bushnell traces the process of state-building in Colombia from the struggle for independence, territorial consolidation, and reform in the nineteenth century to economic development and social and political democratization in the twentieth. He also sheds light on the modern history of Latin America as a whole.
Particularly timely in light of the recent Mexican peso crisis, Mobile Capital and Latin American Development examines the causes, consequences, and implications of the Latin American capital flight of the 1980s. It addresses the increasingly mobile and privatized nature of international capital and its power to shape economic policy in those countries. Through a comparison of the policy experiences of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Venezuela, James E. Mahon finds that those countries that suffered the most capital flight had previously faced fewer structural trade problems and had not reoriented their exchange policies to diversify exports and deal with exchange-market instability. Since the countries that stumbled worst into capital flight before the debt crisis were later among the most aggressive neoliberal reformers, Mahon discusses the ways in which overseas capital served as a kind of pressure for free-market reform. Finally, the idea that internationally mobile capital now can operate as a kind of senate--an arm of the wealthy few, guarding the established order against the arbitrary, dangerous tendencies of the executive and popular chamber--is examined with relation to theories of dependency and the institutionalization of democracy.