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This in-depth study of local government in Mexico raises issues which go far beyond the territory it covers. It will be of absorbing interest to all students of local democracy and participatory methods, not only in Latin America, but in Western and Eastern Europe, the USA, Africa, Asia, and elsewhere, where initiatives and experimentation are driven by socio-economic change. Everywhere citizen participation has become an important part of the democratisation debate, and this is certainly the situation in contemporary Mexico. This book presents a revealing insight of the wide range of participatory mechanisms, including plebiscites, referenda and neighbourhood committees, which have been introduced by different political parties at the local level in Mexico. After presenting the overall picture, the author examines the implementation of the participatory agenda in three localities:
The resurgence of the Left in Latin America over the past decade has been so notable that it has been called “the Pink Tide.” In recent years, regimes with leftist leaders have risen to power in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Uruguay, and Venezuela. What does this trend portend for the deepening of democracy in the region? Benjamin Goldfrank has been studying the development of participatory democracy in Latin America for many years, and this book represents the culmination of his empirical investigations in Brazil, Uruguay, and Venezuela. In order to understand why participatory democracy has succeeded better in some countries than in others, he examines the efforts in urban areas that have been undertaken in the cities of Porto Alegre, Montevideo, and Caracas. His findings suggest that success is related, most crucially, to how nationally centralized political authority is and how strongly institutionalized the opposition parties are in the local arenas.
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.
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.
The United States-Mexico border zone is one of the busiest and most dangerous in the world. NAFTA and rapid industrialization on the Mexican side have brought trade, travel, migration, and consequently, organized crime and corruption to the region on an unprecedented scale. Until recently, crime at the border was viewed as a local law enforcement problem with drug trafficking—a matter of "beefing" up police and "hardening" the border. At the turn of the century, that limited perception has changed. The range of criminal activity at the border now extends beyond drugs to include smuggling of arms, people, vehicles, financial instruments, environmentally dangerous substances, endangered species, and archeological objects. Such widespread trafficking involves complex, high-level criminal-political alliances that local lawenforcement alone can't address. Researchers of the region, as well as officials from both capitals, now see the border as a set of systemic problems that threaten the economic, political, and social health of their countries as a whole. Organized Crime and Democratic Governability brings together scholars and specialists, including current and former government officials, from both sides of the border to trace the history and define the reality of this situation. Their diverse perspectives place the issue of organized crime in historical, political, economic, and cultural contexts unattainable by single-author studies. Contributors examine broad issues related to the political systems of both countries, as well as the specific actors—crime gangs, government officials, prosecutors, police, and the military—involved in the ongoing drama of the border. Editors Bailey and Godson provide an interpretive frame, a "continuum of governability," that will guide researchers and policymakers toward defining goals and solutions to the complex problem that, along with a border, the United States and Mexico now share.
The Romance of Democracy gives a unique insider perspective on contemporary Mexico by examining the meaning of democracy in the lives of working-class residents in Mexico City today. A highly absorbing and vividly detailed ethnographic study of popular politics and official subjugation, the book provides a detailed, bottom-up exploration of what men and women think about national and neighborhood democracy, what their dreams are for a better society, and how these dreams play out in their daily lives. Based on extensive fieldwork in the same neighborhood he discussed in his acclaimed book The Meanings of Macho, Matthew C. Gutmann now explores the possibilities for political and social change in the world's most populous city. In the process he provides a new perspective on many issues affecting Mexicans countrywide.
An analysis of participatory democracy as it operates in practice in different regions of contemporary Mexico.
Through a pathbreaking study of the Zapatista rebellion of 1994, looks at the complexities of the political movement for Chiapas's indigenous peoples.
Publisher Description
The Metamorphosis of Leadership in a Democratic Mexico is a broad analysis of Mexico's changing leadership over the past eight decades, stretching from its pre-democratic era (1935-1988), to its democratic transition (1988-2000) to its democratic period (2000-the present). In it, Roderic Camp, one of the most distinguished scholars of Mexican politics, seeks to answer two questions: 1) how has Mexican political leadership evolved since the 1930s and in what ways, beyond ideology, has the shift from a semi-authoritarian, one-party system to a democratic, electoral system altered the country's leadership? and 2) which aspects of Mexican leadership have been most affected by this shift in political models and when and why did the changes in leadership occur? Rather than viewing Mexico's current government as a true democracy, Camp sees it as undergoing a process of consolidation, under which the competitive electoral process has resulted in a system of governing institutions supported by the majority of citizens and significant strides toward plurality. Accordingly, he looks at the relationship between the decentralization of political power and the changing characteristics, experiences and paths to power of national leaders.The book, which represents four decades of Camp's work, is based upon a detailed study of 3000 politicians from the 1930s through the present, incorporating regional media accounts and Camp's own interviews with Mexican presidents, cabinet members, assistant secretaries, senators, governors, and party presidents.