Democracies and Dictatorships in Latin America: Emergence, Survival, and Fall

by Scott Mainwaring, Aníbal Pérez-Liñán

This book presents a new theory for why political regimes emerge, and why they subsequently survive or break down. It then analyzes the emergence, survival, and fall of democracies and dictatorships in Latin America since 1900. Scott Mainwaring and Aníbal Pérez-Liñán argue for a theoretical approach situated between long-term structural and cultural explanations and short-term explanations that look at the decisions of specific leaders. They focus on the political preferences of powerful actors – the degree to which they embrace democracy as an intrinsically desirable end and their policy radicalism – to explain regime outcomes. They also demonstrate that transnational forces and influences are crucial to understand regional waves of democratization. Based on extensive research into the political histories of all twenty Latin American countries, this book offers the first extended analysis of regime emergence, survival, and failure for all of Latin America over a long period of time.

Genres: Politics, Political Science, History

368 pages, Paperback

First published August 31, 2013

About the author

Scott Mainwaring is the Eugene P. and Helen Conley Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame. He is also a faculty fellow at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies, where he previously served as director for 13 years and is a current Advisory Board member.

In the fall of 2019, Mainwaring returned to Notre Dame from Harvard University, where he served as the Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor of Brazil Studies at the Kennedy School and was faculty co-chair of the Brazil Studies Program from 2016 to 2019.

His research interests include political parties and party systems, democratic and authoritarian regimes, democratization, and political institutions in Latin America.

Reviews

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

A noble and much needed attempt to quantify how factors such as leader’s normative preferences, radicalism and international variables effect democracy. I’m not sure I could cite their results confidently due to measurement issues (especially a suspect U.S. support for democracy in Latin America measure), but I really appreciate this work’s efforts to quantitatively assess factors that intuitively are linked with democratization, but neglected due to issues in measuring them (normative preferences being the best example of this). Further, the authors do a good job of critiquing popular structural democratization theories.

[Jonathan Madison · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent book that offers an alternative and superior method for understanding democratization within and without Latin America.

[Sofi Lupiañez]

Leí una parte para Fundamentos de Ciencia Política 2