Description
Book SynopsisLatin America has seen a great extension of democratic government over the past twenty years. However democratisation has proved problematic in a number of ways: many Latin American countries have seen little per capita growth; poverty has increased; and political crises have often recurred.
Trade Review"Highly recommended for upper-division undergraduate and graduate students of Latin American politics."
Choice 'The book will be helpful as an introductory overview of problems in Latin American democracy and should be useful for undergraduates.'
Latin American Research Review
'George Phillip has written a challenging and provacative book. He correctly highlights the glaring gap between the formalities of electoral democracy, which appears to function reasonably well in many countries in Latin America, and the failure to consolidate and deepen democratic institutions. He also focuses on the root cause of non-consolidation in the region-the perverse ability of predemocratic patterns of political behaviour to survive and indeed flourish in many countries. And Philip's point is that breakdown os probably not the outcome of non-sonsolidation in most countries; rather we may see cmplex approaches to rule-breaking that preclude consolidation and that for long periods of time are superficially stable and acceptable by major actors in the political system." Riordan Roett, Johns Hopkins University
