Research Catalog

Title

Precarious democracies : understanding regime stability and change in Colombia and Venezuela / Ana María Bejarano.

Author

Bejarano, Ana María

Publication

Notre Dame, Ind. : University of Notre Dame Press, c2011.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies

Description

xvii, 350 p. : ill., maps; 23 cm.

Summary

• Why has democracy in Colombia and Venezuela evolved in very different directions? In Precarious Democracies, Ana Maria Bejarano provides a comparative historical analysis of how the democratic regimes in these two countries have diverged, following similar transitions from authoritarian rule to democracy in the late 1950s.
• Rather than focusing on resource-driven explanations, such as the role of oil in Venezuela and coffee in Colombia, or on short-term elite choices and calculations, Bejarano argues that democratic development in Colombia and Venezuela is best understood from a vantage point that privileges political history, especially the history of institutional evolution. The book makes the case that a comparative historical institutional framework-focused both on institutional legacies from the distant past (such as the state and political parties) and on those from more recent critical junctures (the foundational pacts)-provides the best lens to account for the divergent trajectories followed by democratic regimes in Colombia and Venezuela in the second half of the twentieth century. Book jacket.

Series Statement

From the Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies

Subject

• Since 1974
• Political stability > Venezuela
• Political stability > Colombia
• Democracy > Venezuela
• Democracy > Colombia
• Venezuela > Politics and government > 1999-
• Colombia > Politics and government > 1974-

Note

• "Recent titles from the Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies."

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

Part I: History matters. Oil versus coffee : searching for the structural foundations of regime type ; Beyond oil and coffee : the political foundations of democratic rule -- Part II: Rethinking pacted transitions and their legacies. Reading pacts as political blueprints : the institutional legacies of pacted transitions -- Part III: The struggle for democratic institutionalization. Subduing the challengers : disarming, subordinating, and incorporating contenders on the right and the left ; Institutionalizing inclusion and contestation : the making of a democratic political society ; From exceptions to rules? A tale of two unhappy democracies.

ISBN

• 9780268022266 (pbk. : alk. paper)
• 0268022267 (pbk. : alk. paper)

LCCN

^^2011009411

OCLC

• 693809788
• SCSB-10654569

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library