Precarious Democracies: Understanding Regime Stability and Change in Colombia and Venezuela (Kellogg Institute Series on Democracy and Development) - Softcover

Bejarano, Ana Maria

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0268022267 ISBN 13: 9780268022266

Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press, 2011

Synopsis

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.

About this title

About the Author

Ana María Bejarano is associate professor of political science at the University of Toronto.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0268022267
• ISBN 13: 9780268022266
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 368