Representation and Effectiveness in Latin American Democracies: Congress, Judiciary and Civil Society

Legislatures, the judiciary and civil society are important actors in representative democracies. In what ways and how well do they represent? And how effectively do they carry out their institutional and social roles? Both questions refer to the key dimensions of democracy analyzed in this book: representativeness and effectiveness, respectively. While they have been developed separately in scholarly work on institutions and regimes, there is little work considering them simultaneously, and on their interaction. Using quantitative and/or qualitative methods, contributions from top scholars in the field of legislatures, the judiciary and civil society examine these two concepts and their relationships in four Latin American countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico.

Designed to guide the reader through the complexities of this debate, each expert engages in a larger set of theoretical debates about different approaches to representation in each sphere. In doing so, they debate how effectively these spheres carry out their roles in each country: whether a congress is institutionalized, its accountability, and its performance as a lawmaker; whether a judicial system is independent, carries out oversight, and protects citizen rights; and the role of civil society in a representative democracy.

Representation and Effectiveness in Latin American Democracies is a timely and welcomed contribution to the to the growing debate about the quality of democracy in Latin America, and the developing world more generally.

Moira B. MacKinnon is a Post Doctoral Fellow at the Center for Inter American Policy and Research at Tulane University. She is a political and historical sociologist whose area of special interest is political institutions in Latin America, in particular Congress and political parties in the South Cone.

Ludovico Feoli is the director of the Center for Inter-American Policy and Research (CIPR) and a Research Associate Professor in the Stone Center for Latin American Studies and the Department of Political Science at Tulane University. His research interests include the political economy of market reforms in Latin America, institutions and institutional change, and the quality of governance.