Successful and Aborted Democratization in Central America: Visible and Invisible Politics (original) (raw)
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1992
As the 1990s opened, the only country in Central America that could claim to hold periodic free and fair elections was Costa Rica. El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua all had held elections, but this inchoate "electoral politics" still fell considerably short of democratic politics. In general, there was little effective participation or broad-based representation and little political accountability between the elected officials and their supporters, and elected officials had limited power visA -vis a still-dominant military and, in some cases, a still-powerful oligarchy. After colonial times in Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Honduras powerful, entrenched classes led by landed interests (but also including commercial and financial elites) and powerful military institutions opposed, often brutally, groups that sought to create democratic political institutions. Following World War II, however, the defense of the existing land tenure system, of related economic interests, and of military power and privilege became more difficult, as important We would like to thank Elisabeth Escalante for her comments and assistance. We also want to thank Rodrigo Carazo, William M. LeoGrande, and the other members of the conference for their comments.
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Democratization largely occurred in Central America at the end of the twentieth century. The region also experienced two waves of antineo liberal protest during this democratic transition. Beginning in the late 1990s, the region’s fifty million inhabitants experienced an upsurge in popular movement activity against economic policies directly related to economic glob alization. Examples of this wave of contention include the campaigns against new sales taxes and free trade in Guatemala; mobilizations against privatization and free trade in Honduras, Costa Rica, and El Salvador; struggles against the pension system and labor reforms in Panama; and major protests against con sumer price hikes in Nicaragua. More than any other social grievance or issue, economic liberalization measures motivated the largest mass mobilizations in the region over the past two decades (Almeida 2014). These struggles are char acterized by a more open political context in which traditional social sectors...
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We are all students of Barrington Moore, Jr., not only those of us on the panel like Professors Skocpol and Tilly, who had the privilege of studying directly with him, or like Professor Goldstone, with one of his students (in this case Professor Skocpol), but also those like Professors Brustein, Eckstein and myself who have been profoundly influenced by his work. It would be fair to say that Barrington Moore, Jr. created the modern study of revolution just as he contributed profoundly to the current golden age of comparative historical sociology and the revival of political sociology represented by this section. In this year of anniversaries of revolutions great and small, the French, the Chinese, the Cuban, the Nicaraguan, it is only fitting that we turn to an examination of the ideas of a man who restored the study of revolution to a central place at the core of the sociological discipline. H i s Social of D-.. remains the most widely accepted and influential theory not only of revolution but of the origins of democracy, authoritarianism, and revolutionary socialism El Salvador, Costa Rica, and Nicaragua, three small countries in a region that was once the most obscure corner of the sp&ish colonial empire, m a y seem a strange place to begin an. evaluation of a theory based on studies of the great revolutions, the French, the Chinese, and implicitly but fundamentally, the Russian. Indeed Moore himself (1966, xiii) cautions against the study of small countries since "the decisive causes of their politics lie outside their boundaries," although he acknowledges a certain discomfort a t bypassing some worthy, if diminutive, revolutions in such obscure places as the Korean peninsula, Cuba, and Indochina. But the cases of Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Nicaragua present us with a fortuitous natural experiment in the study of revolutions since they contain within themselves Moore's three routes into the modern political worlddemocracy, authoritarianism, and revolutionary socialism. Indeed, it would be difficult to find three political systems anywhere in the world that differ among themselves as much as do contemporary Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Nicaragua. Costa Rica has the longest lived democracy in Latin America. Since 1889, when it held the first fully free election in Latin America, Costa Rica has, with the exception of two brief periods in
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2014
Review essay: - Central America in the New Millennium: Living Transition and Reimagining Democracy, edited by Jennifer L. Burrell and Ellen Moodie. CEDLA Latin America Studies (CLAS) Vol. 102. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2013. – The Politics of Modern Central America: Civil War, Democratization, and Underdevelopment, by Fabrice Lehoucq. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012. – Handbook of Central American Governance, edited by Diego Sánchez-Ancochea and Salvador Martí i Puig. Milton Park and New York: Routledge, 2014.
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Since the late 1970s almost all Latin American and Caribbean countries have been experimenting with democracy. Some of them have succeeded in transitioning to a more democratic political regime, like Uruguay and Chile, while others are still trying to consolidate their democratic systems, such as Brazil and Mexico whereas others are encountering serious difficulties, like Bolivia and Ecuador. There are also states that have failed totally to build democratic systems, function confidently and accomplish basic assignments. In the most extreme cases, the failure of the democratization process has led to the total dysfunctioning of a state or even its collapse. The most significant example of this kind in the Western Hemisphere is Haiti. However, there are many more countries in the Latin American and Caribbean region that have serious problems with the proper adoption of democratic systems. This article is an attempt to analyze the problems with building a stable democratic system in G...
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This study aims to compare the political systems in Central America from a historical perspective. Here, Central America is considered as a very diverse region in experiences and quality of democracy; Costa Rica is the most successful, historical, contemporary case in the subregion. In the rest of the countries, there are relatively young and fragile democracies, without historical experiences of democracy, with very weak States, without social consensus, and with limited citizenship that is treated in a clientelist manner and is a victim of poverty and inequality.
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As the countries of Central America approach the twenty-frs century, they present a picture that is srikingly diferent from the situation of the previous decade. At the beginning of the 1980s, only Cosa Rica was a functioning democracy. By 1990, for the Project MUSE-The Hybrid Regimes of Central America
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This paper examines the concept of democratic local governance and its relevance for health development in Central America, a region which was torn apart by conflict in the 1980s. Peace-building has been taking place since the 1990s in a difficult macro-level context, as stabilization and structural adjustment policies in the postwar period have led to drastic state reforms with high social costs for the marginalized population. Innovative experiences and strategies in health have also developed in the region over the last decades, based upon local participatory governance, contributions to public health policy, development and peacebuilding at the local level. This article describes two of these municipal health development processes, the SILOS (Local Health Systems) in the northern zone of San Salvador, El Salvador and the municipal health process in León, Nicaragua. The paper examines the relevance and sustainability of these local initiatives and the importance of democratic local governance for (health) development. It also analyzes the extent to which macro-level reform policies have enabled the development of these processes and the perspective for sustainability of democratic local governance in countries confronted by serious lack of governability. Whilst the imperative for reform/change is beyond doubt, as well as the advances booked in terms of local democratic governance and health, the authors underline the need to address the incoherence in global reform policies and -in the current situation -the impossibility of achieving democratic governance and equity in health within the confines of the city. Finally, the authors question the relevance of a development paradigm that does not address democratic local governance and existing structural (political, social, economic) inequalities.