Democratic Institutional Design: The Powers and Incentives of Venezuelan Politicians and Interest Groups. By Brian F. Crisp. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000. 294p. $100.00 cloth, $34.95 paper.

2001 ◽  
Vol 95 (2) ◽  
pp. 496-498
Author(s):  
Daniel C. Hellinger
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Interest Groups ◽  
Institutional Design ◽  
Dark Period ◽  
Stanford University ◽  
Urban Riots ◽  
Transitions To Democracy ◽  
Democratic System ◽  
The 1960S

Venezuelan politics attracted little attention from political scientists for thirty years after the defeat of the fidelista guerrillas in the 1960s, but there has been a surge of interest in recent years. The country retained civilian, elected govern- ment through a dark period of authoritarianism in Latin America, which seemed to make it a good candidate for deriving lessons about transitions to democracy. In the 1990s, however, the democratic system entered into crisis. Venezu- ela experienced urban riots, two unsuccessful coups, removal of a president from office before completion of his term, rising electoral abstention, collapse of the traditional parties at the heart of the system, and the election of a coup leader to the presidency. Attention shifted from what went right to what went wrong. These books help us understand the limitations of the Venezuelan democratic model.

Review Article: Institutional Design, Party Systems and Governability – Differentiating the Presidential Regimes of Latin America

1998 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 651-676 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOE FOWERAKER
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Institutional Design ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
Transitions To Democracy ◽  
European Experience ◽  
General Elections ◽  
Independent States ◽  
Presidential Regimes ◽  
First Time

The general elections in Chile and Brazil in 1989 marked ‘the first time that all the Ibero-American nations, excepting Cuba, enjoyed the benefits of elected constitutional governments at the same time’. This occurrence was not as dramatic or visible as the collapse of Communism and the transitions to democracy in Eastern and Central Europe, which began in the same year, but it did mark a historical watershed. After almost two centuries as independent states, the countries of Latin America now comprised a new democratic universe. Similarly to the Eastern European experience, the Latin American watershed presented new opportunities for comparative research into democratic governance. In particular, it created a new context for the study of the relationships between institutional design, party systems and governability – defined in the narrow sense of institutional efficacy, as expressed through government stability, legislative capacity and the avoidance of gridlock. This article sets out to review the recent research on these topics, in order to describe the predominant regime type in Latin America and differentiate its distinct variants, examining their impact on governability.

The Genesis and Internal Dynamics of El Salvador's People's Revolutionary Army, 1970–1976

2014 ◽  
Vol 38 (01) ◽  
pp. 102-129
Author(s):  
ALBERTO MARTÍN ÁLVAREZ ◽  
EUDALD CORTINA ORERO
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
El Salvador ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Internal Dynamics ◽  
Internal Coherence ◽  
The 1960S

AbstractUsing interviews with former militants and previously unpublished documents, this article traces the genesis and internal dynamics of the Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo (People's Revolutionary Army, ERP) in El Salvador during the early years of its existence (1970–6). This period was marked by the inability of the ERP to maintain internal coherence or any consensus on revolutionary strategy, which led to a series of splits and internal fights over control of the organisation. The evidence marshalled in this case study sheds new light on the origins of the armed Salvadorean Left and thus contributes to a wider understanding of the processes of formation and internal dynamics of armed left-wing groups that emerged from the 1960s onwards in Latin America.

CORRUPTION IN ADVERSARIAL SYSTEMS: THE CASE OF DEMOCRACY

2018 ◽  
Vol 35 (02) ◽  
pp. 221-241
Author(s):  
Daniel M. Weinstock
Keyword(s):  
Institutional Design ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Institutional Framework ◽  
Central Feature ◽  
Central Task ◽  
Perverse Incentives ◽  
Democratic System ◽  
Democratic Systems ◽  
Positive Traits ◽  
In Virtue Of

Abstract:In this essay I argue that adversarial institutional systems, such as multi-party democracy, present a distinctive risk of institutional corruption, one that is particularly difficult to counteract. Institutional corruption often results not from individual malfeasance, but from perverse incentives that make it the case that agents within an institutional framework have rival institutional interests that risk pitting individual advantage against the functioning of the institution in question. Sometimes, these perverse incentives are only contingently related to the central animating logic of an institution. In these cases, immunizing institutions from the risk of corruption is not a theoretically difficult exercise. In other cases, institutions generate perverse or rival incentives in virtue of some central feature of the institution’s design, one that is also responsible for some of the institution’s more positive traits. In multi-party democratic systems, partisanship risks giving rise to too close an identification of the partisan’s interest with that of the party, to the detriment of the democratic system as a whole. But partisanship is also necessary to the functioning of such a system. Creating bulwarks that allow the positive aspects of partisanship to manifest themselves, while offsetting the aspects of partisanship through which individual advantage of democratic agents is linked too closely to party success, is a central task for the theory and practice of the institutional design of democracy.

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