Regional Integration And Democratic Consolidation In The Southern Cone Of Latin America

This book explores the widely admitted failure of regional integration in this continent, linking the features of regional institutional arrangements with domestic politics and includes an inquiry into regionalism at the hemispherical level.

South America has experienced dramatic political changes during the last decade. Almost all the military regimes established during the 1960s and 1970s have made room for democratically elected governments. The end of the last authoritarian cycle and the initiation of a democratization process have produced a vigorous debate among experts in South American politics about the present chances for the consolidation of democracy in the Southern Cone. Can we consider the current process of democratization as marking a historical end of authoritarian rule in the region? Or are we simply witnessing a mere democratic intermezzo, after which authoritarianism will recover its longstanding supremacy within South American political development? This book constitutes a general introduction to the role of the State in the current process of democratization in the Southern Cone region. It offers a comprehensive and multidisciplinary overview of the various problems with which the recent democratic governments have been confronted. A central focus of attention is the role played by the state and its institutions in the elimination of the authoritarian legacy and in the construction of a democratic polity.

A member of the US Foreign Service from 1949 to 1975, Weintraub (political economy, Center for Strategic and International Studies) argues that the organization Mercosur is succeeding, despite recent setbacks, in its goal of encouraging market economies and representative democracy in southern South America. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

The processes of democratization and regionalization in South America ran parallel to one another between 1985 and 1991. However, the nature of this relationship is by no means clear. This book explores the diplomatic history of the formation of Mercosur and analyzes the precise place of democracy in the process. At the methodological level, a combination of hitherto unexamined documents and extensive interview material makes for a novel oral history approach to diplomatic studies. At the theoretical level, a melding of cognitive approaches to foreign policy making and realist theory of international relations provides a nuanced but systematic explanation of events.

Duquette analyses the main public policies of Brazil, Chile, and Mexico to explore examples of how countries make the transition from an authoritarian regime to a democratic society.

Since 1974 there has been an unprecedented wave of democratization in the world. This trend has been particularly extensive in South America. But the problems confronting these new democracies are staggering, and the prospects for building consolidated democratic regimes are far from uniformly good. Focusing primarily on recent South American cases, Issues in Democratic Consolidation examines some of the difficulties of constructing consolidated democracies and provides a critical examination of the major issues involved. A prominent theme running through this collection is that the transitions from authoritative rule to civilian government may be arrested by political, economic, and social constraints. The articles contain analyses of the varied modalities and complex processes related to the transitions. The first transition begins with the initial stirrings of crisis under authoritarian rule that generate some form of political opening and greater respect for basic civil rights, and ends with the establishment of a government elected in an open, competitive contest. The volume's primary focus, however, is on the second transition, which begins with the inauguration of a democratic government and ends-if all goes well-with the establishment of a consolidated democratic regime.