Regimes and Democracy in Latin America: Theories and Methods

by Gerardo L. Munck

Overview

This volume focuses on democracy in Latin America and assesses the state of current knowledge on the topic and identifies new research frontiers in the study of Latin American politics. It provides an overview of research agendas and strategies used in the literature over the past four decades. It tackles a series of central questions—What is democracy? Is democracy an absolute value? Are current conceptualizations of democracy adequate? How and why does democracy work or fail in Latin America?—and spells out the implications of answers to these questions for current research agendas. It distinguishes between qualitative and quantitative approaches to the conceptualization and measurement of democracy, and presents a dataset on political regimes and democracy that illustrates how the differences between these two standard approaches might be overcome. Finally, it evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of conventional methods used to generate and test explanations of the causes and consequences of democracy, and proposes alternative ways to advance ongoing substantive debates given the current state of theory and data.

The contributors are scholars from the United States and Latin America who are experts on Latin America, and who have established reputations as theorists and methodologists. The volume will be of interest to readers seeking to understand debates about democracy in developing societies and to grasp the concepts, theories and methods that are currently being developed to study Latin American politics.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199219902
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	06/28/2007
Series:	Oxford Studies in Democratization
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	9.10(w) x 6.10(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Gerardo Munck, Argentinian by birth, received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of California in San Diego and teaches in the School of International Relations at the University of Southern California. His research focuses on political regimes and democracy, methodology, and Latin America.

Table of Contents

Introduction. Research Agendas and Strategies in the Study of Latin American Politics, Gerardo Munck1. The Study of Politics and Democracy: Touchstones of a Research Agenda, Gerardo Munck2. Reconceptualizing Democratization: Access to Power versus Exercise of Power, Sebastián L. Mazzuca3. Neo-Madisonian Theory and Latin American Institutions, Royce Carroll and Matthew Soberg Shugart4. Thickening Thin Concepts: Issues in Large-N Data Generation, Michael Coppedge5. Classifying Political Regimes in Latin America, 1945-2004, Scott Mainwaring, Daniel Brinks and Aníbal Pérez-Liñán6. Theory Building and Hypothesis Testing: Large-N vs. Small-N Research on Democratization, Michael Coppedge7. Democracy and Growth: A Case Study in Failed Causal Inference, Jason Seawright8. Why Regions of the World Are Important: Regional Specificities and Region-Wide Diffusion of Democracy, Scott Mainwaring and Aníbal Pérez-Liñán9. Democracy, Dictatorship and Economic Development: A Model of Reference-Dependent Choices With Experimental Data, Andrew C. Gould and Andrew J. MaggioReferencesIndex