The Third Wave of Democratization in Latin America: Advances and Setbacks ed. by Frances Hagopian, Scott P. Mainwaring (review)

172 The Latin Americanist Fall 2006 The Third WaveofDemocratization in LatinAmerica:Advances and Setbacks. FrancesHagopian& ScottP. Mainwaring(eds). Cambridge:Cambridge UniversityPress,2005.p. 432,$70.00. Comparative social science is an ideal setting for addressing basic methodological issues. Division between quantitative and qualitative approaches has led to overlook and has distorted important research questions, especially in democratizationissues and in Latin America in general. The tendency is either to expand researchquestionssothat they arebroader and thereforerelevantto many countries, or to restrict the investigationto a few significant or deviant cases. In methodologicalterms, quantitativeresearch is variable oriented, seeking to show differences and relationships in numbers (hard data) among a group of variables, while qualitative research is case oriented and sensitive to complexity, historical specificity and more focused on showing differences in kind (soft data). In democratization studies it is hard to find analyses that combine both methods of research. However, this book is an exception. It combines quantitative chapters with case studies to offer an ambitious and comprehensivedescription of the so-called “third wave” of democratization in Latin America. This method triangulation in my view is perhaps the major contribution of this volume, at least a step it that direction. Triangulation is understood as a research strategy that combines quantitative and qualitative methods to explore the same problem. In doing so, the book is well placed to underpin the predicament that Latin America is at odds with some empirical and theoretical arguments that claim that democracy requires a minimum threshold of development to survive. In the Introduction, the editors propose three objectives for the entire volume of edited essays. The first is to chart the unprecedented and unanticipated advances as well as setbacks in the post-1978 wave of democratization in Latin America. The second objective is to explain the sea change in a region dominated by authoritarian regimes to one in which openly authoritarian regimes are the exception.Third, it aspires to contribute to the broader comparative literature on what makes democracy thrive, survive without thriving, or fail. The book contents fall into five sections. The fist contains the introduction by the editors, which argues that Latin American experience since 1978suggests “that the impact of economic performance on regime survival is mediated by political factors ... [and that] if key actors are not committed to democracy and Book Reviews 173 the international political environment is not favourable, democracy may falter even if economic performance is credible and per capita income is moderately high” (p.7).This sectionalsocontains a cross-country chapter by Mainwaring and Perez-Liiian, whose main messages are: (i) the post-1978 wave of democratization is by far the longest lasting and the broadest that Latin America has ever experienced; (ii) democracy has endured in Latin America at fairly low levels of development, especially, but not only in the post-1978 period; (iii) structural variables such as per capita income are not important factors, but political variableshave been powerful contributing factors (“regime survival has depended far more on political factors than on economic performance and the level of development” p.57), and (iv) the international context plays an important role. Sections two, three and four contain the nine case studies arbitrarily selected. The second section includes the cases of Argentina, Brazil and Mexico, grouped not only as the three democratic giants of the region, but also due to their authoritarian pasts. The nextthree casesareBolivia,El SalvadorandGuatemala, labelled as unexpected democracies in unlikely countries. What is interesting about these cases is that two of them-Bolivia and Guatemala-are the poorest in LatinAmerica, along with Nicaragua , of which no mention at all is made in the entire volume. Last but not least, the three final cases include the Andean countries of Peru, Colombia and Venezuela, portrayed as democratic erosions in the third wave (though Guatemala and Bolivia may also fit into this description). The final section includes an extensivechapter with the concluding remarks, giving emphasis to government performance, political representation and public perceptions. While the chapter is well structured and well intentioned, at some points its connections to the arguments of the cases studies are unclear. For example the links with corruption issues, economic and public security and crime are not clearly connected with...