Democratization And Citizenship In Latin America: The Emergence of Institutional Forms of Participation

Debates on Latin American democratization entered a second phase at the moment when social scientists stopped to discuss the danger of a return to nondemocratic practices and accepted that the virtues as well as the problems of democracy in the region had to be approached on their own terms. Phenomena such as delegative democracy, informal institutions, and the impact of neoliberalism in the construction of democracy moved to the forefront of academic debate. A second crucial aspect marked the beginning of this second phase: an important change in perspective on the divide between civil society and the state. Authors working in this area stopped looking to the state as the embodiment of all vices and to civil society as the embodiment of virtue, and started to realize that the construction of democracy involves a much more complicated process of state and civil society collaboration. In addition, neoliberalism and a reduction of the size of the state in Latin America also brought additional elements to analyses of the construction of citizenship, state fragmentation, and the position occupied by social actors. Classical actors such as labor and state bureaucracy reduced their influence in the region's politics at the same time that historically marginalized actors such as blacks and Indians were considered anew. Thus, Latin America is today experiencing a process of democratic construction in which old certainties no longer work. This triple process of change in perspective is redefining important theoretical questions about the construction of democracy: What is civil society in the region and how does it interact with the state? How can citizenship be constructed beyond the classical paradigm of civil, political, and social rights? What is the role of informal institutions in the construction of democracy in the region? How can participation generate a new democratic paradigm? All the books reviewed here attempt to answer these questions and to put forth a new concept of democracy for the region.

The changing nature of democratization is the point of departure of five of these recent books: La disputa por la construcción democrática en América Latina; Citizenship in Latin America; The Dubious Link: Civic Engagement and Democratization; Latin American Social Movements; and Neoliberal Economics, Democratic Transitions and Mapuche Demands for Rights in Chile . These books acknowledge that transitions to democracy are over, that elections take place regularly and that democratic consolidation does not adequately express the problems of constructing democracy in the region. Dagnino, Olvera, and Panficci argue for two new elements in the analysis of democracy: civil society heterogeneity and political dispute among...