Informal Institutions and Democracy

Lessons from Latin America
Erscheinungsjahr 2006
ISBN: 978-0-8018-8352-1
Verlag: Johns Hopkins University Press

Buch, Englisch, 368 Seiten, Format (B × H): 154 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 499 g

This volume analyzes the function of informal institutions in Latin America and how they support or weaken democratic governance. Drawing from a wide range of examples—including the Mexican dedazo, clientelism in Brazil, legislative "ghost coalitions" in Ecuador, and elite power-sharing in Chile—the contributors examine how informal rules shape the performance of state and democratic institutions, offering fresh and timely insights into contemporary problems of governability, "unrule of law," and the absence of effective representation, participation, and accountability in Latin America.

The editors present this analysis within a fourfold conceptual framework: complementary institutions, which fill gaps in formal rules or enhance their efficacy; accommodative informal institutions, which blunt the effects of dysfunctional formal institutions; competing informal institutions, which directly subvert the formal rules; and substitutive informal institutions, which replace ineffective formal institutions.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Helmke, Gretchen

Levitsky, Steven

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politische Systeme Demokratie
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politikwissenschaft Allgemein Politische Studien zu einzelnen Ländern und Gebieten
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politische Systeme Vergleichende Politikwissenschaft

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Preface
Introduction
Part I. The Informal Politics of Executive-Legislative Relations
1. Accommodating Informal Institutions and Chilean Democracy
2. How Informal Electoral Institutions Shape the Brazilian Legislative Arena
3. Crafting Legislative Ghost Coalitions in Ecuador: Informal Institutions and Economic Reform in an Unlikely Case
Part II. Informal Institutions and Electoral Politics
4. Informal Institutions When Formal Contracting Is Prohibited: Campaign Finance in Brazil
5. The Difficult Road from Caudillismo to Democracy: The Impact of Clientelism in Honduras
6. Do Informal Rules Make Democracy Work? Accounting for Accountability in Argentina
Part III. Informal Institutions and Party Politics
7. The Birth and Transformation of the Dedazo in Mexico
8. Election Insurance and Coalition Survival: Formal and Informal Institutions in Chile
9. Informal Institutions and Party Organization in Latin America
Part IV. Informal Judicial Institutions and The Rule of Law
10. The Rule of (Non)Law: Prosecuting Police Killings in Brazil and Argentina
11. Mexico's Postelectoral Concertacasiones: The Rise and Demise of a Substitutive Informal Institution
12. Dispensing Justice at the Margins of Formality: The Informal Rule of Law in Latin America
Conclusion
Afterword: On Informal institutions, Once Again
Notes
References

Über Autor(innen)

Levitsky, Steven
Steven Levitsky is a professor of government at Harvard University. He is the coauthor of Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes after the Cold War, author of Transforming Labor-Based Parties in Latin America, and coeditor of Informal Institutions and Democracy, the last also published by Johns Hopkins.

Helmke, Gretchen
Gretchen Helmke is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Rochester.

Gretchen Helmke is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Rochester. Steven Levitsky is the John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard University.