The Crisis of Democratic Representation in the Andes

Notre Dame political scientist Scott Mainwaring has coedited a new book that analyzes and explains the challenges facing democratic representation in five Andean countries: Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela. 

"The Crisis of Democratic Representation in the Andes," published by Stanford University Press, is coedited by Ana María Bejarano and Eduardo Pizarro Leongómez, two former visiting fellows at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies.  All told, nine of the eleven contributors were former visiting fellows at the Institute.

"Understanding what has gone wrong with democracy in Latin America and many other 'third wave' democracies has become one of the outstanding intellectual challenges of our day," writes Mainwaring, director of the Kellogg Institute and Eugene Conley Professor of Political Science, along with his two coeditors."The widespread dissatisfaction with democratic representation is a core ingredient in the crisis of democracy in the Andes and throughout much of Latin America."

In this region, disaffection with democracy, political parties, and legislatures has spread to an alarming degree.  Many presidents have been forced from office, and many traditional parties have fallen by the wayside. 

Mainwaring said that these five countries have the potential to be “negative examples in a region that has historically had strong demonstration and diffusion effects in terms of regime changes. "The Crisis of Democratic Representation in the Andes" addresses an important question for Latin America as well as other parts of the world: Why does representation sometimes fail to work?

Scott Mainwaring is Eugene Conley Professor of Political Science and Director of the Kellogg Institute for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame. Ana María Bejarano is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto. Eduardo Pizarro Leongómez is professor at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Bogotá.