The Partisan Origins of Democracy in Latin America
A Kellogg Work-in-Progress Seminar with Visiting Fellow Raúl Madrid.
The existing literature on democratic emergence has focused on economic factors, ascribing it to rising development or the emergence of the working classes or the bourgeoisie. By contrast, Madrid's paper advances a partisan explanation for the initial emergence of democracy in Latin America. It argues that the central actor in the democratization process were elite opposition parties. Democracy was most likely to emerge in Latin America where: 1) there were strong opposition parties; 2) where those opposition parties abandoned the armed struggle as a result of growing strength of the armed forces; and 3) where there was a split in the ruling party. Madrid explores these arguments using quantitative as well as qualitative methods and a combination of archival and secondary sources.
Raúl Madrid
Raúl L. Madrid is a professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin who specializes in Latin American politics. His research interests include democratization, political parties, ethnic politics, and social policy.
While at Kellogg, he will study the partisan origins of democracy in Latin America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with a focus on South America...
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