Search

"Challenges to Democracy in the Andes: Strongmen, Broken Constitutions, and Regimes in Crisis" is an edited volume by Maxwell A. Cameron and Grace M. Jaramillo that explores the weakening of checks on executive power in the Andes region. The book examines case studies of executive aggrandizement in countries such as Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, and Colombia, highlighting the tension between executive power and popular sovereignty. The contributors argue that threats to democracy often come from elected leaders rather than the military, and they challenge readers to consider a more nuanced theory of democracy that goes beyond elections and liberalism. The book provides a framework for understanding different forms and degrees of regime change and emphasizes the importance of balancing democratic, republican, and liberal elements in a democratic regime. [Extracted from the article]

The study of the bureaucracy in Latin America, within the study of politics, has long been little more than an afterthought. It is assumed to lie in the realm of public administration, distinct from other regional subfields that have increasingly gained the attention of political scientists. As a result, scholars' understanding of Latin American bureaucratic politics is limited. Here, we conduct a comprehensive survey of peer-reviewed articles to evaluate the state of this subfield. We find a thematically, analytically, and methodologically splintered discipline, but a prime one for exploitation and new avenues of research. This article summarizes salient trends in the literature, describes advances in the study of bureaucracy in Latin America, and discusses limitations in this scholarship. It suggests a roadmap for scholars by proposing a series of research questions and recommends a series of analytical and methodological approaches to address those questions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article advances the idea that coalition formation and maintenance in highly fragmented presidential regimes is not only crucial to overcoming policy deadlock, but in some cases, critical to ensuring government survival. To advance this argument, the article looks at the formation and demise of legislative coalitions in Ecuador between 1979 and 2006. The empirical data suggest that paradoxically, government coalitions became more difficult to sustain after the adoption of institutional reforms intended to strengthen the president's legislative powers. The adoption of those reforms, it is argued, undermined the legislative incentives to cooperate with the government and helped to accelerate coalition erosion. Not only did the reforms fail significantly to avoid policy deadlock, but in some cases they contributed to the early termination of presidential mandates. This article contributes to the study of coalition survival and how it is linked to policymaking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]