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This paper suggests that it is fallacious to see democracies as exclusively characterized by either programmatic/ideological, or clientelistic/charismatic linkages (or a combination of both). It is vital to deepen the discipline’s theoretical efforts to conceptualize other forms of party-voter connections. We hypothesize that in democracies with weak state infrastructure, experiences of praetorian politics, powerful veto players and low institutionalized party systems, governability appeals become a crucial variable in voters’ decision making functions. Governability appeals are distinctive because the emphasis is put on the possibility of the candidate in question being able to govern, ensuring certain levels of social peace and public policy effectiveness, and not on the likelihood that s/he will promote X or Y policy if elected. Governability appeals are a type of performance based voting in the sense that voters evaluate past or prospective performance, but they do so at a very general level, focusing on the prospects for stability and minimum standards of governance. We use survey data from Argentina and Peru, two countries that experienced severe governability crises, to test this hypothesis. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through the adoption in June 1991 of the Santiago Commitment to democracy, the Organization of American States (OAS) renewed its pledge to protect democracy in the region and established the institutional mechanisms for doing so. Despite reasonably successful responses to coups and democratic crises in the early 1990s (Haiti 1991, Peru 1992, Guatemala 1993), however, the last ten years (1993-2003) have presented the OAS with more pernicious obstacles to democratic stability in the region, whether among the smaller countries of the region (e.g., the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Haiti, and Paraguay) or the intermediate powers (e.g., Argentina, Colombia, Peru, and Venezuela). To discern how deep and consequential the organization’s normative commitment to democracy is, this essay examines OAS action (and inaction) to democratic crises in Latin America from 1991 to the present. Utilizing both qualitative and quantitative data, the essay generalizes about when the OAS is most likely to intervene on behalf of democracy and assesses the impact intervention has had on democratic quality and sustainability in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the impact of local civil society organizations on the trajectory of social conflicts under conditions of weak rule of law. Both civil society and rule of law have been presented as potentially key elements for improving governance and facilitating democratic consolidation. However, there is little empirical research on how the two interact in scenarios that are very different from those of the affluent liberal-democratic countries in which the concepts were developed. The case of Peru offers a valuable opportunity for evaluating this relationship, as accounts of 173 social conflicts collected by the Peruvian Ombudsman over the last three years shed light on both the shortcomings of the rule of law and the type of actors involved in articulating popular discontent. The paper finds that the presence of civil society organizations increases the likelihood that complainants will attempt to use legal mechanisms and peaceful demonstrations. However, it also argues that due to the weakness of the rule of law, legal mechanisms usually prove ineffective. For this reason, the presence of civil society organizations is insufficient to curb the recurrent use of violence to solve disputes. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]