商品詳細

This is a study of the recent emergence of democracy in Latin America. The author shows that traditional theories of democratization fall short in explaining this phenomenon. Scholars have held that the post-war stability of Western Europe reveals that restricted democracy, or "democratic elitism", is the only realistic way to guard against forces such as the mass mobilizations that toppled Eurpoean democracies after World War I. Leonardo Avritzer challenges this view. Drawing on the ideas of Jurgen Habermas, he argues that democracy can be far more inclusive and can rely on a sphere of autonomous association and argument by showing that democratic collective action has opened up a new "public space" for popular participation in Latin American politics. Unlike many theorists, Avritzer builds his case empirically. He looks at human rights movements in Argentina and Brazil, neighbourhood associations in Brazil and Mexico and election-monitoring initiatives in Mexico. Contending that such participation has not gone far enough, he proposes a way to involve citizens even more directly in policy decisions. For example, he points to experiments in "participary budgeting" in two Brazilian