Donna Lee Van Cott

From Movements to Parties in Latin America

The Evolution of Ethnic Politics

• Broschiertes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

This book provides a detailed treatment of an important topic that has received no scholarly attention: the surprising transformation of indigenous peoples' movements into viable political parties in the 1990s in four Latin American countries (Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela) and their failure to succeed in two others (Argentina, Peru). The parties studied are crucial components of major trends in the region. By providing to voters clear programs for governing, and reaching out in particular to under-represented social groups, they have enhanced the quality of democracy and representative government. Based on extensive original research and detailed historical case studies, the book links historical institutional analysis and social movement theory to a study of the political systems in which the new ethnic cleavages emerged. The book concludes with a discussion of the implications for democracy of the emergence of this phenomenon in the context of declining public support for parties.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Cambridge University Press
• Seitenzahl: 304
• Erscheinungstermin: 23. Dezember 2009
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 229mm x 152mm x 19mm
• Gewicht: 496g
• ISBN-13: 9780521707039
• ISBN-10: 052170703X
• Artikelnr.: 22698748

Autorenporträt

Donna Lee Van Cott is Associate Professor of Political Science and Latin American studies at Tulane University. She is author of The Friendly Liquidation of the Past: The Politics of Diversity in Latin America (2000), editor of Indigenous Peoples and Democracy in Latin America (1994), and has published more than a dozen articles on related topics. She has been awarded a Fulbright Fellowship as well as a residential fellowship from the Helen Kellogg Institute of International Studies at the University of Notre Dame. Dr Van Cott is the founding chair of the section on Ethnicity, Race, and Indigenous Peoples of the Latin American Studies Association.

Inhaltsangabe

1. Introduction: toward a comprehensive theory of ethnic party formation
and performance; 2. Institutions, party systems, and social movements; 3.
'A reflection of our motley reality': Bolivian Indians' slow path to
political representation; 4. 'We are the government': Pachakutik's rapid
ascent to national power; 5. 'It is not a priority': the failure to form
viable ethnic parties in Peru; 6. Argentina, Colombia, and Venezuela:
unlikely cases of ethnic party formation and success; 7. Conclusions and
Implications.

Rezensionen

'Donna Lee Van Cott's systematic comparison of indigenous politics across six countries is … a courageous and welcome contribution to the growing literature on this topic … Through a multifaceted approach that brings together the usually separate literatures on political parties and social movements. Van Cott weaves a model of indigenous party formation and performance that demonstrates the joint causality of social movement organisational strength, state institutional rules/frameworks like ballot access and decentralisation, and party system fissures such as a declining party left and voter de-alignment from parties they previously supported … Van Cott should also be commended for her willingness to incorporate explanatory factors outside those in her core model … this work's methodology is attractively nuanced, and is a model for studies that seek to combine variable and case-study comparative analysis.' International Affairs