Author: Daniel H. Levine
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400870046
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 300
Get Book Here
Book Description
Venezuela has had a long and bloody history of military dictatorships. Yet, since 1958, it has developed one of the few effective, competitive democracies in Latin America. To explain this transformation Daniel H. Levine analyzes the development of modern mass-based political parties with pervasive organizations and commanding strong loyalties; the changing structure and content of social and political conflict; and the gradual emergence of common norms governing political behavior. This book does not pretend to be a general survey of Venezuelan politics. Rather, it is an attempt to understand, for both theoretical and practical purposes, the development of shared "rules of the game" for political action in a heterogeneous society. Once these norms are accepted by key elites, and then imposed on recalcitrant oppositions, they provide a means of controlling and managing political conflict without eliminating it. Mr. Levine's conclusions are based primarily on case studies of specific political conflicts. His study of conflicts over educational reform uncovers the conditions in which a traditional sector of society—Catholic groups and institutions—moved from violent, total opposition to the political system to a position of accommodation. In the second case study he examines the role of students in politics, with special reference to the integration of students in national patterns of conflict and opposition. Originally published in 1973. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Author: Geo Maher
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822354527
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 347
Get Book Here
Book Description
Since being elected president in 1998, Hugo Chávez has become the face of contemporary Venezuela and, more broadly, anticapitalist revolution. George Ciccariello-Maher contends that this focus on Chávez has obscured the inner dynamics and historical development of the country’s Bolivarian Revolution. In We Created Chávez, by examining social movements and revolutionary groups active before and during the Chávez era, Ciccariello-Maher provides a broader, more nuanced account of Chávez’s rise to power and the years of activism that preceded it. Based on interviews with grassroots organizers, former guerrillas, members of neighborhood militias, and government officials, Ciccariello-Maher presents a new history of Venezuelan political activism, one told from below. Led by leftist guerrillas, women, Afro-Venezuelans, indigenous people, and students, the social movements he discusses have been struggling against corruption and repression since 1958. Ciccariello-Maher pays particular attention to the dynamic interplay between the Chávez government, revolutionary social movements, and the Venezuelan people, recasting the Bolivarian Revolution as a long-term and multifaceted process of political transformation.
Author: Alfred Stepan
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191639036
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 382
Get Book Here
Book Description
This volume brings together new and classic articles by one of the leading scholars in comparative politics. The articles focus in particular on the nature of contemporary democracy and its prospects. The volume begins with a personal analysis of the intellectual, and often political, reasons why and how Stepan chose to engage in certain critical arguments over the last thirty years. The volume is then divided into three sections, each with a distinctive theme: state and society; constructing polities; and varieties of democracies. The introduction and articles ask whether, both for intellectual and political reasons, there are strong grounds for questioning both Rawls and Huntington on religion and democracy, Riker on federalism, and Gellner on multinationalism. The volume contains articles on civil society, political society, economic society, the military, and a usable state. The possibility of multiple and complementary political identities is argued for. The incentive systems and political practices of the three macro-constitutional frameworks for democratic government— parliamentarianism, presidentialism, and semi-presidentialism— are compared and contrasted.
Author: Enrique A. Baloyra
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292769687
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 321
Get Book Here
Book Description
Here is a benchmark study of voter attitudes in a Latin American country. This volume is based on extensive survey research conducted during the Venezuelan elections of 1973. The methods employed by Baloyra and Martz to poll an "unpollable" society successfully challenge previously established paradigms. The authors interviewed a representative sample of over 1,500 voters to determine relationships between class, status, community, context, religion, ideology, and partisanship on the one hand and political attitudes and preferences on the other. They found that the Venezuelan electorate is defined by a series of contradictory tendencies, and they place their conclusions in the context of contemporary political science literature regarding class and party, ideology and party, and inequality and participation.
Author: Alejandro Velasco
Publisher: University of California Press
ISBN: 0520283325
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 342
Get Book Here
Book Description
Beginning in the late 1950s political leaders in Venezuela built what they celebrated as Latin America’s most stable democracy. But outside the staid halls of power, in the gritty barrios of a rapidly urbanizing country, another politics was rising—unruly, contentious, and clamoring for inclusion. Based on years of archival and ethnographic research in Venezuela’s largest public housing community, Barrio Rising delivers the first in-depth history of urban popular politics before the Bolivarian Revolution, providing crucial context for understanding the democracy that emerged during the presidency of Hugo Chávez. In the mid-1950s, a military government bent on modernizing Venezuela razed dozens of slums in the heart of the capital Caracas, replacing them with massive buildings to house the city’s working poor. The project remained unfinished when the dictatorship fell on January 23, 1958, and in a matter of days city residents illegally occupied thousands of apartments, squatted on green spaces, and renamed the neighborhood to honor the emerging democracy: the 23 de Enero (January 23). During the next thirty years, through eviction efforts, guerrilla conflict, state violence, internal strife, and official neglect, inhabitants of el veintitrés learned to use their strategic location and symbolic tie to the promise of democracy in order to demand a better life. Granting legitimacy to the state through the vote but protesting its failings with violent street actions when necessary, they laid the foundation for an expansive understanding of democracy—both radical and electoral—whose features still resonate today. Blending rich narrative accounts with incisive analyses of urban space, politics, and everyday life, Barrio Rising offers a sweeping reinterpretation of modern Venezuelan history as seen not by its leaders but by residents of one of the country’s most distinctive popular neighborhoods.
Author: Paulo Drinot
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822376245
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 373
Get Book Here
Book Description
Although Latin America weathered the Great Depression better than the United States and Europe, the global economic collapse of the 1930s had a deep and lasting impact on the region. The contributors to this book examine the consequences of the Depression in terms of the role of the state, party-political competition, and the formation of working-class and other social and political movements. Going beyond economic history, they chart the repercussions and policy responses in different countries while noting common cross-regional trends--in particular, a mounting critique of economic orthodoxy and greater state intervention in the economic, social, and cultural spheres, both trends crucial to the region's subsequent development. The book also examines how regional transformations interacted with and differed from global processes. Taken together, these essays deepen our understanding of the Great Depression as a formative experience in Latin America and provide a timely comparative perspective on the recent global economic crisis. Contributors. Marcelo Bucheli, Carlos Contreras, Paulo Drinot, Jeffrey L. Gould, Roy Hora, Alan Knight, Gillian McGillivray, Luis Felipe Sáenz, Angela Vergara, Joel Wolfe, Doug Yarrington
Author: Jennifer L. McCoy
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 9780801884283
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 380
Get Book Here
Book Description
For four decades, Venezuela prided itself for having one of the most stable representative democracies in Latin America. Then, in 1992, Hugo Chávez Frías attempted an unsuccessful military coup. Six years later, he was elected president. Once in power, Chávez redrafted the 1961 constitution, dissolved the Congress, dismissed judges, and marginalized rival political parties. In a bid to create direct democracy, other Latin American democracies watched with mixed reactions: if representative democracy could break down so quickly in Venezuela, it could easily happen in countries with less-established traditions. On the other hand, would Chávez create a new form of democracy to redress the plight of the marginalized poor? In this volume of essays, leading scholars from Venezuela and the United States ask why representative democracy in Venezuela unraveled so swiftly and whether it can be restored. Its thirteen chapters examine the crisis in three periods: the unraveling of Punto Fijo democracy; Chávez's Bolivarian Revolution; and the course of "participatory democracy" under Chávez. The contributors analyze such factors as the vulnerability of Venezuelan democracy before Chávez; the role of political parties, organized labor, the urban poor, the military, and businessmen; and the impact of public and economic policy. This timely volume offers important lessons for comparative regime change within hybrid democracies. Contributors: Damarys Canache, Florida State University; Rafael de la Cruz, Inter-American Development Bank; José Antonio Gil, Yepes Datanalisis; Richard S. Hillman, St. John Fisher College; Janet Kelly, Graduate Institute of Business, Caracas; José E. Molina, University of Zulia; Mosés Naím, Foreign Policy; Nelson Ortiz, Caracas Stock Exchange; Pedro A. Palma, Graduate Institute of Business, Caracas; Carlos A. Romero and Luis Salamanca, Central University of Venezuela; Harold Trinkunas, Naval Postgraduate School.
Author: Judith Ewell
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804712132
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 288
Get Book Here
Book Description
A Stanford University Press classic.
Author:
Publisher: Hoover Press
ISBN: 9780817980634
Category : Economic development
Languages : en
Pages : 284
Get Book Here
Book Description
Author: G. Bingham POWELL
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674042352
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 294
Get Book Here
Book Description
Why do some democracies succeed while others fail? In seeking an answer to this classic problem, G. Bingham Powell, Jr., examines the record of voter participation, government stability, and violence in 29 democracies during the 1960s and 1970s. The core of the book and its most distinguishing feature is the treatment of the role of political parties in mobilizing citizens and containing violence.
