University of Miami

Review
Reviewed Work(s): The Paradox of Democracy in Latin America: Ten Country Studies of
Division and Resilience by Katherine Isbester
Review by: Juan Muñoz Portillo
Source: Latin American Politics and Society, Vol. 54, No. 1 (Spring 2012), pp. 197-200
Published by: Distributed by Wiley on behalf of the Center for Latin American Studies at
the University of Miami
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 Book Reviews

Katherine Isbester, ed., The Paradox of Democracy in Latin America:

Ten Country Studies of Division and Resilience . Toronto: University
of Toronto Press, 2010. Tables, index, 396 pp.; hardcover $80, paper-
back $39.95.

The wave of democratization that took place in Latin America beginning

in the 1970s generated great expectations about the political and socioe-
conomic future of the region. The paradox of democracy in Latin Amer-
ica, hence the name of the book, according to Katherine Isbester, is that
this type of regime is more desirable than the autocracies that ruled the
region before. Nevertheless, "inequality and poorly structured relations
of power have produced a weak state and a minimal (electoral) democ-
racy in many Latin American countries" (xiii).
Since democracy was accepted as the "only game in town," human
rights abuses have substantially decreased and civil society has
strengthened, while elected governments have introduced reforms to
improve the quality of democratic institutions. In contrast, democracy
did not bring a solution to poverty and social inequality, two of the
main causes of the many political conflicts that affected the subconti-
nent during the twentieth century. Moreover, it seems that the economic
policies adopted by most of the Latin American governments during the
1980s, reducing the influence of the state over the markets, known as
neoliberalism, have aggravated these problems. Isbester and her con-
tributors certainly stand as critics of neoliberalism.
The book is not a theoretical claim on politics and development in
Latin America, nor is it an empirical contribution. Instead, it attempts to
discuss the literature on democracy and economic development in order
to make an assessment of the current Latin American democracies. For
this purpose, Isbester builds a theoretical framework based on a neoin-
stitutionalist approach. She asserts that the state, the economy, and civil
society are the key factors in understanding the complexities of any
democratic system: "the ability of the state to act autonomously from
groups in order to identify, develop, and implement solutions to prob-
lems is called state capacity" (11). The state capacity is a function of its
democratic institutions; these are "the formal and informal frameworks
governed by rules and informal conventions that shape human interac-
tions and incentives" (12). Furthermore, a healthy economy depends on
good-quality institutions and state capacity. What makes a good-quality
institution, for Isbester, is a matter of balancing accountability, since a

© 2012 University of Miami

DOI: 10.111 1/j.l 548-2456.201 2.00148.x

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198 LATIN AMERICAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY 54: 1

state with too much capacity can be harmful for citiz

ance rests on three pillars: vertical accountability,
government citizens exert in the ballot box; horizo
the system of checks and balances among politica
social accountability, civil society oversight.
The first three chapters of this volume, written
theoretical framework and synthesize the political his
ica since independence. Each of the following ten e
studying the evolution toward democracy and the disc
tioning in ten of the region's countries: Mexico, G
Costa Rica, Colombia, Venezuela, Brazil, Bolivia, Ch
Each of the country chapters starts with a very sho
ticular event (the DR-CAFTA referendum in Costa Rica and the Cara-
cazo in Venezuela), the life of a historical figure (Rigoberta Menchu in
Guatemala, Ernesto Cardenal in Nicaragua, and Evo Morales in Bolivia),
or a more ordinary person whose personal experience helps to exem-
plify how democracy is actually lived by Latin Americans. For instance,
the chapter on Colombia, by Roberta Rice, introduces the story of Black
Vladimir, a former guerrilla insurgent, who, due to structural and per-
sonal circumstances, transformed himself into a very skilled paramilitary
counterinsurgent. These stories make the reading of each of these chap-
ters more engaging from the start. An additional feature of the book is
its e-resources section for each chapter, which helps to identify reliable
country and regional web-based sources.
The book also provides a good introduction to formal and informal
institutions and their societal outcomes in Latin America. Isbester dedi-
cates chapter 1 to analyzing the literature on the intersection between
democracy and economic development. Chapter 3 compliments this
analysis by explaining how institutions work in the Latin American con-
text. The academic literature on issues of democracy and development
is broad, and controversies constantly arise among scholars regarding
the causal linkages between them. The more advanced reader might
find that this theoretical debate is missing.
Some of the essays, even though they provide valuable historical
insight, lack in-depth analysis of key explanatory factors. For example,
the case of Mexico, developed by Judith Teichman, mentions how the
electoral system and the presidential form of government contributed to
understanding authoritarianism in that country during most of the twen-
tieth century. However, Teichman does not explain how that political
system worked. By contrast, Lauren Phillips's analysis of the institutional
structure of the federal system, the party system, the electoral system,
presidentialism, and clientelism explains broadly the political processes
in Brazil by providing a more detailed description of each institutional
feature.

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 BOOK REVIEWS 199

Isbester shows a degree of bia

Rica. She credits the caudillo Jo
the uniqueness of Costa Rican
nized that other variables contr
ocratic development; for exam
egalitarian population and its re
American countries, especially
quent after independence (i.e.,
Another source of bias is identified when Isbester discusses the ratifica-
tion of the Dominican Republic-Central American Free Trade Agreement
with the United States (DR-CAFTA). After reading this chapter, the
reader might get the impression that Isbester is taking a position against
DR-CAFTA, an issue that divided Costa Rican society and that finally had
to be settled through a referendum.
In the final chapter, "What Works and Why," Isbester aims to balance
the case studies by providing statistics encompassing all Latin American
countries. Here she invites the reader to reflect on her balance of what
works well, what barely works, what might work, and what does not
work in the region. I particularly believe that her analysis of what barely
works in the region needs a closer examination. Isbester shows how
Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico perform better than their Latin American
counterparts on different socioeconomic indexes. However, according to
her analysis, "these giants" do not perform as well as Costa Rica, Uruguay,
Chile, and Venezuela in terms of corruption, levels of support for their
democracies, and human development. In this regard, the statistics
Isbester cites do not show the inner variation on levels of development,
which can be much larger than the variations within a smaller country.
Similarly, one could also disagree with her section on what does not
work. On the one hand, she focuses on the June 2009 coup d'état in
Honduras as an exemplary case of the failures of democracy in Central
America. While regional and international factors have implications for
the Honduran coup, and while we can learn from it to increase our
knowledge of Central America, in my opinion, it should not be used to
derive conclusions about the failures of democracy in other Central
American countries. On the other hand, issues of criminality and inse-
curity in the Central American isthmus require a more detailed explana-
tion than the one Isbester provides.
Contributions to most edited volumes vary in quality and scope of
analysis. While some of the authors here attach to Isbester's analytical
framework, others take noticeable liberties when studying particular cases.
In all, throughout most of the book, it is possible to note good communi-
cation between the editor and the contributors. Overall, the analysis of ten
representative cases of contemporary democracies in Latin America, from
a historical perspective, is the most valuable asset of this book.

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200 LATIN AMERICAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY 54: 1

I recommend this book especially to lecturers

itics who take an interest in the democratic dev
porary issues affecting the region. For the general
be a good source of information on the region
applies to those working in policymaking areas
who, after reading the book, will get a better
American democracies.
Juan Muñoz Portillo
Dublin City University

Carlos Scartascini, Ernesto H. Stein, and Mariano Tommasi, eds., How

Democracy Works: Political Institutions , Actors, and Arenas in Latin
American Policymaking. Washington, DC: Inter-American Develop-
ment Bank, 2010. Tables, bibliography, index, 333 pp.; paperback
$29.95.

How Democracy Works is the latest installment in the Inter-American

Development Bank's ambitious project to chart the connections
between the institutions of policymaking and public policy outcomes.
The editors note that the purpose of this project is to move beyond the
traditional perception, at least among economists, that the correct
reforms were obvious and the only issue was mustering the political will
or capacity to pass them.
In a previous publication, the 2006 IADB report The Politics of Poli-
cies , the editors observed that the quality of economic policy could not
be understood simply in terms of implementing, or failing to implement,
a "one size fits all" universal policy set. Instead, they noted that good
policies need to be tailored to fit specific contexts. They consequently
offered a template for evaluating the overall quality of policy over an
extended period of time - a systemic feature, rather than the quality of
any individual policy. This allowed them to avoid having to evaluate
each and every policy piecemeal, and it allowed them to do so without
a prior bias in favor of any specific policy program, whether the IMF's
preferred set or CEPAL's.
This template, laid out in the 2006 report, measured the quality of
policy in six key dimensions: stability (rules are sustained over longer
periods of time), adaptability (policies can adjust to substantially
changed contexts or new evidence of policy failure), public-regarded-
ness (serving broad interests rather than narrow or private interests),
efficiency (resources put to their best uses), coherence and coordination
(policies are consistent with each other), and quality of implementation
and enforcement (effectiveness).
But what produces high-quality policy? For the editors, the quality of
policy was a consequence of each country's specific institutional con-

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