Frances Hagopian

“Democracy by Undemocratic Means”? Elites, Political Pacts, and Regime Transition in Brazil

Why has Brazil failed to develop strong democratic institutions, despite widespread opposition to authoritarianism and support for civilian rule in the 1980s? This article argues that the political pacts bargained by elites that made the regime transition possible limited the extension of democracy. By restoring to old regime elites many sources of their political power as the price for their support for democratization, political pacts left the military with a substantial degree of formal and informal power over civilians, preserved clientelism, and undermined the ability of political parties to transform themselves into genuine transmission belts for nonelite interests. The undemocratic character of the Brazilian state, as embodied by military autonomy, technocratic modes of policymaking, and executive dominance over the legislature, moreover, was reinforced by the defeat of parliamentarism by the constituent assembly in 1988.

Political Development, Revisited

This article reviews four decades of scholarship on political development. It contends that the theoretical ambitions of the early political development literature to frame the comparative inquiry of politics and political change in less developed countries were undermined by intellectual challenges to the paradigms of modernization and structural functionalism and that the literature’s teleological dimension was contradicted by real-world events. Nonetheless, in subsequent decades, the field made great advances in the study of political institutions, democratic stability and breakdown, state structures, civil society, and the uneven character of political development itself. The article argues that amid manifold evidence of plural forms of political development and decay at the century’s end, the field should avoid relapses into neomodernization theory and instead focus on such issues as state reform, democratic governance, political representation and accountability, and the organization of civil societies. Such an expansive and fluid research agenda will enable the field of political development to generate important theoretical advances in comparative politics.

Latin American Catholicism in an Age of Religious and Political Pluralism: A Framework for Analysis

This article identifies and proposes a framework to explain the responses of Latin America’s Roman Catholic churches to a new strategic dilemma posed by religious and political pluralism. Because the church’s goals of defending institutional interests, evangelizing, promoting public morality, and grounding public policy in Catholic social teaching cut across existing political cleavages, Church leaders must make strategic choices about which to emphasize in their messages to the faithful, investment of pastoral resources, and alliances. I develop a typology of Episcopal responses based on the cases of Argentina, Chile, Brazil, and Mexico, and explain strategic choices by the church’s capacity to mobilize civil society, its degree of religious hegemony, and the ideological orientations of Catholics. The analysis draws from 620 Episcopal documents issued since 2000.

Paradoxes of Democracy and Citizenship in Brazil

Participatory Institutions in Democratic Brazil. By Leonardo Avritzer. Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press; Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009. Pp. xiv + 205.

The Limits of Industrialization in the Less Developed World: Bolivia

49.95 cloth.

Traditional Politics and Regime Change in Brazil

24.95 paper. A Poverty of Rights: Citizenship and Inequality in Twentieth-Century Rio de Janeiro. By Brodwyn Fischer. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008. Pp. xiv + 464.

The Third Wave of Democratization in Latin America: Advances and Setbacks

65.00 cloth.

From Patronage to Program The Emergence of Party-Oriented Legislators in Brazil

24.95 paper. Insurgent Citizenship: Disjunctions of Democracy and Modernity in Brazil. By James Holston. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008. Pp. xvii + 396.

Parties and Voters in Emerging Democracies

27.95 paper. Democratic Brazil Revisited. Edited by Peter R. Kingstone and Timothy J. Power. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2008. Pp. xiv + 342.

Derechos, representación y la creciente calidad de la democracia en Brasil y Chile

65.00 cloth.