What is the impact of political decentralisation in Latin America? This book considers the problems raised by political decentralisation in the region and identifies the challenges ahead. Political decentralisation tends to devolve a certain amount of financial responsibility to the sub-national...

Civil society organizations (CSOs) have become an important way to mobilize the energies of those who have been historically unrepresented or underrepresented. The eleven case studies in this book present a wide-ranging view of CSOs in Latin America and their impact on the political and social...

A legitimate and effective democracy is essential for sustainable economic and social development. This updated and expanded edition of "Democracies in Development: Politics and Reform in Latin America" analyzes the effects of institutions on the democratic process, identifies regional trends in...

Over the past 30 years, democratic freedoms and competitive electoral processes have taken hold as never before in Latin America. How Democracy Works takes a detailed look, from an institutional perspective, at each of the main actors on the policymaking stage in Latin America, emphasizing the...

"An Unequal Democracy?: Seeing Latin America through European Eyes" is the result of a conference organized by the International Institute for Governance of Catalonia in November 2003, with support from the government of Catalonia and the Special Office in Europe of the IDB. At the conference, a...

Veto player theory argues that a higher number of veto players lowers the likelihood of change; in turn, policies that do not change help to sustain commitments but may prevent adaptation to changing circumstances. This paper challenges that claim of veto player theory by arguing that policy...

Drawing on previously unused objective institutional data, we provide evidence for the causal link between rent-seeking behavior and democracy in Uruguay, a country where both rent-seeking behavior and political shifts have varied widely in the last 80 years, but where ethnolinguistic...