The Impact of democratization : a preliminary investigation on social policies and political violence in Latin America
Grassi, Davide
Institut de Ciències Polítiques i Socials. Barcelona, Catalunya

Publicació: Institut de Ciències Polítiques i Socials (Barcelona, Catalunya) 2010
Descripció: 28 p.
Resum: The recent strides of democracy in Latin America have been associated to conflicting outcomes. The expectation that democracy would bring about peace and prosperity have been only partly satisfied. While political violence has been by and large eradicated from the sub-continent, poverty and social injustice still prevail and hold sway. Our study argues that democracy matters for inequality through the growing strength of center left and left parties and by making political leaders in general more responsive to the underprivileged. Furthermore, although the pension reforms recently enacted in the region generated overall regressive outcomes on income distribution, democratic countries still benefit from their political past: where democratic tradition was stronger, such outcomes have been milder. Democratic tradition and the specific ideological connotations of the parties in power, on the other hand, did not play an equally crucial role in securing lower levels of political violence: during the last wave of democratizations in Latin America, domestic peace was rather an outcome of political and social concessions to those in distress. In sum, together with other factors and especially economic ones, the reason why recent democratizations have provided domestic peace in most cases, but have been unable so far to solve the problem of poverty and inequality, is that democratic traditions in the subcontinent have been relatively weak and, more specifically, that this weakness has undermined the growth of left and progressive parties, acting as an obstacle to redistribution. Such weakness, on the other hand, has not prevented the drastic reduction of domestic political violence, since what mattered in this case was a combination of symbolic or material concessions and political agreements among powerful élites and counter-élites.
Drets: Aquest document està subjecte a una llicència d'ús de Creative Commons, amb la qual es permet copiar, distribuir i comunicar públicament l'obra sempre que se'n citin l'autor original, la universitat i l'institut i no se'n faci cap ús comercial ni obra derivada, tal com queda estipulat en la llicència d'ús Creative Commons
Llengua: Anglès
Col·lecció: Institut de Ciències Polítiques i Socials. Working papers
Col·lecció: Working papers (Institut de Ciències Polítiques i Socials (Barcelona, Catalunya)) ; 287
Document: Working paper
Matèria: Democràcia ; Amèrica Llatina ; Pobresa



31 p, 403.1 KB

El registre apareix a les col·leccions:
Documents de recerca > Documents dels grups de recerca de la UAB > Centres i grups de recerca (producció científica) > Ciències socials i jurídiques > Institut de Ciències Polítiques i Socials (ICPS)
Documents de recerca > Working papers

 Registre creat el 2010-10-07, darrera modificació el 2022-07-16



   Favorit i Compartir