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Rather than an unintended by-product of poor state capacity, weak political and legal institutions are often weak by design.
List of contents
1. Theorizing weak institutions; 2. When (electoral) opportunity knocks: weak institutions, political shocks, and electoral reforms in Latin America; 3. The stickiness of 'bad' institutions: constitutional continuity and change under democracy; 4. Presidential crises in Latin America; 5. Coercion gaps; 6. Aspirational laws as weak institutions: legislation to combat violence against women in Mexico; 7. The social determinants of enforcement: integrating politics with limited state capacity; 8. A multilevel approach to enforcement: forest protection in the Argentine Chaco; 9. What/whose property rights? The selective enforcement of land rights under Mexican liberalism; 10. Imported institutions: boon or bane in the developing world? 11. Social origins of institutional strength: prior consultation over extraction of hydrocarbons in Bolivia; 12. Conclusion.
About the author
Daniel M. Brinks is Professor of Government and of Law and Chair of the Government Department at the University of Texas, Austin. Dan's research focuses on the role of the law and courts in supporting democracy and human rights. His most recent book (with Abby Blass) is The DNA of Constitutional Justice in Latin America (2018), winner of the Corwin Award for Best Book on Law and Courts awarded by the Law and Courts Section of the APSA.Steven Levitsky is David Rockefeller Professor of Latin American Studies at Harvard University, Massachusetts. He is co-author of How Democracies Die (2018), a New York Times Best-Seller published in 15 languages. His other books include Transforming Labor-Based Parties in Latin America (2003) and (with Lucan Way) Competitive Authoritarianism (2010). He is currently writing a book on the durability of revolutionary regimes.María Victoria Murillo is a Professor in the Department of Political Science and the School of International Affairs and the Director of the Institute for Latin American Studies at Columbia University, New York. She is the author of Labor Unions, Partisan Coalitions, and Market Reforms in Latin America (2001), Political Competition, Partisanship, and Policymaking in the Reform of Latin American Public Utilities (2009), and (with Ernesto Calvo) Non-Policy Politics (2019).
Summary
Political scientists agree that 'institutions matter', but we still know little about when and why or how we would know. Drawing on experiences from Latin America, this volume offers a new conceptual and theoretical framework for understanding when institutions are strong or weak and how different types of weakness matter.
Additional text
'Kudos to Brinks, Levitsky, and Murillo for this impressive volume. They have produced an agenda-setting book, including leading scholars, that significantly advances our conceptual, theoretical, and empirical understanding of institutional fragility in Latin America. The volume challenges the idea that weak institutions are an accident. To explain variations in institutional significance, stability, enforcement, and compliance, the book examines the coalitional bases, strategic causes, and political uses of a wide range of institutions and cases. This volume is a must read for comparative scholars interested in institutions, in general, and Latin American politics, in particular.' Deborah J. Yashar, Princeton University
