Author: Juan E. Méndez
Publisher:
Published: 1999
Total Pages: 376
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This study describes a Latin American legal system which punishes only the poor and a democratic state which fails to control its own agents' arbitrary practices. The contributors argue that judicial reform cannot be seperated from human rights and that justice must be made available to the poor.
Author: Marcelo Bergman
Publisher: Penn State Press
Published: 2015-08-26
Total Pages: 280
ISBN-13: 0271058811
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Few tasks are as crucial for the future of democracy in Latin America—and, indeed, in other underdeveloped areas of the world—as strengthening the rule of law and reforming the system of taxation. In this book, Marcelo Bergman shows how success in getting citizens to pay their taxes is related intimately to the social norms that undergird the rule of law. The threat of legal sanctions is itself insufficient to motivate compliance, he argues. That kind of deterrence works best when citizens already have other reasons to want to comply, based on their beliefs about what is fair and about how their fellow citizens are behaving. The problem of "free riding," which arises when cheaters can count on enough suckers to pay their taxes so they can avoid doing so and still benefit from the government’s supply of public goods, cannot be reversed just by stringent law, because the success of governmental enforcement ultimately depends on the social equilibrium that predominates in each country. Culture and state effectiveness are inherently linked. Using a wealth of new data drawn from his own multidimensional research involving game theory, statistical models, surveys, and simulations, Bergman compares Argentina and Chile to show how, in two societies that otherwise share much in common, the differing traditions of rule of law explain why so many citizens evade paying taxes in Argentina—and why, in Chile, most citizens comply with the law. In the concluding chapter, he draws implications for public policy from the empirical findings and generalizes his argument to other societies in Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe.
Author: Cristina Rojas
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2016-01-08
Total Pages: 142
ISBN-13: 1317656504
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This book looks at how citizenship has been imagined and transformed in Latin America through the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries from different disciplinary perspectives including anthropology, history, urban planning, geography and political studies. It looks beyond citizenship as a formal legal status to explore how ideas about citizenship have shaped political and historical landscapes in different ways through the region. It shows how conceptions of citizenship are intertwined with understandings of natural spaces and environments, how indigenous politics are ‘de-colonizing’ western liberal conceptions of citizenship, and how citizenship is being transformed through local level politics and projects for development. In addition to showcasing some of the novel, emerging forms of citizenship in the region, the book also traces the ways in which historical narratives of citizenship and national belonging persist within present day politics. Collectively, the chapters show that citizenship remains an important entry point for understanding politics, projects of reform, and struggles for transformation in Latin America. This book was published as a special issue of Citizenship Studies.
Author: Scott Mainwaring
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 2009-11-24
Total Pages: 440
ISBN-13: 0804772967
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Producing more effective governance is the greatest challenge that faces most Latin American democracies today—a challenge that involves not only strengthening democratic institutions but also increasing governmental effectiveness. Focusing on the post-1990 period, this volume addresses why some policies and some countries have been more successful than others in meeting this dual challenge. Two features of the volume stand out. First, whereas some analysts tend to generalize for Latin America as a whole, this group of authors underscores the striking differences of achievement among countries in the region and illustrates the importance of understanding these differences. The second feature is the range of expertise within the volume. In addition to the volume editors, the contributors are Alan Angell, Daniel Brinks, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, José de Gregorio, Alejandro Foxley, Evelyne Huber, José Miguel Insulza, Juliana Martínez Franzoni, Patricio Navia, Francisco Rodriguez, Mitchell Seligson, John Stephens, Jorge Vargas Cullell, and Ignacio Walker.
Author: Ricardo D. Salvatore
Publisher: Duke University Press
Published: 2001-09-20
Total Pages: 475
ISBN-13: 0822380781
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Crowning a decade of innovative efforts in the historical study of law and legal phenomena in the region, Crime and Punishment in Latin America offers a collection of essays that deal with the multiple aspects of the relationship between ordinary people and the law. Building on a variety of methodological and theoretical trends—cultural history, subaltern studies, new political history, and others—the contributors share the conviction that law and legal phenomena are crucial elements in the formation and functioning of modern Latin American societies and, as such, need to be brought to the forefront of scholarly debates about the region’s past and present. While disassociating law from a strictly legalist approach, the volume showcases a number of highly original studies on topics such as the role of law in processes of state formation and social and political conflict, the resonance between legal and cultural phenomena, and the contested nature of law-enforcing discourses and practices. Treating law as an ambiguous and malleable arena of struggle, the contributors to this volume—scholars from North and Latin America who represent the new wave in legal history that has emerged in recent years-- demonstrate that law not only produces and reformulates culture, but also shapes and is shaped by larger processes of political, social, economic, and cultural change. In addition, they offer valuable insights about the ways in which legal systems and cultures in Latin America compare to those in England, Western Europe, and the United States. This volume will appeal to scholars in Latin American studies and to those interested in the social, cultural, and comparative history of law and legal phenomena. Contributors. Carlos Aguirre, Dain Borges, Lila Caimari, Arlene J. Díaz, Luis A. Gonzalez, Donna J. Guy, Douglas Hay, Gilbert M. Joseph, Juan Manuel Palacio, Diana Paton, Pablo Piccato, Cristina Rivera Garza, Kristin Ruggiero, Ricardo D. Salvatore, Charles F. Walker
Author: Jordi Diez
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013-10-31
Total Pages: 304
ISBN-13: 1135520992
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This book explores environmental policymaking in Mexico as a vehicle to understanding the broader changes in the policy process within a system undergoing a democratic transformation. It constitutes the first major analysis of environmental policymaking in Mexico at the national level, and examines the implementation of forestry policy in Mexico's largest rain forest, the Selva Lacandona of the state of Chiapas.
Author: Mark G. Brett
Publisher: BRILL
Published: 2008-02-28
Total Pages: 245
ISBN-13: 9047433076
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This book analyses patterns of collective action that emerged during Guatemala’s democratic transition between 1985 and 1996, focusing in particular on the role of indigenous actors in the political processes undergirding and shaping democratisation and the respective impact of the transition upon indigenous social movements. Comparatively little has been written about collective action in Guatemala within the discipline of political science, despite the mobilisation of a wide range of social movements in response to the brutal armed conflict; rather, literature has focused principally on the role of elite actors in democratisation. This study presents a fresh perspective, presenting an analysis of the political evolution of three social movements and their human rights platforms through the framework of social movement theory.
Author: Roderick Leslie Brett
Publisher: BRILL
Published: 2008
Total Pages: 245
ISBN-13: 9004165525
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Drawing on social movement theory, this book presents a comprehensive analysis of the evolution of collective action during Guatemalaa (TM)s democratic transition (1985-1996) and the accompanying impact of social movements on democratisation, focusing on three indigenous peoplesa (TM) social movement organisations.