Democracy and Parties in Latin America

What is wrong with democracy in Latin America?After the wave of democratic transitions in the 1980s, initial concerns focused on the potential for the return of military regimes.This did not happen.However, satisfaction with and support for democracy has eroded, along with confidence and trust in political institutions in general and political parties in particular.How serious are these trends?What has gone wrong-and what might be done to reverse the damage?The authors of the books reviewed in this essay contribute in various ways to addressing these questions.While there is no magic bullet offered in a policy sense, each offers important insights into the relative role played by parties in these processes of decline and the structural underpinnings of party construction.The most general approach to these questions is laid out in Democracias en vilo: la incertidumbre poltica en Amrica Latina, edited by J. Carlos Domnguez Virgen and Alejandro Monsivis Carrillo.Two chapters in this impressive survey focus on the inability of a weak state to deliver on policy outcomes (see the chapter by Alberto Olvera and the chapter by Armando Roman Zozaya on Mexico).Another chapter highlights the particular dangers posed by investments in megaprojects, which create risks that voters will see democracy as "only serving to protect and favor the interests of a few powerful groups" (Domnguez, 122).