We develop a theory of political transitions inspired in part by the experiences of Western Europe and Latin America. Nondemocratic societies are controlled by a rich elite. The initially disenfranchised poor can contest power by threatening social unrest or revolution and this may force the elite to democratize. Democracy may not consolidate because it is more redistributive than a nondemocratic regime, and this gives the elite an incentive to mount a coup. Because inequality makes democracy more costly for the elite, highly unequal societies are less likely to consolidate democracy and may end up oscillating between regimes or in a nondemocratic repressive regime. An unequal society is likely to experience fiscal volatility, but the relationship between inequality and redistribution is nonmonotonic; societies with intermediate levels of inequality consolidate democracy and redistribute more than both very equal and very unequal countries. We also show that asset redistribution, such as educational and land reform, may be used to consolidate both democratic and nondemocratic regimes.

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A Theory of Political Transitions

All fourteen major peacebuilding missions launched between 1989 and 1999 shared a common strategy for consolidating peace after internal conflicts: immediate democratization and marketization. Transforming war-shattered states into market democracies is basically sound, but pushing this process too quickly can have damaging and destabilizing effects. The process of liberalization is inherently tumultuous, and can undermine the prospects for stable peace. A more sensible approach to post-conflict peacebuilding would seek, first, to establish a system of domestic institutions that are capable of managing the destabilizing effects of democratization and marketization within peaceful bounds and only then phase in political and economic reforms slowly, as conditions warrant. Peacebuilders should establish the foundations of effective governmental institutions prior to launching wholesale liberalization programs. Avoiding the problems that marred many peacebuilding operations in the 1990s will require longer-lasting and, ultimately, more intrusive forms of intervention in the domestic affairs of these states. This book was first published in 2004.

At War's End: Building Peace after Civil Conflict

Part I. Theoretical Framing: 1. Questions, approaches, and cases 2. Citizenship regimes, the state, and ethnic cleavages 3. The argument: indigenous mobilization in Latin America Part II. The Cases: 4. Ecuador: Latin America's strongest indigenous movement 5. The Ecuadorian Andes and ECUARUNARI 6. The Ecuadorian Amazon and CONFENAIE 7. Forming the National Confederation, CONAIE 8. Bolivia: strong regional movements 9. The Bolivian Andes: the Kataristas and their legacy 10. The Bolivian Amazon 11. Peru: weak national movements and subnational variation 12. Peru. Ecuador, and Bolivia: most similar cases 13. No national indigenous movement: explaining the Peruvian anomaly 14. Explaining subnational variation 15. Conclusion: 16. Democracy and the postliberal challenge in Latin America.

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Contesting Citizenship in Latin America: The Rise of Indigenous Movements and the Postliberal Challenge

I o n e of the challenges facing the international community in the post-Cold War era is the increasingly pervasive problem of civil conflict.’ Indeed, all of the thirty major armed conflicts fought in the world in 1995 were intrastate wars.’ Devising ways of responding to this violence has been a topic of considerable debate among policymakers and students of conflict management in recent years.3 But no less important is the task of determining what to do once the fighting stops. Operations that aim to prevent violence from reigniting after the initial termination of hostilities-commonly called “postconflict peacebuilding”have been conducted in eight war-shattered states since the end of the Cold War: Namibia, Cambodia, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Mozambique, Angola,

Peacebuilding and the Limits of Liberal Internationalism

Latin American populism is generally associated with the
 developmental stage of import substitution industrialization; it is
 thus widely presumed to have been eclipsed by the debt crisis of
 the 1980s and the free market reforms of the neoliberal era.
 However, the leadership of Alberto Fujimori in Peru suggests that
 new forms of populism may be emerging despite the fiscal
 constraints of neoliberal austerity. This new variant of populism
 thrives in a context where economic crisis and social dislocation
 undermine traditional representative institutions, enabling
 personalist leaders to establish unmediated relationships with
 heterogeneous, atomized masses. Political support can be
 cultivated through populist attacks on entrenched political elites or
 institutions, along with targeted but highly visible poverty alleviation
 programs. This new form of populist autocracy complements the
 efforts of neoliberal technocrats to circumvent the representative
 institutions that are integral to democratic accountability. The
 Peruvian case thus demonstrates that populism has been
 transformed rather than eclipsed during the neoliberal era and that it
 should be decoupled theoretically from any particular phase or
 model of economic development.

Neoliberalism and the Transformation of Populism in Latin America: The Peruvian Case

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The New Politics of Inequality in Latin America

Between earthquakes and volcanoes : market, state, and the revolutions in Central America

Shortly after the Sandinista victory of July 1979, the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua gained enormous international notoriety because of violent conflicts between the new government and the people of the Coast region. Today, asserts Carlos Vilas, it may be the region of Nicaragua in which the peace process has advanced furthest. Exploring the origins of Nicaragua's internal conflicts, Vilas identifies and discusses the ways in which the Coast has been conceptualized, both before and after the revolution, by the groups that act within the Nicaraguan state. He analyzes the social bases of those groups, characterizes the policies inspired by their differing viewpoints, and considers the changes that have been made in both state and region and the tensions, contradictions, and reactions those changes have produced. This historical approach allows a comparison of the Somoza government of the 1950s-1970s and the present regime, as well as of the costeno responses to them. Vilas analyzes the tensions between the Coast's ethnic groups (Miskito, Sumu, Rama, Creole, and Garifuna) and the mestizo central revolutionary government as an accumulation of confronting territorial, socioeconomic, and ethnic ingredients.

State, Class, and Ethnicity in Nicaragua: Capitalist Modernization and Revolutionary Change on the Atlantic Coast

Participation, Inequality, and the Whereabouts of Democracy

Prospects for democratisation in those Central American countries that experienced revolutionary processes are discussed in the light of recurrent structural constraints – such as incipient structural differentiation, overwhelming poverty, dependence on foreign financial subsidies – and specific sociopolitical variations, i.e. uneven modernisation of traditional rule; tensions between the recent mobilisation of both ‘old’ and ‘new’ social actors, and political institutions and actors (such as parties, unions, parliaments, government and multilateral agencies) which in some cases lead to current social demobilisation and electoral apathy and in others prevent the effective uprooting of political violence; persistence of traditional authoritarian culture and its articulation to the new ingredients of the post-war political and socioeconomic setting.

Carlos M. Vilas

Papers

The New Politics of Inequality in Latin America

Between earthquakes and volcanoes : market, state, and the revolutions in Central America

State, Class, and Ethnicity in Nicaragua: Capitalist Modernization and Revolutionary Change on the Atlantic Coast

Participation, Inequality, and the Whereabouts of Democracy

Prospects for Democratisation in a Post-Revolutionary Setting: Central America*