Volume 39, Number 2, January 2007

While the relationship between attempted democratization and large-scale violence has been noticed, the way in which violence is produced has not been fully explored. Three mechanisms produce violence within the wider bargaining process over change: public order policing of protest by mobilized opponents of those in power, incumbent deployment of special forces, and the manipulation of local conflicts by national actors in the context of party formation. Different forms of violence can be used within bargaining to improve the position of one party over another or in some cases to derail negotiations. These mechanisms help to explain not only how large-scale violence escalates but also how it can dramatically deescalate to allow for a successful transition to a more democratic regime.

Causal analysis of why some recent experiments in participatory local government in Latin America have failed while others have succeeded is undeveloped. Comparison of three similar experiments in Caracas, Montevideo, and Port Alegre can provide a more thorough explanation. The program in Caracas largely failed; Porto Alegre’s participatory budgeting became an international model; and Montevideo’s outcome was mixed. Two factors best explain this divergence: the degree of national decentralization of authority and resources for municipal governments and the level of institutionalization of local opposition parties. These conditions shaped the incumbents’ ability to design meaningful participatory programs that could attract lasting citizen involvement.

One of the most prominent features of the peaceful revolutions that swept Serbia, Georgia, and Ukraine was the extraordinary upsurge of youth mobilization demanding fundamental political change. Comparative analysis reveals striking similarities in timing, issues, mobilization, framing processes, and action repertoires, in line with McAdam’s distinction between initiator and spin-off movements. The interaction between political generations and political opportunities triggered the rise of the Serbian initiator movement Otpor and set in motion a protest cycle. Shared concerns over increasing authoritarian practices and similarities in political opportunities in turn facilitated the spin-off movements in Georgia and Ukraine.

Older workers and pensioners constitute a large percentage of the membership of European labor movements. It is usually assumed that their relative weight creates a seniority bias that compels union leaders to preserve the pension system status quo. More important, however, is how they are represented within unions. Labor leaders are more likely to support pension reforms that impose significant costs on current workers when internal union institutions allow pensioners to influence unions social policy positions and centralize authority in peak-level bodies. Evidence from Italy and Germany confirms this argument. Strengthening the representation of pensioner interests within unions may help rather than hinder long-term pension system reform.

According to deliberative democratic theory, transparency and publicity have a civilizing effect on political behavior, forcing actors to argue with regard to the public rather than engage in self-interested bargaining. Negotiation theory, in contrast, warns that transparency may damage effective problem solving and lead to sharper group polarization. Comparison of business lobbyists acting in institutional settings with varying degrees of transparency in Sweden and the European Union can test these theories. The results support negotiation theory. However, the deliberative perspective is also necessary to explain the behavior of lobbyists backstage, and standard two level games will often be inadequate in explaining transparency effects.

This review of four books on the origins and consequences of market-based reforms in the past two decades in Latin America argues that it is necessary to accelerate the integration of four separate subfields of study: public opinion, the political economy of structural reform, the components of democratic governance, and institutional design. Each is centrally concerned with identifying the electoral and institutional incentives and constraints in public development policies. The review examines explanations of why only some institutional designs make governments responsive to voters’ preferences while building a consensus in favor of structural reform.