Crafting Civilian Control in Emerging Democracies: Argentina and Venezuela

Chile's Transformed Party System and the Future of Democratic Stability Chile today is experiencing a new sociopolitical no less significant than the so-called compromise state of the 1930s and 1940s. A central feature of the new arrangement has been the performance of Chile's party system. This role should be understood in terms of how it reflects, and helps to mitigate or aggravate, the tension between capital accumulation and the struggles over sociopolitical inclusion and distribution. Party System Deinstitutionalization: The 1997-98 Colombian Elections in Historical Perspective Taking the 1997-98 electoral season as its case study, this article seeks to determine whether Colombia's party system is undergoing deinstitutionalization. The resilience of the Liberal Party and the lack of an organized alternative to the traditional parties may mean that Colombia is in the process of party system transformation. Democratization and Changes in the Pattern of Association in Brazil The results of a survey of 311 members of voluntary associations in Sao Paulo and Belo Horizonte suggest that members of voluntary associations incorporate the values introduced by social movements during the democratization process: they claim organizational autonomy from the state, and they defend more participatory forms of decisionmaking. These findings are important for the debate between democratic consolidation and delegative democracy. Democratization might benefit from the incorporation of these actors into new participatory designs. Crafting Civilian Control in Emerging Democracies: Argentina and Venezuela Democratic transitions create an opportunity for elected officials to maximize their leverage over the armed forces and create institutions that permanently shift power away from the military. This article develops a theoretical argument about how civilian control, is established. Venezuela institutionalized weak civilian control in the wake of its 1958 democratic transition, allowing the regime to survive the 1992 coup attempts. Argentina moved close to strong civilian control by 1995, although such control is exercised through questionable institutional channels.