Political Culture and Institutional Development in Costa Rica and Nicaragua: World Making in the Tropics
Cambridge University Press, 8/22/2005
EAN 9780521842037, ISBN10: 0521842034
Hardcover, 302 pages, 23.4 x 15.6 x 2.3 cm
Language: English
Democracy's checkered past and uncertain future in the developing world still puzzles and fascinates. In Latin America, attempts to construct resilient democracies have been as pervasive as reversals have been cruel. This book is based on a wealth of original historical documents and contemporary interviews with prominent political actors and analyses five centuries of political history in these paradigmatic cases of outstanding democratic success and abysmal failure. It shows that while factors highlighted by standard explanations matter, it is political culture that configures economic development, institutional choices and political pacts in ways that directly affect both democracy's chances and its quality. But it also claims that political culture is a dynamic combination of rational and normative imperatives that define actors' views of the permissible, shape their sense of realism, structure political struggles and legitimate the resulting distribution of power.
1. Theoretical overview
2. Manichean identities and normative scheming
origins
3. Orphans of Empire
constructing national identities
4. Post-colonial paths
rhetorical strategies and frames
5. Costa Rica
possibility mongers
6. Nicaragua
hybrid arbitration
7. Tropical histories
paradise and Hell on Earth
8. Transition
familiar novelties.