R. Feinberg & C. Waisman 
Civil Society and Democracy in Latin America 

A dense web of private associations drawn from multiple social classes, interest groups and value communities makes for a firm foundation for strong democracy. In Latin America today, will civil society improve the quality of democracy or will it foster political polarization and reverse recent progress? Distinguished theorists from the United States, Canada and Latin America explore the diverse impact of civil society on economic performance, political parties, and state institutions. In-depth and up-to-date country studies explore the consequences of civil society for the durability of democracy in three highly dynamic, controversial settings: Argentina, Brazil and Venezuela.

Table of Content

Introduction * Civil Society and Democracy: the Latin American Case – Carlos H. Waisman, Richard Feinberg& Leon Zamosc * Part I: Theoretical and Comparative Perspectives * Autonomy, Self-regulation and Democracy: Tocquevillean-Gellnerian Perspectives on Civil Society and the Bifurcated State in Latin America – Carlos H. Waisman * Civil Society in Latin America in the Twenty-first Century: Democratic Deepening, Social Fragmentation and State Crisis – Leonardo Avritzer * Conceptualizing Civil Society from the Bottom Up: A Political Economy Perspective – Philip Oxhorn * Part II: Country Case Studies * Citizenship and Civil Society in Renascent Argentina – Isidoro Cheresky * Argentina after the Nineties: Changes in Social Structure and Political Behavior – Manuel Mora y Araujo * “ Sem Reforma Agrária, Não Ha Democracia ”: The Struggle over Access to Land and Deepening Democracy in Brazil – Wendy Wolford * Civil Society and Political Decay in Venezuela – Daniel H. Levine

About the author

Richard Feinberg is professor of international political economy at the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies, University of California, San Diego. He has written widely on international finance and trade and US-Latin American relations and his latest book is
Summitry in the Americas. Currently he teaches a course on civil society in developing economies and is book reviewer for the Western Hemisphere section of
Foreign Affairs magazine.

Carlos H. Waisman is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, San Diego. Professor Waisman is a comparative political sociologist. His current work deals with the social and political dynamics of neo-mercantilist regimes. He has published
Modernization and the Working Class, Reversal of Development in
Argentina
, Institutional Design in New Democracies (with Arend Lijphart),
Spanish and Latin American Transitions to Democracy (with Raanan Rein) and many articles and book chapters.

Leon Zamosc is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of
California, San Diego. His work includes books and articles in Spanish and English on rural development, peasant political participation, and
indigenous movements in Colombia and Ecuador. He is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of the academic journal
Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies.