Elections in Latin America: The problematic use of a democratic institution

Claudia Zilla

No 11/2009, SWP Comments from Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP), German Institute for International and Security Affairs

Abstract: In present-day Latin America 'election activism' is widespread. Elections are held with growing frequency and increasingly serve differing aims. In many cases, however, they do not go along with a strengthening of democracy. A current example is Argentina, where early congressional elections were held on June 28 and the government and opposition fought in court over the legality of several candidateships. Argentina thus joined the ranks of countries like Bolivia and Venezuela, where elections not only serve as a source of democratic legitimation and a form of political oversight, but are also used by both ruling parties and opposition forces in certain situations as a means to extend their own power

Date: 2009
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/256086/1/2009C11.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:swpcom:112009

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in SWP Comments from Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP), German Institute for International and Security Affairs
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().