Precarious Democracies

<p>Why has democracy in Colombia and Venezuela evolved in very different directions? In <i>Precarious Democracies</i> Ana Maria Bejarano provides a comparative historical analysis of how the democratic regimes in these two countries have diverged following similar transitions from authoritarian rule to democracy in the late 1950s.</p><p>Rather than focusing on resource-driven explanations such as the role of oil in Venezuela and coffee in Colombia or on short-term elite choices and calculations Bejarano argues that democratic development in Colombia and Venezuela is best understood from a vantage point that privileges political history especially the history of institutional evolution. The book makes the case that a comparative historical institutional framework--focused both on institutional legacies from the distant past (such as the state and political parties) and on those from more recent critical junctures (the foundational pacts)--provides the best lens to account for the divergent trajectories followed by democratic regimes in Colombia and Venezuela in the second half of the twentieth century.</p>