Record Nr.

UNINA9910457923703321

Autore

Kurtz Marcus J.

Titolo

Free market democracy and the Chilean and Mexican countryside / / Marcus J. Kurtz [[electronic resource]]

Pubbl/distr/stampa


Cambridge : , : Cambridge University Press, , 2004

ISBN


1-107-14723-9
1-280-47777-6
0-511-19517-6
0-511-19583-4
0-511-19376-9
0-511-32712-9
0-511-51023-3
0-511-19450-1

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (ix, 253 pages) : digital, PDF file(s)

Disciplina

320.972

Soggetti

Democracy - Chile

Democracy - Mexico

Free enterprise - Chile

Free enterprise - Mexico

Rural population - Chile

Rural population - Mexico

Political participation - Chile

Political participation - Mexico

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (p. 227-247) and index.

Nota di contenuto

Part 1 : The framework and theoretical argument. Posing the right questions -- The sectoral foundations of free market democracy -- Part 2 : The cases. Neoliberalism and the transformation of rural society in Chile -- Social capital, organization, political participation, and democratic competition in Chile -- The consolidation of free market democracy and Chilean electoral competition, 1988-2000 -- Markets and democratization in Mexico : rural politics between corporatism and neoliberalism -- Part 3 : Conclusions and implications. Political

competitiveness, organized interests, and the democratic market.

Sommario/riassunto

This book examines the relationship between free markets and democracy. It demonstrates how the implementation of even very painful free-market economic reforms in Chile and Mexico have helped to consolidate democratic politics without engendering a backlash against either reform or democratization. This national-level compatibility between free markets and democracy, however, is founded on their rural incompatibility. In the countryside, free-market reforms socially isolate peasants to such a degree that they become unable to organize independently, and are vulnerable to the pressures of local economic elites. This helps to create an electoral coalition behind free-market reforms that is critically based in some of the market's biggest victims: the peasantry. The book concludes that the comparatively stable free-market democracy in Latin America hinges critically on its defects in the countryside; conservative, free-market elites may consent to open politics only if they have a rural electoral redoubt.