In 1994, the Inter-American Dialogue launched a new project on democratic governance in Latin America and the Caribbean with the purpose of producing an edited volume, Constructing Democratic Governance.  The book is intended to provide a resource to policymakers, nongovernmental leaders, and scholars for research and information on issues of democratic governance in the hemisphere. The Dialogue undertook this project at a critical time. While the 1980s and early 1990s reflected much hopefulness about the future of democracy in Latin America (after all, Chile was the last country in the region to begin its transition to democratic rule in 1989), as the decade progressed, this initial optimism began to fade in the face of political and economic troubles. Cases such as Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, and Colombia demonstrated just how fragile democracy was in the region and emphasized the existing challenges to democratic consolidation.

The project coordinators and editors were Abe Lowenthal, professor of international relations at the University of Southern California and former executive director of the Inter-American Dialogue, and Jorge I. Dominguez, Clarence Dillon Professor of International Affairs and director of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University.

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In Constructing Democratic Governance, Jorge I. Domínguez and Abraham F. Lowenthal bring together a distinguished group of scholars to assess how well democracy has been working in this part of the world. The authors find that serious problems still plague these new democracies. Many of these problems are related to the political institutions, including political parties, the civil service, and the justice system. Part I introduces broad thematic surveys of such key issues as the role of the left, conservatism, inequality, and indigenous peoples. Part II reviews the South American nations. Part III focuses on Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean, including Cuba. In Part IV, the volume editors draw conclusions about the problems and prospects for stable democracies in Latin America.

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Release Event

On Thursday, February 6, 1997, the Dialogue marked the release of the first edition of Constructing Democratic Governance with a symposium at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, on the problems and challenges of building effective democratic governance in Latin America and the Caribbean.  Moises Naím of the Carnegie Endowment and the Editor of Foreign Policy opened the session.  Jorge I. Domínguez, co-editor of the book and Director of Harvard University's Center for International Affairs, discussed security challenges and expanded on the issues of political participation and representation.  Former Director of the Institute of Peruvian Studies and the Dialogue's Visiting Senior Fellow, Carlos Ivan Degregori talked about the significance of ethnic politics and persistent inequalities for building democracy in the region.  Abraham F. Lowenthal, the book's other co-editor and President of the Pacific Council on International Policy, concluded the presentations with an assessment of the book's implications for US policy toward the region.

Conference

On September 12 and 13, 1994, the Dialogue convened an international conference at the Embassy Row Hotel in Washington, which brought together nearly all of the twenty-six authors from throughout Latin America, the United States, the Caribbean, and Great Britain.  Panels were designed to look with fresh eyes on the progress and problems in each country and to enhance the level of debate on the mid- to long-term prospects for democracy in the region.  Topics included:  the consolidation of democracy in a weak party system (Brazil and Ecuador); democracy with long-term one-party rule (Mexico); the deepening and consolidation of democracies that are ambiguous (Peru and the Dominican Republic); learning from countries where constitutional governments tamed hyperinflation (Argentina and Bolivia); and the role of "the left," "the right," and traditional power structures in fostering or inhibiting the consolidation of democracy.

Luncheon speakers on September 12 were current and former senior officials in the U.S. government and multilateral banks, including  Sebastián Edwards (World Bank), Nancy Birdsall (Inter-American Development Bank), and Michael Skol (State Department).  On the 13th, more than one hundred conference participants listened to the remarks of five Latin American Ambassadors:  Richard Bernal (Jamaica), John Biehl (Chile), Ricardo Luna (Peru), Sonia Picado (Costa Rica), and Christopher R. Thomas (Trinidad and Tobago) and also Assistant Secretary General of the OAS. During the conference, project Co-Directors Jorge I. Domínguez and Abraham F. Lowenthal presented and distributed their essay, "The Challenges of Democratic Governance in Latin America and the Caribbean: Sounding an Alarm.

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