Our Latest Issue! Democracy, Repression, and the Defense of Human Rights

Democracy, Repression, and the Defense of Human Rights 

edited by William Avilés and Leila Celis

Issue 216 | Volume 44 |  Issue 5 | September 2017

Table of Contents

In the 1990s Barry Gills, Joel Rocamora, and Richard Wilson directly challenged the democratic-transitions literature by introducing the model of “low-intensity democracy” a largely procedural democracy that allows political opposition, greater individual freedoms, a reduced institutional role for the armed forces, and a more permeable environment for the investments of transnational capital. Increasingly since the 1970s, low-intensity democracies have been viewed as the political regime best equipped to integrate Latin America into capitalist globalization. This issue is largely dedicated to an examination of these restricted democracies across the region. In contrast to the expectations of much of mainstream democratization scholarship, this issue demonstrates how “democracies” in Latin America have not become more consolidated along some linear continuum.  In fact, they have maintained political and socioeconomic exclusion, military/judicial/paramilitary repression, often through extralegal practices, including the criminalization of protest, massacres, and the forced displacement of whole communities.