New Books In Latin American Studies

Lindsay Mayka’s new book examines the idea and implementation of participatory institutions, asking the question about when they actually work, and when they do not work, and why this is the case, especially in Latin America. Building Participatory Institutions in Latin America: Reform Coalitions and Institutional Change (Cambridge University Press, 2019) explores, especially in the introductory and concluding chapters, the countries that make up Latin America, but the thrust of the book focuses specifically on Brazil and Colombia. The concept of participatory institutions is tied to considerations of building citizenship within democracies and especially within the institutions that form the governmental structures of a democracy. Mayka’s research looks at particular cases in both Brazil and in Colombia to understand the variables that contributed to success and to see what may have been missing in situations that proved less successful. This is a complex examination of the dynamics that thread through the c