While limited to only 140 characters, Twitter has helped many to realize just how thin-skinned Donald Trump truly is, and how fast he is to lash out when he feels slighted. For someone who has proclaimed that his best advisor is himself, the idea of Trump having access to nuclear weapons only a phone call away should give everyone pause.
Civil society organizations thrive in healthy democracies, but their role as watchdogs of governments and “gap-fillers” providing where the government is absent, tends to make those in power uncomfortable. In the following piece, we explore how Latin America fares compared to other countries in terms of barriers to civil society.
President Nicolás Maduro shocked Venezuela this week when he announced he was giving exceptional powers to his Defense Minister, General Vladimir Padrino López. Was this a palace-coup by the military against a rudderless, discredited Maduro government?
Cuando quedan 100 días para las elecciones municipales, parece improbable que este gobierno pueda cambiar de rumbo. El legado de esta administración ya está formado y hay muy poco que pueda hacer cualquier dupla Interior-Hacienda, por más poderosa que sea, para enmendar rumbo.
Richard Millet, Jennifer Holmes and Orlando Perez, eds. Latin American Democracy: Emerging Reality or Endangered Species? 2nd edition. New York: Routledge, 2015. This volume provides an in depth
Jorge Dominguez and Rafael Fernandez de Castro, eds. Contemporary US-Latin American Relations: Cooperation or Conflict in the 21 Century?, 2nd edition. New York: Routledge, 2016. This work
William LeoGrande and Peter Kornbluh (2015) Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana. This study provides a comprehensive, detailed account
Malamud, Andrés, (2011) “La política externa de Dilma Rousseff: ¿menos de lo mismo?” One month before Dilma Rousseff’s presidential inauguration, the author predicted her foreign
Schenoni, Luis, and Carlos Escudé (2016) “Peripheral Realism Revisited” The authors empirically test one of the few native Latin American theories of international relations.
After being celebrated as the most successful case of democratic consolidation and economic development in Latin America since 1990, Chile has now lost its appeal. In the meantime, other countries in Latin America have embraced market-friendly policies and have experienced sustained growth.
