Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-vsgnj Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-22T13:31:02.392Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Democracy, Indigenous Movements, and Postliberal Challenge in Latin America

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Deborah J. Yashar
Affiliation:
Princeton University
Get access

Abstract

Scholars of democratic consolidation have come to focus on the links between political institutions and enduring regime outcomes. This article takes issue with the conceptual and analytical underpinnings of this literature by highlighting how new political institutions, rather than securing democratic politics, have in fact had a more checkered effect. It delineates why the theoretical expectations of the democratic consolidation literature have not been realized and draws, by example, on the contemporary ethnic movements that are now challenging third-wave democracies. In particular, it highlights how contemporary indigenous movements, emerging in response to unevenly institutionalized reforms, pose a postliberal challenge to Latin America's I newly founded democracies. These movements have sparked political debates and constitutional reforms over community rights, territorial autonomy, and a multiethnic citizenry. As a whole, I they have laid bare the weakness of state institutions, the contested terms of democracy, and the I indeterminacy of ethnic accommodation in the region. As such, these movements highlight the need to qualify somewhat premature and narrow discussions of democratic consolidation in favor I of a broader research agenda on democratic politics.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1999

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 This argument draws on Migdal, Joel S., Strong Societies and Weak States: State-Society Relations and State Capabilities in the Third World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988)Google Scholar; Migdal, JoelKohli, Atul, and Shue, Vivienne, eds., State Power and Social Forces: Domination and Transformation in the Third World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and O'Donnell, Guillermo, “On the State, Democratization and Some Conceptual Problems: A Latin American View with Glances at Some Postcommunist Countries,” World Development 21 (August 1993).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 See Stavenhagen, Rodolfo, “Challenging the Nation-State in Latin America,” Journal of International Affairs 45 (Winter 1992)Google Scholar; Smith, Richard Chase, “A Search for Unity within Diversity: Peasant Unions, Ethnic Federations, and Indianist Movements in the Andean Republics,” in MacDonald, Theodore Jr., ed., Native Peoples and Economic Development (Cambridge: Cultural Survival, 1985)Google Scholar; Cott, Donna Lee Van, ed., Indigenous Peoples and Democracy in Latin America (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994)Google Scholar; Yashar, Deborah J., “Indigenous Protest and Democracy in Latin America,” in Domínguez, Jorge I. and Lowenthal, Abraham F., eds., Constructing Democratic Governance: Latin America and the Caribbean in the 1990s—Themes and Issues (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996)Google Scholar; idem, “Contesting Citizenship: Indigenous Movements and Democracy in Latin America,” Comparative Politics 31 (October 1998).Google Scholar

3 See Young, Crawford, The Politics of Cultural Pluralism (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1976)Google Scholar, chap. 11; Horowitz, Donald L., Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985)Google Scholar; Gurr, Ted Robert with Harff, BarbaraMarshall, Monty G., and Scarritt, James R., Minorities at Risk: A Global View ofEthnopolitical Conflicts (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1993).Google Scholar

4 This article restricts its focus to indigenous identities, communities, and movements in the countryside, where the majority of self-identified Indians continue to reside. Most communities and movements have developed urban and occasionally international ties through markets, migration, and the rise of participation by nongovernmental organizations. However, even in these cases of increasing urban and international penetration, the communities in question remain geographically rural. This article does not address the politicization of racial cleavages in Latin America. The politicization of black identities, which has emerged in a different historical context, has been largely limited to urban movements and has resulted in types of political demands that are different from those voiced by indigenous movements in Latin America. For competing views on racial cleavages and their politicization, see Degler, Carl N., Neither Black nor White: Slavery and Race Relations in Brazil and the United States (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1971)Google Scholar; Fontaine, Pierre-Michel, ed., Race, Class, and Power in Brazil (Los Angeles: University of California, 1985)Google Scholar; Winant, Howard, “Rethinking Race in Brazil,” Journal of Latin American Studies 24 (February 1992), 173–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Graham, Richard, ed., The Idea of Race in Latin America, 1870–1940 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990)Google Scholar; Hanchard, Michael, Orpheus andPoioer:The Movimento Negro of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, 1945—1988 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994)Google Scholar; NACLA, “The Black Americas, 1492–1992,” Report on the Americas 25 (February 1992)Google Scholar; Wade, Peter, Race and Ethnicity in Latin America (London: Pluto Press, 1997)Google Scholar; and Marx, Anthony W., Making Race and Nation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).Google Scholar

5 Marshall, T. H., “Citizenship and Social Class,” Class, Citizenship, and Social Development (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1963).Google Scholar This article does not assume, as does Marshall, that there is a natural progression of citizenship rights and/or that they are irreversible. For alternative discussions of citizenship, see Beiner, Ronald, ed., Theorizing Citizenship (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995)Google Scholar; Kymlicka, Will, Multicultural Citizenship (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995)Google Scholar; Soysal, Yasemin Nuhoglu, Limits of Citizenship: Migrants andPostnationalMembership in Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994)Google Scholar; and Shafir, Gershon, ed., The Citizenship Debates: A Reader (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998).Google Scholar

6 I borrow the phrase “citizenship regime” from Jenson and Phillips. They use the term to refer to the varying bundles of rights and responsibilities that citizenship can confer. This article expands the term to refer not only to the content of citizenship but also to its accompanying modes of interest intermediation. See Jenson, Jane and Phillips, Susan D., “Regime Shift: New Citizenship Practices in Canada,” International Journal of Canadian Studies 14 (Fall 1996).Google Scholar

7 I label the latter citizenship regime as neoliberal for three reasons. First, I want to distinguish it from T H. Marshall's description of earlier British liberal citizenship regimes, where civil and political rights were extended but social rights were not yet on the political agenda. The sequencing of citizenship rights that Marshall identified, while perhaps applicable to the late-nineteenth-century liberal periods in Latin America, does not apply to the contemporary Latin American context, where social rights were dismantled and civil and political rights extended. Second, I want to distinguish it from the liberal periods that marked the second half of nineteenth-century Latin American politics. Finally, I want to link the contemporary neoliberal citizenship regimes to the contemporary neoliberal reforms that have redefined Latin America's political economies and dismantled many of the social programs that were once tied to social rights.

8 For classic perspectives on Latin American corporatism, see Malloy, James M., ed., Authoritarianism and Corporatism in Latin America (Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1977).Google Scholar For a seminal comparative analysis of Latin American corporatism, see Collier, Ruth Berins and Collier, David, Shaping the Political Arena: Critical Junctures, the Labor Movement, and Regime Dynamics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991).Google Scholar

9 Collier, David, “Trajectory of a Concept: ‘Corporatism’ in the Study of Latin American Politics,” in Smith, Peter H., ed., Latin America in Comparative Perspective: New Approaches to Methods and Analysis (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1995).Google Scholar State commitments to class-based federations, for example, weakened under the authoritarian regimes of the 1970s.

10 Ethnicity and class are not the only axes for organizing grassroots mobilization in rural Latin America. Political parties, religious organizations, and cooperatives, for example, also competed for membership. However, from a national and comparative perspective they were generally not the most important players in redefining the rural landscape.

11 Fox, Jonathan, “The Difficult Transition from Clientelism to Citizenship: Lessons from Mexico,” World Politics 46 (January 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, “Latin America's Emerging Local Politics,” Journal of Democracy 5 (April 1994)Google Scholar; Hagopian, Frances, Traditional Politics and Regime Change in Brazil (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Joseph, Gilbert M. and Nugent, Daniel, eds., Everyday Forms oj State Formation: Revolution and the Negotiation of Rule in Modern Mexico (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1994)Google Scholar; and Nickson, R. Andrew, Local Government in Latin America (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1995).Google Scholar

12 States did not actively seek to harness the Amazon region until the latter part of the twentieth century. Prior to that they had mapped out boundaries that de facto included Indians as members, though not necessarily citizens, of the given state. See Ruiz, Lucy, ed., Amazonía: Escenariosy conflictos (Quito: CEDIME and Ediciones Abya Yala, 1993)Google Scholar;Granero, Fernando Santos, ed., Globalización y cambio en la amazonía indígena (Quito: FLACSO and Ediciones Abya Yala, 1996)Google Scholar; Smith, Richard Chase, “La política de la diversidad. COICA y las federaciones étnicas de la Amazonía,” in Varese, Stefano, ed., Pueblos indios, soberaniay globalismo (Quito: Ediciones Abya Yala, 1996).Google Scholar

13 In Eugen Weber's classic study of nation building, he illuminates how the French state turned peasants into Frenchman. See Weber, , Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 1870–1914 (Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 1976).Google Scholar I suggest here that Latin American efforts to turn Indians into peasants in fact created the space in which they could defend and develop a local indigenous identity.

14 Rubin, Jeffrey W., Decentering the Regime: Ethnicity, Radicalism, and Democracy in Juchitán Mexico (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1997)Google Scholar; Harvey, Neil, The Chiapas Rebellion (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1998)Google Scholar; Napolitano, Valentina and Solano, Xochitl Leyva, eds., Encuentros antropológicos: Politics, Identity, and Mobility in Mexican Society (London: Institute of Latin American Studies, 1998)Google Scholar; Fox (fn. 11); and Mattiace, Shannan, “!Zapata Vive! The Ezln, Indian Politics and the Autonomy Movement in Mexico,” in George A. Collier and Lynn Stephen, special eds., Journal of Latin American Anthropology 3, no. 1 (1997).Google Scholar

15 Rivera, Silvia Cusicanqui y equipo THOA, Ayllusyproyectos de desarrollo en elnorte de Potosí (La Paz: Ediciones Aruwiyiri, 1992)Google Scholar; Esteban, Ticona A.Gonzalo, Rojas O., and Xavier, Albó C., Votosy wiphalas: Campesinosy pueblos orginarios en democracia (La Paz: Fundación Milenio and CIPCA, 1995)Google Scholar; and Ströbele-Gregor, Juliana, “Culture and Political Practice of the Aymara and Quechua in Bolivia: Autonomous Forms of Modernity in the Andes,” Latin American Perspectives 23 (Spring 1996).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16 Zamosc, Leon, Estadístca de las áreas depredomimo étnico de la sierra ecuatonana: Población rural, indicadores cantonalesy organizaciones de base (Quito: Ediciones Abya Yala, 1995).Google Scholar

17 A similar pattern emerged following land-reform programs in Guatemala (1944–54) and Peru (1968). Given high levels of repression, however, corporatist policies and institutions were undermined and dismantled shortly after they were created. Nonetheless, the general outline of this argument remains. While states promoted national ideals, indigenous communities found ways to shelter their right to sustain and develop ethnic identities and ties.

18 This duality is captured by disciplinary differences in the social sciences. Political scientists working on this period have highlighted the centrality of class, the peasantry, and corporatist organizations, as if they displaced community autonomy and ethnic identities. Anthropologists have historically focused on the local level and, in turn, have highlighted community autonomy and ethnicity, often at the expense of broader patterns of state-society relations.

19 Corporatist citizenship regimes barely penetrated the Amazon. Amazonian Indians rarely formed part of peasant federations and states did not have the resources to control them. Consequently, Amazonian Indians had even more autonomy than Andean and Mesoamerican Indians.

20 There is a healthy and unresolved theoretical debate about whether the core of liberal thought is based on toleration or autonomy. But it would be foolish to argue in the Latin American context that there is one coherent core, as the region's history of liberalism is undeniably syncretic.

21 Several states did have national indigenous institutes. However, these rarely if ever served as interlocutors between Indians and the state.

22 Conaghan, Catherine M. and Malloy, James M., Unsettling Statecraft: Democracy and Neoliberalism in the Central Andes (Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1994)Google Scholar; Córdova, Miguel Urioste Fernández de, Fortalecer las comunidades: Una Utopía subversiva, democrdtica … y posible (La Paz: AIPE/PROCOM/TIERRA, 1992)Google Scholar; Lustig, Nora, Coping with Austerity: Poverty and Inequality in Latin America (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1995)Google Scholar; Janvry, Alain de et al., The Political Feasibility of Adjustment in Ecuador and Venezuela (Paris: OECD, 1994)Google Scholar; Morley, Samuel A., Poverty and Inequality in Latin America: The Impact of Adjustment and Recovery in the 1980s (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995).Google Scholar

23 Indians resisted both sets of reforms. However, the isolated and ephemeral terms of indigenous historical resistance differ from the more organized and sustained contemporary indigenous movements. See fn. 2.

24 Willis, ElizaGarman, Christopher da C.B., and Haggard, Stephan, “The Politics of Decentralization in Latin America,” Latin American Research Review 34, no. 1 (1999).Google Scholar

25 Weber, Max, “Politics as a Vocation,” From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, ed. and trans. Gerth, H. H. and Mills, C. Wright (New York: Oxford University Press, 1946), 78.Google Scholar

26 State formation is a process of political mapping. As Scott has argued, it requires a situation of mutual intelligibility. The state must be able to read, identify, and defend the territory it governs. Those governed should be able to identify (with) and depend on the state for basic functions. See Scott, James C., Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998).Google Scholar See also fn 1.

27 This article seeks to explain not why indigenous movements emerge but why indigenous identities became politicized and how that politicization is reflected in the postliberal challenge, a regionwide agenda for democratic reform. For an explanation of why, when, and where indigenous organizations emerge in Latin America, see Yashar (fn. 2,1998); indigenous movements emerge only where state reforms that challenge local autonomy combine with political liberalization and preexisting networks. In some cases these movements were supported and shaped by ties to urban and international actors.

28 CONAIE, Proyecto político de la CONAIE (Quito: CONAIE, n.d.), 6.

29 Based on anonymous small-group discussions conducted by the author in Ecuador, Bolivia, and Peru during the course of 1997, and repeated in most 1995–97 interviews with indigenous leaders in Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru, Guatemala, and Mexico.

30 Stavenhagen, Rodolfo and Iturralde, Diego, eds., Entre la ley y la costumbre: El derecho consuetudinano mdigena en América Latina (Mexico City: Instituto Indigemsta Interamericano; San Jose, Costa Rica: Instituto Interamericano de Derechos Humanos, 1990)Google Scholar; Dandier, Jorge E., “Indigenous Peoples and the Rule of Law in Latin America: Do They Have a Chance?” (Paper prepared for the academic workshop on the Rule of Law and the Underprivileged in Latin America, Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies, University of Notre Dame, November 9—11, 1996)Google Scholar; and Ramón Torres Galarza, ed., Derechos de los pueblos indígenas: Situación jurídica y políticas de estado (Quito: Abya Yala, CEPLAES, CONAIE, n.d.).

31 Ethnic cleavages were also politicized in Nicaragua in the 1980s, as the Miskitu demanded, struggled for, and achieved autonomy. This politicization occurred, however, during the revolutionary decade headed by the Sandinistas—a very different historical and political context from the shifting citizenship regimes in the rest of the region. See Hale, Charles R., Resistance and Contradiction: Miskitu Indians and the Nicaraguan State, 1894–1987 (Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 1994).Google Scholar

32 See Iris Marion Young, “Polity and Group Difference: A Critique of the Ideal of Universal Citizenship,” in Beiner (fn. 5). Young argues that liberal democracies profess to represent all individuals equally but, in fact, privilege certain dominant voices over others. She calls for a differentiated form of citizenship, one in which social groups are granted spaces for representation, participation, and voice. While indigenous peoples have not necessarily read Young, their claims in fact parallel hers when they indicate that Indians should gain additional and different rights alongside individual ones.

33 Parallel theoretical discussions about politics in advanced industrial democracies have tended to refer to this challenge as the “multicultural” challenge.

34 Yashar (fn. 2, 1996). These figures should be read with caution given the problems of data collection and measurement.

35 Brysk, Alison, “Acting Globally: Indian Rights and International Politics in Latin America,” in Van Cott (fn. 2); idem, “Turning Weakness into Strength: The Internationalization of Indian Rights,” Latin American Perspectives 23, no. 2 (1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Wilmer, Franke, The Indigenous Voice in World Politics (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Press, 1993).CrossRefGoogle Scholar As these authors note, the international arena has provided a new discourse, funds, and forums that have often shaped debates about indigenous rights.

36 http://ilolex.ilo.ch:1567/scripts/ratifce.pl?C169. Thirteen countries have ratified Convention 169, including Denmark, Fiji, the Netherlands, and Norway.

37 The call for constitutional recognition of multiethnic and plurinational populations has elicited vitriolic reactions from some politicians. Specifically, they fear that this recognition of different “peoples” will provide Indians with the leverage to appeal to UN laws that sanction the right of all peoples to self-determination and, by implication, to their own state.

38 Dandier (fn. 30). In a May 1999 Guatemalan referendum the voting population (18 percent of the eligible electorate) rejected these proposed reforms.

39 See Lijphart, Arend, Democracy in Plural Societies: A Comparative Exploration (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977)Google Scholar; Daalder, Hans, “The Consociational Democracy Theme,” World Politics 26 (July 1974)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lustick, Ian S., “Lijphart, Lakatos, and Consociationalism,” World Politics 50 (October 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Horowitz (fn. 3).

40 “Unit homogeneity” refers here to the unit of political representation and intermediation. It is not meant to evoke the standard meaning of the term used by methodologists.

41 See Enrique Mayer, “Reflexiones sobre los derechos individuales y colectivos: Los derechos étnicos,” and Stavenhagen, Rodolfo, “Los derechos indígenas: Algunos problemas conceptuales,” both in Hershberg, Eric and Jelín, Elizabeth, eds., Construir la democracia: Derechos humanos, ciudadanía y sociedaden América Latina (Caracas: Nueva Sociedad, 1996).Google Scholar

42 CONAIE (fn. 28), 11–12; COMG, Construyendo unfuturo para nuestro pasado: Derechos del pueblo mayay elfroceso depaz (Guatemala City: Editorial Cholsamaj, 1995)Google Scholar; Serviciosdel Pueblo Mixe, A.C. del Pueblo Mixe, A.C., “Autonomía, una forma concreta de ejercicio del derecho a la libre determinacion y sus alcances,” Chiapas 2 (Mexico City: Ediciones ERA, S.A. de C.V., 1996).Google Scholar

43 These statements were made in 1997 author interviews with indigenous leaders: from Peru, with Evaristo Nukguaj and Bonifacio Cruz Alanguía; from Bolivia, with Marcial Fabricano and Román Loayza; and from Ecuador, with Luis Macas, Leonardo Viteri, César Cerdas, and Valerio Grefa. Similar statements were made in an author interview in the United States with Guatemalans Manuela Alvarado, Alberto Mazariegos, and Juanita BazibalTujal, May 3, 1998.

44 For normative debates in political science on the topic of individual and group rights, see Kymlicka, Will, ed., The Rights of Minority Cultures (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995)Google Scholar; and Shapiro, Ian and Kymlicka, Will, eds., Ethnicity and Group Rights 39, Yearbook of the American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy (New York: New York University Press, 1997).Google Scholar Democratization studies of Latin America have generally ignored the liberal-communitarian debate that speaks to the philosophical foundations of ethnic diversity and democratic representation. These debates, however, raise the question of the central unit of political life. They have also discussed whether in fact communities should be granted special (i.e., different) rights by virtue of being a community. There have been efforts to conjoin these seemingly opposite positions, for example, by Kymlicka, “Introduction,” and Kukathas, “Are There Any Cultural Rights?” in Kymlicka, The Rights of Minority Cultures. The authors fail, however, to provide guidelines for how to institutionalize both individual liberal rights and communitarian rights. Because they fail to problematize sufficiently the role that the state plays in balancing these goals— particularly when communities demand a form of political autonomy that includes alternative juridical and authority systems—their normative discussion resonates only loosely with the empirical cases of democratization.

45 Young (fn. 32) introduces the term “differentiated citizenship.” References to country-specific demands for differentiated administrative boundaries follow. For a comparative overview of the current state of legal pluralism and autonomy regimes, see Dandier (fn. 30); Donna Lee Van Cott, The Friendly Liquidation of the Past: The Politics of Diversity in Latin America (Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, forthcoming); idem, “Explaining Ethnic Autonomy Regimes in Latin America” (Manuscript, 1999)Google Scholar; and Smith, Michael Addison, “Indigenous Law and the Nation States of the Latin American Region” (Manuscript, University of Texas, School of Law and the Mexican Center, April 20, 1999).Google Scholar

46 See Clavero, Bartolomé, Derecho indígenay cultura constitucional en América (Mexico: Siglo Veintiuno, 1994), 187–89Google Scholar; Van Cott (fn. 45, forthcoming and 1999); and idem, “A Political Analysis of Legal Pluralism in Bolivia and Colombia,” Journal of Latin American Studies (forthcoming).

47 Two author interviews each, in Ecuador, with Leonardo Viteri, César Cerdas, and Gonzalo Ortiz Crespo between February and May 1997.

48 May-August 1997 author interviews with indigenous leaders Marcial Fabricano and Ernesto Noe of CIDOB, with researchers Zulehma Lehm and Wilder Molina at CIDDEBENI, and with lawyer Carlos Romero Bonifaz of CEJIS. See Libermann, Kitula and Godínez, Armando, eds., Territorio y dignidad: Pueblos indígenasy media ambiente en Bolivia (La Paz: ILDIS and Editorial Nueva Sociedad, 1992)Google Scholar; and Ribera, Carlos Navia, Reconocimiento, demarcatión y control de territories indígenas: situatión y experiencias en Bolivia, Working Paper no. 34 (Trindad, Bolivia: Centra de Investigación y Documentación para el Desarrollo del Beni, July 1996)Google Scholar; Molina, Wilder M., “El movimiento social indígena del Beni en el contexto del proceso de consolidación de la movilizacion intercomunal hasta la Marcha por el Territorio y la Dignidad (1987—1990)” (Manuscript, Centro de Investigación y Documentación para el Desarrollo del Beni, Trinidad, Bolivia, 1997)Google Scholar; and Van Cott (fn. 45, forthcoming and 1999, and fn. 46).

49 Author interviews conducted in Bolivia with Isabel Lavadenz, former national director of the National Institute of Agrarian Reform, and Jorge Múñoz, researcher at UDAPSO, 1997. See also Múñoz, Jorge A. and Lavadenz, Isabel, “Reforming the Agrarian Reform in Bolivia” (Paper prepared for HIID/UDAPSO and presented in Cambridge, Mass., and La Paz, Bolivia, 1997).Google Scholar

50 Ayllus often claim sovereignty over discontinuous land bases, in contrast to Western ideas of state formation that generally assume/advocate that continuous areas coincide with a single political administration.

51 Author interviews conducted in Bolivia between May and August 1997 with former Aymaran leader Constantino Lima; Carlos Mamani, María Eugenia Choque Quispe, and Ramón Conde, researcher-activists at THOA; and Ricardo Calla, former-director of TAYPI. See Molina, Sergio and Arias, Iván, De la natión clandestina a la participatión popular (La Paz: Centro de Documentación e Información CEDOIN, 1996)Google Scholar; Xavier Albó and Ayllu Sartañani, “Participation popular en tierra de ayllus,” in David Booth, ed., “Popular Participation: Democratising the State in Rural Bolivia” (Manuscript).

52 Author interviews conducted in Ecuador between February and May 1997 with indigenous leaders José María Cabascango, Luis Maldonado, and Luis Macas.

53 For examples of autonomy debates in Mexico and Guatemala, see Ojarasca, no. 45 (August-November 1995)Google Scholar; Díaz-Polanco, Héctor, “La rebelión de los más pequeños: Los Zapatistas y la autonomía” (Manuscript); Joarnal of Latin American Anthropology 3, no. 1 (1997)Google Scholar; the 1996 Guatemalan Peace Accords; the 1995 Guatemalan Acuerdo sobre identitad y derechos de los pueblos indígenas; and Sieder, Rachel, ed., Guatemala after the Peace Accords (London: Institute of Latin American Studies, 1998).Google Scholar

54 For the differences between territorial autonomy, federalism, and decentralization, see Lapidoth, Ruth, Autonomy: Flexible Solutions to Ethnic Conflict (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1996), 5052.Google Scholar

55 See Humano, Ministerio de Desarrollo, Secretaría Nacional de Participación Popular, Indígenas en elpoder local (La Paz: Talleres de Editorial Offset Boliviana, 1997)Google Scholar; and Van Cott (fn. 45, forthcoming, and fn. 46).

56 The Federalist Papers raise parallel concerns about the power of factions in small pure democracies, particularly in the essays by Madison, James; see The Federalist Papers, selected and ed. Fairfield, Roy P. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981), no. 10.Google Scholar

57 The initial trend in democratic consolidation studies did not necessarily adopt this institutional focus. Notable examples include Mainwaring, ScottO'Donnell, Guillermo, and Valenzuela, J. Samuel, eds., Issues in Democratic Consolidation: The Neiv South American Democracies in Comparative Perspective (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992)Google Scholar; Higley, John and Gunther, Richard, eds., Elites and Democratic Consolidation in Latin America and Southern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992)Google Scholar; and Linz, Juan J. and Stepan, Alfred, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996).Google Scholar

58 Ames, Barry, “Approaches to the Study of Institutions in Latin American Politics,” Latin American Research Review 34, no. 1 (1999), 221.Google Scholar

59 There are scores of volumes and articles that explore this theme. See, in particular, Linz, Juan J., “The Perils of Presidentialism,” Journal of Democracy 1 (Winter 1990)Google Scholar; Shugart, Matthew Soberg and Carey, John M., Presidents and Assemblies: Constitutional Design and Electoral Dynamics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Linz, Juan J. and Valenzuela, Arturo, eds.,The Failure of Presidential Democracy: The Case of Latin America, vol. 2 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994)Google Scholar; Lijphart, Arend and Waisman, Carlos H., eds., Institutional Design in New Democracies: Eastern Europe and Latin America (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1996)Google Scholar; Mainwaring, Scott and Shugart, Matthew Soberg, eds., Presidentialism and Democracy in Latin America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Stepan, Alfred and Skach, Cindy, “Constitutional Frameworks and Democratic Consolidation: Parliamentarism versus Presidentialism,” World Politics 46 (October 1993).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

60 Similar arguments are made by O'Donnell, Guillermo, “Illusions about Democratic Consolidation,” Journal of Democracy 7 (April 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, “Horizontal Accountability in New Democracies,” Journal of Democracy 9 (July 1998)Google Scholar; Mettenheim, Kurt von and Malloy, James, “Introduction,” in Mettenheim, and Malloy, , eds., Deepening Democracy in Latin America (Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1998)Google Scholar; Schneider, Ben Ross, “Democratic Consolidations: Some Broad Comparisons and Sweeping Arguments,” Latin American Research Review 30, no. 2 (1995), 216, 219, 220, 231Google Scholar; Becker, David, “Latin America: Beyond Democratic Consolidation,” Journal of Democracy 20 (April 1999), 139.Google Scholar

61 I thank Atul Kohli for highlighting how this plea to move away from consolidation as an analytical concept parallels Huntington's classic argument about the need to move away from teleological and homogenizing ways of conceptualizing and analyzing political development. Huntingdon, Samuel P., “The Change to Change,” in Macridis, Roy C. and Brown, Bernard E., eds., Comparative Politics: Notes and Readings (Chicago: Dorsey Press, 1986).Google Scholar

62 See O'Donnell (fnn. 1 and 60,1998).

63 In contrast to the great majority of consolidation studies, Linz and Stepan (fn. 57) do question how varied types of states might consolidate or undermine democracy. What I call the weak reach of the state they refer to as the problem of usable bureaucracies, neither of which bodes well for democratic consolidation. They also contend, among other things, that democracies cannot consolidate where there is a “stateness” problem, which they take to mean disputes over international (rather than internal) state boundaries and national membership (who can be a citizen rather than what citizenship might entail). According to this definition, they argue, there is no stateness problem in Latin America (p. 16). Indeed, these authors conclude this because they assume away the national question in Latin America—one they find very prevalent in their other cases. Yet while national conflicts in Eastern Europe have emerged to make states and (presumed) nations coincide, in Latin America they have emerged to force states to recognize the multiethnic diversity of its citizens, as we have seen.

64 A notable few of these institutional studies (i.e., Mainwaring and Shugart, fn. 59) do analyze social support by established political actors and urban social groups. They are concerned with the ways in which institutional arrangements enable politicians to elicit support, build coalitions, and wrestle with policy questions without centralizing power in the hands of the executive and without engendering legislative paralysis. But these studies overwhelmingly neglect to analyze whether and how these institutions incorporate and sustain social support beyond traditional forces and beyond capital areas areas—focusing as they do so closely on the institutions that are constructed and so little on whether these institutions will be maintained or disrupted by social actors and groups outside of the state.

65 Ames (fn. 58) also makes this point (p. 234).

66 Black movements, women's movements, and poor people's movements, where they exist, have also demanded equal inclusion and greater access to state resources in Latin America's democratic regimes. Their emergence in Latin America highlights the failure of democratic institutions in many instances to incorporate social sectors that have historically been marginalized. Unlike the indigenous movements discussed in this article, however, their demands in most cases do not necessarily challenge the assumptions and terms of liberal democratic institutions and state formation as much as demand an equal footing in the regime. It is also important to note that these movements, in contrast to the region's indigenous movements, have declined in strength during the contemporary democratic regimes as political parties displace and/or absorb them on the political stage. On black movements, see fn. 4. On women's movements, see Alvarez, Sonia E., Engendering Democracy in Brazil: Women's Movements in Transition Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990)Google Scholar; Jaquette, Jane S., ed., The Women's Movement in Latin America: Participation and Democracy, 2d ed. (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1994)Google Scholar; Lind, Amy Conger, “Power, Gender, and Development: Popular Women's Organizations and the Politics of Needs in Ecuador,” in Escobar, Arturo and Alvarez, Sonia E., eds., The Making of Social Movements in Latin America: Identity, Strategy, and Democracy (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1992)Google Scholar; and Jaquette, Jane S. and Wolchik, Sharon L., eds., Women and Democracy: Latin America and Central and Eastern Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998).Google Scholar On poor people's movements, see Gay, Robert, Popular Organization and Democracy in Rio de Janeiro: A Tale of Two Favelas (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994)Google Scholar; Oxhorn, Philip D., Organizing Civil Society: The Popular Sectors and the Struggle for Democracy in Chile (University Park, Pa.: Penn State University Press, 1995)Google Scholar; Schneider, Cathy Lisa, Shantytoian Protest in Pinochet's Chile (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995)Google Scholar; and Stokes, Susan S., Cultures in Conflict: Social Movements and the State in Peru (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

67 Indeed, the failure to problematize how emerging social forces (particularly in the countryside) contest the process of institutionalizing democracy weakens the analytic narrative and causal arguments in democratic consolidation studies. This is because regime endurance (the dependent variable in consolidation studies) is fundamentally linked to the politics of the countryside. A substantial comparative historical literature has argued and illustrated how regime endurance requires states to secure control, if not command loyalty, of the countryside. These studies have taken institutions seriously, but they have also problematized the process of building institutions and of cultivating the social forces that could support those institutions. The failure of contemporary democratic consolidation studies to incorporate this central insight curtails the power of their arguments about the links between institutions and regime endurance. See Moore, Barrington Jr., Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World (Boston: Beacon Press, 1966)Google Scholar; Huntington, Samuel P., Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986)Google Scholar; Skocpol, Theda, States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Collier and Collier (fn. 8); Scully, Timothy R., Rethinking the Center: Party Politics in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Chile (Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 1992)Google Scholar; Huber, Evelyne and Safford, Frank, eds., Agrarian Structure and Political Power: Landlord and Peasant in the Making of Latin America (Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1995)Google Scholar; Yashar, Deborah J., Demanding Democracy: Reform and Reaction in Costa Rica and Guatemala, 1870s–1950s (Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 1997)Google Scholar; Jonathan Fox, ed.,The Challenge of Rural Democratisation: Perspectives from Latin American and the Philippines, Journal of Development Studies, special issue, 26 (July 1990)Google Scholar; and Gibson, Edward L., “The Populist Road to Market Reform: Policy and Electoral Coalitions in Mexico and Argentina,” World Politics 49 (April 1997).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

68 It is striking that the democratic consolidation literature pays no heed to an earlier institutional literature on democratic stability in divided societies—a literature that concluded that there is no one model for all societies.

69 For parallel arguments, see fn. 60.

70 See Schmitter, Philippe C., “The Consolidation of Democracy and Representation of Social Groups,” American Behavioral Scientist 35 (March-June 1993).Google Scholar Schmitter states (p. 444): “The label democracy hides a continuous evolution in rules and practices and an extraordinary diversity of institutions.” While Schmitter seems unwilling to dispense with the concept of consolidation, he does call for a more disaggregated study of the new democracies—one that would analyze political democracy as a composite of partial and competing regimes. He also calls for studies of the types of democracies that have emerged and notes the importance of accounting for the causal role of emerging associations.