COUNTERPOINTS. SELECTED ESSAYS ON AUTHORITARIANISM AND DEMOCRATIZATION.
[South Bend, Indiana]: University of Notre Dame, 1999. First edition, presumed. Paperback. 8vo, bds, 238 p., dust jacket, index. New. Item #154798
The central, driving theme of this volume is democracy, its vicissitudes and its possibilities in Latin America. Guillermo O’Donnell considers the pattern of political and social alliances that have shaped Argentina’s agitated history, and focuses on the tensions and intrinsic weaknesses of bureaucratic-authoritarianism, especially in its most repressive guises, at a time when it projected itself as an enduring, efficient, and potentially legitimate form of political authority. He includes detailed empirical analysis of daily life under extremely repressive regimes and argues throughout that the struggle for democracy is the most appropriate way, both morally and strategically, to take advantage of the fissures and tensions that close examination discovers behind the bureaucratic-authoritarianism facade.
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