Between Tyranny and Anarchy

"Between Tyranny and Anarchy" provides a unique comprehensive history and interpretation of efforts to establish democracies over two centuries in the major Latin American countries. Drake takes an unusual interdisciplinary approach, combining history and political science with an emphasis on political institutions. He argues that, without a thorough examination of its historical roots and causes, Latin American theories of democracy cannot explain its failures, successes, and forms. Latin America offers an extraordinary laboratory for the study of democratic experiments. Alongside a well-deserved reputation for authoritarianism, it boasts one of the world's deepest, richest histories of democratic movements, ideas, and institutions. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the region's leading democracies did not lag very far behind the United States and Western Europe in making numerous advances.In comparison with those countries, though, Latin America's democratic history has been distinctive because of its fundamental dilemma: how to reconcile political systems theoretically committed to legal equality with societies divided by extreme socio-economic inequalities.