Legislatures and Political Accountability
In March 2000, while researching legislatures in several Latin American countries, I found myself in Caracas. This promised to be a quiet stop given that Venezuela was, at the time, without a real…
Category: Building Institutions
HACIA Democracy Social Justice and Democracy in Latin America
As I walked around the Harvard campus on a characteristically cold slushy day in February 1996, I spotted several bright posters with slanted palm trees, inviting students interested in Latin…
Corruption and Democracy
Despite more than ten years of democratic systems in Latin America, why is it that corruption hasn’t decreased in the region? In Peru, videotapes filmed at the National Intelligence…
Children and Democracy
Children and youth are citizens. It’s important to keep that fact in mind, and to understand that political participation in a democratic society involves much more than voting. In our work we…
Education for Democracy
The breakdown of some democratic regimes in Latin America in the 1970s challenged the widespread belief of many in the region that with education came democracy. This perceived…
Constitutional Reform
You say you’ll change the constitution,” Beatle John Lennon once wrote. Latin American countries have long been singing this same tune, often blaming their presidential constitutions…
