Annotated Bibliography Types Of Leftist Governments

Steven Venegas July 23, 2016 Annotated Bibliography Question: What preexisting or absent institutions have led Latin American nations to see a divergence in the types of leftist governments in power? Group 1: Party Systems and Political Institutions French, John. 2010. â€Å"Many Lefts, One Path? Chavez and Lula.† In Latin America’s Left Turns: Politics, Policies, and Trajectories of Change. Eds. Maxwell A. Cameron Eric Hershberg. Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 41-60. French poses that â€Å"the key to unity that exists in within the left’s diversity... can be found in the notion of the left as a space of convergence across difference based on a common anti neoliberal politics.† (French, p. 42) This idea allows for an†¦show more content†¦All of these features of a regime, if disrupted or altered, could be the difference between a stable democracy and it demonstrating a radical archetype of ascendancy. After explaining both alternatives, Mainwaring comes to the conclusion that â€Å"Presidentialism and a fractionalized multi party system seems especially inimical to stable democracy† in that they are conducive to gridlock between the executive and legislative branches of government. (Mainwaring, p. 168) Levitsky, Steven, and Kenneth M. Roberts. The Resurgence of the Latin American Left. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2011. Print. Theorists Steven Levitsky and Kenneth Roberts articulate two divergent paths that the left took as a result of their party systems and political institutions, or lack there of. The two give light to the divergence of an institutional path and a populist path, which they are able to closely associate to various political regimes currently in power throughout Latin America. This further branches out how even following the presidential path, rather than parliamentary, can see more divisions. Mainwaring, Scott. â€Å"Presidentialism, Multipartism, and Democracy: The Difficult Combination.† Comparative Political Studies. Vol. 26: July 1993. Pp. 198-228. Noting that multipartism isn’t conducive for the consolidation of democracy and that there are many regimes following the