A review of Strong Parties and Lame Ducks: Presidential Partyarchy and Factionalism in Venezuela, by Michael Coppedge and Democracy for the Privileged: Crisis and Transition in Venezuela, by Richard S. Hillman.
About the Author
Anibal Romero is a research affiliate at the John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard University, where he was a visiting scholar at the Center for Latin American Studies in 1995. He is on temporary leave from Simón Bolivar University in Caracas, Venezuela, where he is a full professor of political science. His many books include The Decline and Prospects of Venezuelan Democracy (in Spanish, 1994).
Over the last decade or so, Bolivia has made great progress at wider political and social inclusion, but at some cost to civil liberties and horizontal accountability.
Democracy by itself does not put an end to injustice or inequality, but it establishes the most favorable conditions for making progress in the struggle to achieve a just society.
