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Analyzes institutional bypasses, a strategy to promote change and implement reforms in developing countries.
'Law and development is a difficult field. It is at once multi-disciplinary and comparative; historical and policy driven; theoretical and empirical; positive and normative. Here at long last is a book that provides a masterful overview and critical analysis that will make this field accessible to students and teachers alike.' Katharina Pistor, Columbia Law School, US This important book focuses on the idea that institutions matter for development, asking what lessons we have learned from past reform efforts, and what role lawyers can play in this field. What Makes Poor Countries Poor? provides a critical overview of different conceptions and theories of development, situating institutional ...
Stories of transnational terror and justice illuminate the past and present of South America's struggles for human rights "Outstanding. . . . An Olympian view of the Condor system."--Philip Chrimes, International Affairs Through the voices of survivors and witnesses, human rights activists, judicial actors, journalists, and historians, Francesca Lessa unravels the secrets of transnational repression masterminded by South American dictators between 1969 and 1981. Under Operation Condor, their violent and oppressive regimes kidnapped, tortured, and murdered hundreds of exiles, or forcibly returned them to the countries from which they had fled. South America became a zone of terror for those w...
Complementarities between political and economic institutions have kept Brazil in a low-level economic equilibrium since 1985.
This book is a collection of chapters on corruption. It highlights the importance of corruption, transparency, and accountability and ways to deal with it. Understanding the types of corruption is very important to know how to deal with it. Types of corruption include bribery, lobbying, extortion, cronyism, nepotism, parochialism, patronage, influence peddling, graft, embezzlement, double-dealing, under-the-table transactions, manipulating elections, diverting funds, laundering money, and defrauding investors. Identifying corruption in all its forms requires analyzing the country and its political system and laws and rooting out the sources of corruption and the people behind it. Corruption and those participating in it must be identified to find ways to deal with it, including installing proper governance mechanisms with complete transparency and accountability for politicians, people in power, and/or citizens, as well as applying rules and holding those who infringe them accountable. This book provides a comprehensive overview of the many types of corruption and how to handle them.
Traditionally relegated because of political pressure and public expectations, courts in Latin America are increasingly asserting a stronger role in public and political discussions. This casebook takes account of this phenomenon, by offering a rigorous and up-to-date discussion of constitutional adjudication in Latin America in recent decades. Bringing to the forefront the development of constitutional law by Latin American courts in various subject matters, the volume aims to highlight a host of creative arguments and solutions that judges in the region have offered. The authors review and discuss innovative case law in light of the countries’ social, political and legal context. Each chapter is devoted to a discussion of a particular area of judicial review, from freedom of expression to social and economic rights, from the internalization of human rights law to judicial checks on the economy, from gender and reproductive rights to transitional justice. The book thus provides a very useful tool to scholars, students and litigants alike.
Latin America was one of the earliest and most enthusiastic adopters of what has come to be known as the judicialization of politics - the use of law and legal institutions as tools of social contestation to curb the abuse of power in government, resolve policy disputes, and enforce and expand civil, political, and socio-economic rights. Almost forty years into this experiment, The Limits of Judicialization brings together a cross-disciplinary group of scholars to assess the role that law and courts play in Latin American politics. Featuring studies of hot-button topics including abortion, state violence, judicial corruption, and corruption prosecutions, this volume argues that the institutional and cultural changes that empowered courts, what the editors call the 'judicialization superstructure,' often fall short of the promise of greater accountability and rights protection. Illustrative and expansive, this volume offers a truly interdisciplinary analysis of the limits of judicialized politics.
The 1973 coups d’état in Uruguay and Chile were significantly different from other military coups in Latin America. These two dictatorial regimes began a new era in the subcontinent. They became staunch bearers of a National Security State doctrine and introduced radical new economic policies. More tellingly, they gave birth to extreme models of society built on the foundations of what can arguably be considered ideological genocides, relying on both rudimentary and sophisticated methods of repression and authoritarianism to establish neoliberal systems that have lasted until today. 2013 marked the 40th anniversary of the fall of democratic rule in those countries. After four decades, the...
This book offers a comprehensive introduction to law and policy responses to contemporary problems in Latin America, such as human rights violations, regulatory dilemmas, economic inequality, and access to knowledge and medicine. It includes 19 chapters written by sociologists, lawyers, and political scientists on the transformations of courts, institutions and rights protection in Latin America, all of which stem from presentations at conferences in Oxford and UCL organised by the editors. The contributors present original analyses based on rigorous research, innovative case-studies, and interdisciplinary perspectives, all written in an accessible style. Topics include the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, institutional design, financial regulation, competition, discrimination, gender quotas, police violence, orphan works, healthcare, and environmental protection, among others. The book will be of interest to students and scholars interested in policymaking, public law, and development.
After Violence: Transitional Justice, Peace, and Democracy examines the effects of transitional justice on the development of peace and democracy. Anticipated contributions of transitional justice mechanisms are commonly stated in universal terms, with little regard for historically specific contexts. Yet a truth commission, for example, will not have the same function in a society torn by long-term civil war or genocide as in a society emerging from authoritarian repression. Addressing trials, reparations, truth commissions, and amnesties, the book systematically addresses the experiences of four very different contemporary transitional justice cases: post-authoritarian Uruguay and Peru and post-conflict Rwanda and Angola. Its analysis demonstrates that context is a crucial determinant of the impact of transitional justice processes, and identifies specific contextual obstacles and limitations to these processes. The book will be of much interest to scholars in the fields of transitional justice and peacebuilding, as well as students generally concerned with human rights and democratisation.