Incomplete Democracies: The (Un) Rule of Law in Latin America
Incomplete Democracies: The (Un) Rule of Law in Latin America
Dr. Sara Schatz
WF 9:35AM – 10:55AM
Room 080, Derby Hall
INTSTDS Class #: 18595
Credits: 3
This course explores recent trends to combat corruption, consolidate liberal-democratic regimes and continued efforts to forge more robust rule of law in Latin America. Recent challenges to reversing income inequality in the context of Covid-19 will be explored along with various long-standing forms violence. These include organized crime, police brutality & violence against police, death squads, electoral violence, state-sanctioned violence against political opponents and other human rights abuses (Mexico, Brazil, Peru, and Caribbean).
Examples of successes and failures from other Latin American nations in combating organized crime, reducing state-sanctioned violence and armed conflicts against the state are closely examined (Colombia, Central America). The inter-disciplinary readings focus on the institutional, social and legal underpinnings of political violence in the effort to consolidate electoral democracies in Latin America since the third wave of democratization. The course also delves into the history of how different types of regimes in Latin America (authoritarian and state-socialist) have shaped current institutional trajectories in terms of significant political violence (Venezuela, Nicaragua), episodic violence (Paraguay) and non-violence in electoral turn-over (Costa Rica, Uruguay, Chile, Ecuador).We will pay particular attention to the social and institutional responses to the recent wave of anti-corruption movements in Latin America.
Prerequisite: None.
