The Political Economy of Protest and Patience: East European and Latin American Transformations Compared

Why did Eastern Europeans protest less about the brutal social consequences of systemic change than the people of Latin America a decade earlier? Why has the region-wide authoritarian or populist turnabout not occurred? Why has democracy in these countries proved to be crisis-proof? In what ways has economic crisis impacted on the politics of the region? In addressing these questions, this book uses a comparative analysis of the structures, institutions, cultures, and actors shaping both the Eastern European and the Latin American transformations. The author argues that structural, institutional, and cultural factors have put a brake on destabilizing collective actions which have paved the way for the emergence of the enduring, low-level equilibrium between incomplete democracy and imperfect market economy which seems set to characterize the Eastern European experience for the foreseeable future.