Owing to a poor economy and renewed political repression, Philip Oxhorn was one of only a handful of individuals able to conduct research in Chilean shantytowns in the 1980s. His book focuses on the emergence of popular organizations among the Chilean urban poor under the Pinochet regime and their place in the larger political system.

Oxhorn develops an original theoretical framework for understanding the emergence of popular organizations and their potential for forming a new social movement that can contribute to the democratization of civil society independently of a change in...

While there is much literature analyzing the politics of implementing economic reforms, very little has been written on the social and political consequences of such reforms after they have been implemented. The basic premise of this book is that the convergence of many social, economic, and political ills (such as high levels of poverty, income inequality, criminal violence, and the growth of the informal sector) in the context of unprecedented levels of political democratization in Latin America presents a paradox that needs to be explained. What Kind of Democracy? demonstrates...

"South America is not the poorest continent in the world, but it may very well be the most unjust." This statement by Ricardo Lagos, then president of Chile, at the Summit of the Americas in January 2004 captures nicely the dilemma that faces Latin American countries in the wake of the transition to democracy that swept across the continent in the last two decades of the twentieth century. While political rights are now available to citizens at unprecedented levels, social and economic rights lag far behind, and the fledgling democracies struggle with long legacies of poverty, inequality,...