Bras. Political Sci. Rev.2020;14(1):e0005.
Democratic Innovations Under Scrutiny
DOI: 10.1590/1981-3821202000010007
Is it still possible to think about innovations within the context of our battered democracies? ‘The Two Faces of Institutional Innovation: Promises and Limits of Democratic Participation in Latin America’ is a book that pursues this issue and reflects the maturity of this field of study on the topic of institutional participation and democratic innovations.
Following an initial period of enthusiasm for these means of ‘deepening democracy’, the context of this work is one mistrust in traditional political institutions around the world and lack of belief in the democratic institutions themselves. ‘Two Faces…’ proposes a path of analysis to assess how democratic innovations, once viewed as intrinsically positive for improving democracy, can actually reinvigorate more democratic practices of political action and government or, conversely, may even decelerate the processes of democratization of political regimes.
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