Societal Accountability in Latin America
By Catalina Smulovitz, Enrique Peruzzotti. 2000
390 citations recorded by the source corpus.
In Argentina, the unsolved murder of a teenager triggered social protests that eventually led to the trial and indictment of her assailants and the resignation of a provincial governor. In Brazil, press reports of governmental corruption and public demands for due process led to the 1992 impeachment of President Fernando Collor de Mello. In Colombia, the introduction of a constitutional mechanism for the protection of fundamental rights resulted in more than 200,000 legal actions, including indictments for malfeasance in office and for violations of due process. Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) like Alianza Cívica in Mexico and Poder Ciudadano in Argentina organized campaigns to monitor elections and the financial assets of elective officials. These cases show new ways in which citizens are exercising control of government in many of Latin America’s democracies. Citizen action aimed at overseeing political authorities is becoming a fact of life and is redefining the traditional concept of the relationship between citizens and their elected representatives. The emergence of rights-oriented discourse and politics, media exposés of government scandals, and social movements organized around demands for due process are only some of the examples of this new politics of societal accountability. We contend that the nature of the new democratic regimes and the scope of citizens’ rights are being shaped by this set of conflicts and struggles. Catalina Smulovitz teaches at the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires and is a researcher at the Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Tecnológicas (CONICET). Enrique Peruzzotti, professor of sociology and politics in the Department of Political Science and Government at the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, is completing a book on populism and the rule of law. This article stems from a research project supported by the Ford Foundation and was presented at a conference sponsored by the Tinker Foundation.
Subfields: Development, Political Science and International Relations, Sociology and Political Science
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ba7745a9424b035092fba1d5653471c02b22d561
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In Sociology and Political Science
Citations in the corpus
- Corruption and Trust: Theoretical Considerations and Evidence From Mexico (2010, background): “Indeed, many of the current anti-corruption programs weigh heavily on public involvement, stressing what Smulovitz and Peruzzotti (2000) refer to as the " new politics of societal accountability " (see also Peruzzotti and Smulovitz 2006).”