Publications by Author: Domínguez, Jorge I

U.S. Latinos–Puerto Ricans and Cuban–Americans excepted in specific instances—have had limited impact on U.S. policy toward Latin America because they lack the interest and the resources to do so, and the capacity to act in concert for foreign policy purposes. Moreover, Latinos as a category do not have a shared Latin American foreign policy agenda. To the extent that they engage at all in the foreign policy arena, they typically do so in relation to their countries of origin. In many cases, however, they dislike the government of their homeland. In those relatively rare cases when U.S. Latino elites have sought to influence U.S. foreign policy, they have characteristically followed the lead of the U.S. government instead of seeking to change the main features of U.S. policy toward Latin America. This paper considers several case studies: the Puerto Rican influence on the Alliance for Progress; the Cuban–American influence on U.S. policy toward Cuba; the Mexican–American behavior relative to the enactment of NAFTA and U.S.–Mexican migration negotiations in 2001; and the Central American impact on U.S. immigration policies in the mid–1990s.

This book examines the responses to U.S. power in the two areas of the world where U.S. primacy was first successfully consolidated: East Asia and Latin America. The U.S. has faced no comparably powerful challengers to the exercise of its power in Latin America for much of the past century. It established its primacy over much of East Asia in the aftermath of WW II and extended its influence in the late 1970's and after the end of the Vietnam War through its entente with China to balance the Soviet Union. By contrast, the U.S. has always encountered rivals and challengers in Europe, has attempted unsuccessfully thus far to impose its primacy in the Middle East, and has paid only intermittent attention to South Asia and Africa.

The essays in this volume will explore three important themes: 1)How do region-wide economic trends and arrangements sustain or modify U.S. influence in the region? 2)How do rising powers in these regions (Japan, China, Brazil) reshape their policies to cope with the U.S. and 3) How do new (South Korea) and old (Cuba) challengers to U.S. power shape their policies to account for the unrivaled exercise of U.S. power?

This collection will place the United States at the hub of relations with countries in East Asia and Latin America and examine the new policies and new styles of engagement that are employed to address the prolonged U.S. interest in these areas-approaches from which the rest of the world might learn.

Construcción de gobernabilidad democrática en América Latina reúne ensayos de prestigiosos politólogos y expertos en relaciones internacionales, acerca de los complejos procesos que se vienen dando en América Latina durante los últimos años. Se abordan temas como el análisis de la institución presidencial, la representatividad y el papel de los partidos políticos, el ejército, el sindicalismo, las reformas económicas y la opinión pública, entre otros.

La primera parte del libro presenta un análisis transversal de los diferentes aspectos que permiten naciones democráticas, dependiendo de sus condiciones particulares. La segunda parte incluye siete estudios de caso correspondientes a México, Venezuela, Colombia, Perú, Argentina, Brasil y Chile, que mejoran la calidad del debate político sobre aspectos clave para la región.

How can Cuba address the challenges of economic development and transformation that have bedeviled so many Latin American and Eastern European countries? What are the universally common macroeconomic and societal challenges it faces and the specific peculiarities that have emerged after a decade-long transformation of its economy? For the Cuban and American social scientists and policy experts writing in this timely and provocative volume, the answer lies in examining Cuba's development trajectory by delving into issues ranging from the political economy of reform to their impact on specific sectors including export development, foreign direct investment, and U.S.-Cuba trade. Moreover, the volume also draws attention to the intersection between economic reform and societal dynamics by exploring changes in household consumption, socio-economic mobility, as well as remittances and their effects, while remaining steadfast in its focus on their policy implications for Cuba's future.

The 2000 Mexican presidential race culminated in the election of opposition candidate Vicente Fox and the end of seven decades of one-party rule. This book, which traces changes in public opinion and voter preferences over the course of the race, represents the most comprehensive treatment of campaigning and voting behavior in an emerging democracy. It challenges the "modest effects" paradigm of national election campaigns that has dominated scholarly research in the field.

Chapters cover authoritarian mobilization of voters, turnout patterns, electoral cleavages, party strategies, television news coverage, candidate debates, negative campaigning, strategic voting, issue-based voting, and the role of the 2000 election in Mexico's political transition. Theoretically-oriented introductory and concluding chapters situate Mexico's 2000 election in the larger context of Mexican politics and of cross-national research on campaigns. Collectively, these contributions provide crucial insights into Mexico's new politics, with important implications for elections in other countries.

"This comprehensive [book] takes a close look at the status of democratic regimes in Latin America and the Caribbean... This is a remarkable collaborative achievement and provides a quick, authoritative, and handy reference that will be invaluable to students."—Foreign Affairs, reviewing the first edition

Since the first edition of the acclaimed Constructing Democratic Governance was published in 1996, the democracies of Latin America and the Caribbean have undergone significant change. This new, one-volume edition, edited by Jorge I. Domínguez and Michael Shifter, offers a concise update to current scholarship in this important area of international studies.

The book is divided into two parts: Themes and Issues, and Country Studies. Countries not covered by individual studies are discussed in the introduction, conclusion, and thematic chapters. In the introduction, Michael Shifter provides an overview of new developments in Latin America and the Caribbean, with particular emphasis on civil society and problems of governance. The conclusion, by Jorge I. Domínguez, ties together the themes of the various chapters and discusses the role of parties and electoral politics.

Contributors: Felipe Agüero, University of Miami; John M. Carey, Washington University in St. Louis; Fernando Cepeda Ulloa, Universidad de los Andes; Michael Coppedge; University of Notre Dame; Javier Corrales, Amherst College; Carlos Iván Degregori, Instituto de Estudios Peruanos; Rut Diamint, Universidad Torcuato Di Tella; Denise Dresser, University of Southern California; Mala N. Htun, New School University; Marta Lagos, Latinobarómetro; Bolívar Lamounier, Augurium: Análise; Steven Levitsky, Harvard University; M. Victoria Murillo, Yale University.

Esta obra expone los resultados de un proyecto de análisis e investigación sobre conflictos y disputas territoriales en América Latina y el Caribe desarrollado por Diálogo Interamericano y originalmente impulsado por iniciativa del Embajador Luigi Einaudi, actual Secretario General Adjunto de la Organización de Estados Americanos, con el propósito de comprender mejor las posibilidades y estrategias de solución de disputas territoriales en el marco de los procesos de democratización de la región. El hilo conductor de este volumen, resultante del proyecto, apunta a resolver dos interrogantes clave. En primer lugar, por qué, pese a la existencia de una vasta gama de disputas y controversias limítrofes sin resolución, ha habido tan pocas guerras en nuestra región. Y, en segundo lugar, hasta qué punto la democracia ha jugado un papel en la limitada proliferación de conflictos fronterizos en América Latina y el Caribe. Ambos interrogantes orientan tanto el capítulo introductorio de este libro, que presenta un panorama y un análisis de los conflictos territoriales y limítrofes en América Latina y el Caribe, a cargo del doctor Jorge Domínguez, de la Universidad de Harvard, compilador del presente volumen, como el capítulo del doctor David Mares, profesor de la Universidad de California, quien realiza un análisis de los diferentes conflictos territoriales y su vinculación con el tipo de sistema político prevaleciente en los países en disputa.

The Bush administration, like its two predecessors, has expressed strong support for democracy in the Americas. It is now time to put its money where its mouth is.

Argentina's story in the 1990s was, in many respects, exactly what the United States would like to see happen throughout the hemisphere. The country has been a democracy since 1983, its longest span of constitutional government since the 1920s.

It has undergone a major foreign policy shift. Argentina resolved territorial disputes that once brought it to the edge of war with its neighbors, dismantled programs that could have led to the development of nuclear weapons, downsized its armed forces and became one of the most reliable U.S. allies in Latin America.

Poster Child

Argentina also became a poster child for market-oriented economic reform in the 1990s. The 1991 Convertibility Law, which pegged the Argentine peso to the dollar at a one-to-one rate, ended a devastating period of hyperinflation and helped to reintegrate Argentina into the global economy. The first Bush administration was a key ally in this process, supporting Argentina politically and financially.

Yet today Argentina is bankrupt, and its hard-won democracy is in danger. Mass riots and looting left at least two dozen people dead and forced President Fernando de la Rúa to resign in December. After more riots last weekend, Adolfo Rodríguez Saá also resigned a week after being appointed interim president.

A nearly four-year-long recession has pushed the unemployment rate to almost 20 percent and, according to one study, more than three million people into poverty in the last year alone. Argentina now stands on the brink of a huge debt default and a political meltdown.

The causes of the current crisis are disputed, but most observers agree that the same convertibility scheme that had ended the hyperinflationary crisis a decade ago left Argentine governments without instruments to respond to the recession that hit the country in the wake of the 1997 Asian financial crisis. Unable to increase the money supply or devalue the currency, governments were left only with fiscal policy instruments.

The de la Rúa government was also shackled by its $132 billion debt burden. Rather than boosting the economy through a fiscal or monetary stimulus, as governments normally do, Argentine governments did the opposite in their increasingly desperate effort to sustain international financial credibility: They cut spending in the face of recession and refused to dismantle the currency peg that once ended hyperinflation.

The recession deepened, unemployment soared, poverty widened and tax revenues plummeted.

No Easy Way Out

There is no easy way out of this crisis. Indeed, any interim government will have to undertake one or both of the two Ds that its predecessor desperately sought to avoid: default and devaluation. Both options will entail massive economic and political costs.

This is where the Bush administration can help. Argentina's successful economic adjustment requires approximately $50 billion in international support for its evolving international-debt and exchange-rate policies, consistent with its economic realities and its international financial obligations.

That large sum can be assembled only with the direct, active and immediate support of the Bush administration, working with the International Monetary Fund and other governments and public and private financial institutions. One reason to assemble the large sum is to deter a worse panic.

Why should the U.S. government help soften Argentina's difficult landing? During the 1990s, Republican and Democratic administrations actively pursued the twin goals of democracy and economic integration in the Americas. Those goals are now imperiled. Argentina's further collapse would directly or indirectly damage other South American economies, provoking cumulative financial panics. And the breakdown of one of the region's largest democracies would undermine two decades of gains across the hemisphere.

Only two decades ago, dictatorship, not democracy, dominated much of Latin America. Argentina suffered six military coups between 1930 and 1976.

Since 1983, Argentines have put political violence and instability behind them. Presidents are now regularly and freely elected, and power has passed peacefully several times from government to opposition. Civil liberties are now widely respected, and the country possesses a vibrant free press and civil society.

Losing Hope

The current crisis threatens to undo these democratic gains. After four years of recession, Argentines are beginning to lose hope. Trust in government has eroded. Many citizens no longer believe their elected leaders are able to address their most pressing problems.

The de la Rúa 2-year-old government suffered such a dramatic loss of support because it was increasingly perceived to be sacrificing its citizens' well-being to meet the demands of financial markets. In his wake, Rodríguez Saá's grace period lasted only a week.

The danger today is that frustration has spread to include the entire political elite, and perhaps even Argentina's political institutions—patterns similar to those that gave rise to Alberto Fujimori in Peru and Hugo Chávez in Venezuela. If that occurs, the prospects for democracy will dim considerably.

It has not come to that yet. Neither de la Rúa's or Rodríguez Saá's resignation was a military coup, and no Argentine Hugo Chávez has yet emerged. No one doubts that the election to choose de la Rúa's successor will be free and fair. But if Argentina is to steer clear of a Venezuela-like fate, its new government must deliver economic solutions to Argentines. To do so, it will require external assistance.

A successful model of such U.S.-backed support was tested in Mexico. The U.S. government's decision to organize a financial assistance package to help Mexico address the 1994-95 financial panic was bold and politically risky. But it clearly worked. A worse panic was deterred, economic growth was soon restored and Mexico made an impressive transition to democracy.

Argentina deserves similar help. Few, if any, Latin American countries combined democracy and market reforms as successfully as Argentina did in the 1990s.

Argentine democracy has proven remarkably resilient, weathering hyperinflation and radical economic reform. But if something is not done soon to give Argentines a realistic expectation that their politicians and democratic institutions can provide solutions to their problems, someone else will try to convince them that those politicians and those institutions are themselves the problem.

If that happens, U.S. interests will suffer badly in Argentina and elsewhere in the Americas.

With the fall of the Soviet Union and the acceleration of global economic, political, and social pressures, Mexico, Central, and South America have undergone vast transformations. This collection details these changes and updates the scholarship on a region once defined by the cold war and now struggling to define itself within the era of economic globalization and democratization. Rapid changes in the area have produced new and contentious scholarship, the best of which is contained in this new five-volume set. Collected by one of the premiere authorities on the region, each volume contains a valuable introduction and considers a key discipline of study.

¿Es posible imaginar relaciones "formales, correctas y pacíficas" entre Estados Unidos y Cuba?... Junto a los esfuerzos por promover cambios políticos en Cuba, se han dado en las diferentes administraciones de Estados Unidos algunas manifestaciones de flexibilización ante la posibilidad de crisis mayores.

The ideal introduction to U.S.-Mexican relations, The United States and Mexico moves from the conflicts all through the nineteenth century up to the current democratic elections in Mexico. Domínguez and Castro deftly trace the path of the relationship between these North American neighbors from bloody conflict to (wary) partnership. By covering immigration, drug trafficking, NAFTA, democracy, environmental problems and economic instability, this volume provides a thorough look back and an informed vision of the future.

Did the Cold War matter for US–Latin American relations? In many respects, the answer is no. The United States had faced military, political and economic competition for influence in the Americas from extracontinental powers before the Cold War, just as it did during the Cold War. The United States had pursued ideological objectives in its policy towards Latin America before, during, and after the Cold War. And the pattern of US defence of its economic interests in Latin America was not appreciably different during the Cold War than at previous times. From these singular perspectives, it is difficult to assert that the Cold War was a signficantly distinctive period of US–Latin American relations; it looked like 'more of the same'.

Nonetheless, the Cold War emerges as significantly distinctive in U.S. relations with Latin America because ideological considerations acquired a primacy over U.S. policy in the region that they had lacked at earlier moments. From the late 1940s until about 1960, ideology was just one of the important factors in the design of U.S. policy toward Latin America. The victory and consolidation of the Cuban revolutionary government changed that. In its subsequent conduct of the key aspects of its policy toward Latin America, the U.S. government often behaved as if it were under the spell of ideological demons.

"The transformation of politics in Latin America, the consolidation of a democratic consensus in the Anglophone Caribbean, and the able performance of many democratic governments in fashioning economic policies made this book intellectually possible. Most of Latin America's democratic governments have carried economic reforms more effectively than their authoritarian predecessors and have remained stunningly resilient despite many problems. The naysayers have not been proven right. Indeed, even if democratic governments were to be overthrown tomorrow, the history of democratic politics in the 1980s and 1990s is already noteworthy."—from the Introduction

In Democratic Politics in Latin America and the Caribbean, Jorge Domínguez focuses on the successful accomplishments of democratic politics in the region—a process that nations in Eastern Europe, Asia, and Africa seek to emulate. Domínguez considers the role of British colonial rule and United States policies. But he also examines the development of parties, other civil institutions, and competitive markets, which lend permanence to democracy. He also discusses the prospects for democracy in Cuba and Mexico. Despite recurrent problems, Dom?nguez concludes, the outlook is good for stable democracies in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Las discusiones sobre el régimen político que impera en Cuba se caracterizan por un consenso peculiar. Fidel Castro y los más altos funcionarios del gobierno y del Partido Comunista de Cuba insisten en que no ha cambiado nada fundamental; persiste un régimen "socialista" de partido único. Por otra parte, los enemigos más acérrimos de ese régimen, sobre todo quienes radican en Estados Unidos, afirman lo mismo: nada fundamental ha cambiado y, por supuesto, no hay democratización. Sugiero en este artículo que Cuba ya transita de un régimen político hacia otro, aunque sea una transición incompleta. Hoy el régimen político cubano comienza a aproximarse a lo que se podría llamar un régimen autoritario.

Today, as in the past, Mexico's foreign policy is guided by reasons of state and shaped by the will of its presidents, but the content and style of implementation of Mexican foreign policy has changed substantially. The convergence of elite beliefs and experiences in the United States and Mexico has increased the likelihood that bilateral negotiations will be less adversarial and seek, instead, the "term" outcome. Moreover, the Mexican government's foreign policy institutions and practices have changed. Many more Ministries and agencies, including Consulates, now play a significant role in policy implementation. Mexico resorts proactively to new international institutions and procedures to cushion the new impact of the United States on Mexico and to channel the conflicts between contentious private actors from both countries. Some issues remain riddled in conflict, however, legal and illegal immigration especially. And, because the beliefs and experiences of non–elites have not converged, the political foundations for future intergovernmental conflict are also in place. Though the powerful in each country proclaim that the ideals and interests of the United States and Mexico coincide, a great many people in both countries do not believe it.

Scholarly "realism" has been the dominant approach in the study of U.S. – Mexican relations; it has portrayed the Mexican government as a unified and calculating rational actor. Nonetheless, much of the reality of U.S. – Mexican relations has never been explained well by that approach. In this work, I assess the utility of other explanations for understanding U.S. – Mexican relations in the 1980's and 1990's. In particular, I consider the contributions of approaches based on international regimes and institutions, "games" played at multiple levels, and signaling a behavior.

In the 1998 and 1991 national elections, Mexican voters asked themselves above all whether they continued to support the long–ruling official party. Voter behavior was not well explained by attachments to social cleavages, attitudes on policy issues, or general assessments about the present circumstances and the prospects for the nation's economy or personal finances. In both elections, moreover, the parties of the Left failed to mobilize voters that had chosen to abstain in past elections. Once voters were ready to oppose the ruling party, however, differences by issue, prospective economic assessments, and social cleavages shaped their choice between opposition parties.