Understanding Institutional Weakness: Power and Design in Latin American Institutions (Elements in Politics and Society in Latin America)

Description

This Element introduces the concept of institutional weakness, arguing that weakness or strength is a function of the extent to which an institution actually matters to social, economic or political outcomes. It then presents a typology of three forms of institutional weakness: insignificance, in which rules are complied with but do not affect the way actors behave; non-compliance, in which state elites either choose not to enforce the rules or fail to gain societal cooperation with them; and instability, in which the rules are changed at an unusually high rate. The Element then examines the sources of institutional weakness. Cover Title page Copyright page Understanding Institutional Weakness: Power and Design in Latin American Institutions Contents 1 Introduction 1.1 Why Institutional Strength Matters for Comparative Politics 1.2 Why Latin America? 2 Defining Institutions 3 Institutional Weakness 3.1 The Core Concept 3.1.1 Social Norms and Institutional Strength 3.1.2 Insignificance 3.2 Types of Institutional Weakness 3.2.1 Noncompliance 3.2.1.1 State Nonenforcement 3.2.1.2 State (In)capacity and Societal Resistance 3.2.2 Instability 3.3 Judicial Interpretation as a Source of Noncompliance and Instability 4 Accounting for Institutional Weakness 4.1 Sources of (Non)compliance 4.1.1 Strategic Adoption of Weak Institutions 4.1.1.1 Implementation and Enforcement Gaps 4.1.2 State Capacity and Societal Resistance 4.1.3 Societal Sources of Compliance 4.2 Sources of Insignificance: Audience Costs and Preemptive Design 4.3 Sources of Instability 4.3.1 Economic Instability 4.3.2 Unstable Coalitions 4.3.3 Instability Traps 4.3.4 Compliance and Stability 5 The Persistence of Institutional Weakness in Latin America 5.1 A Problem of Institutional Borrowing? 5.2 Mechanisms that Reproduce Institutional Weakness in Latin America 5.3 Democracy and Institutional Ambition 6 Conclusion References