Shifting Frontiers of Citizenship ─ The Latin American Experience

While in the days of the Cold War models of citizenship were relatively clear-cut around the contrasting projects of reform and revolution, in the last three decades Latin America has become a laboratory for comparative research. The region has witnessed both a renewal of electoral democracy and the diversification of experiments in citizen representation and participation. The implementation of neo-liberal policies has led to countervailing transformations in democratic citizenship and to the rise of populist leaderships, while the crisis of representation has been accompanied by new forms of participation, generating profound transformations. The authors analyze these recent trends, reflected in new forms of populism, inclusion and exclusion, participation and alternative models of democracy, social insecurity and violence, diasporas and transnationalism, the politics of justice and the politics of identity and multiculturalism.

Mario Sznajder is Leon Blum Professor of Political Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and senior fellow of the Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace in Jerusalem. He has published extensively on Fascism, democratization, human rights and politics. He is coauthor of, among others, Naissance de l’ideologie fasciste (1989), Constructing Collective Identities and Shaping Public Spheres (1998) and The Politics of Exile in Latin America (with Luis Roniger, 2009).Luis Roniger is Reynolds Professor of Latin American Studies at the Department of Politics and International Affairs of Wake Forest University. A comparative political sociologist, he has published among others Patrons, Clients and Friends (with SN Eisenstadt, 1984), The Legacy of Human-Rights Violations in the Southern Cone (with Mario Sznajder, 1999), and Globality and Multiple Modernities (with Carlos H. Waisman, 2002) and Transnational Politics in Central America (University of Florida Press, 2011).Carlos A. Forment, Ph.D (1991) in Sociology, Harvard University, is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Politics at the New School for Social Research. He has published Democracy in Latin America: Volume I, Civic Selfhood and Public Life in Mexico and Peru (University of Chicago, 2003), and The Making of Public Culture in Nineteenth Century Latin America (University of Chicago, forthcoming).