Democratic Accountability in Latin America

CONCEPTUAL AND THEORETICAL ISSUES; 1. Introduction: Democratic Accountability in Latin America; 2. Horizontal Accountability: The Legal Institutionalization of Mistrust; 3. Horizontal Accountability: Concepts and Conflicts; LEGISLATURES, EXECUTIVES, AND OVERSIGHT AGENCIES; 4. The Accountability Deficit in Latin America; 5. Legislative Oversight: Interests and Institutions in the United States and Argentina; 6. The Role of Congress as an Agency of Horizontal Accountability: Lessons from the Brazilian Experience; THE JUDICIARY, THE PUBLIC PROSECUTION OFFICE, AND RULE OF LAW; 7. The New Brazilian Public Prosecution: An Agent of Accountability; 8. Horizontal Accountability and the Rule of Law in Central America; 9. Authoritarianism, Democracy and the Supreme Court: horizontal exchange and the rule of law in Mexico; SOCIETAL ACCOUNTABILITY; 10. Societal and Horizontal Controls: Two Cases of a Fruitful Relationship

Scott Mainwaring is Conley Professor of Political Science, University of Notre Dame Christopher Welna is Associate Director, Kellog Institute for International Studies, University of Notre Dame

Mainwaring and Welna's volume broadens the conceptual focus, addressing courts as only one of a group of political and societal actors which jointly provide accountability. The debates raised here, and the insight that the ongoing interaction between various institutions is essential to constructing accountability, will surely become a mainstay of the growing literature on accountability in Latin America. --Matthew M. Taylor, University of S o Paulo