This book addresses the question of why governments sometimes follow the law and other times choose to evade the law. The traditional answer of jurists has been that laws have an autonomous causal efficacy: law rules when actions follow anterior norms; the relation between laws and actions is one of obedience, obligation, or compliance. Contrary to this conception, the authors defend a positive interpretation where the rule of law results from the strategic choices of relevant actors. Rule of law is just one possible outcome in which political actors process their conflicts using whatever resources they can muster: only when these actors seek to resolve their conflicts by recourse to la, does law rule. What distinguishes 'rule-of-law' as an institutional equilibrium from 'rule-by-law' is the distribution of power. The former emerges when no one group is strong enough to dominate the others and when the many use institutions to promote their interest.

Argues that new democracies face consolidation challenges due to campaign finance corruption and the unwillingness of politicians to reform rule of law enforcement. Mainstream theories assert that democracy cures corruption. In market economies, however, elections are expensive and parties, with ever-thinning memberships, cannot legally acquire the necessary campaign funds. In order to secure electoral funds, a large number of politicians misappropriate public funds. Due to the illicit character of these transactions, high officials with conflicts of interest prefer to leave anticorruption enforcement mechanisms unreformed and reserve the right to intervene in the judicial process, with dire consequences for the rule of law. In No Rule of Law, No Democracy, Cristina Nicolescu-Waggonner demonstrates that when corrupt politicians are in power—true of nearly all new democracies—they will protect their office and fail to implement rule of law reforms. Consequently, these polities never reach a point where democracy could and would cure corruption. This dysfunction is tested in one hundred cases over sixteen years with significant results. In the case of the Czech Republic, for example, which is regarded as a consolidated democracy, there is systematic corruption, misappropriation of state funds, an unreformed judiciary, and arbitrary application of law. The only solution is a powerful, independent, well-funded anticorruption agency. Romania, one of the most corrupt countries in Europe, established, at the European Union’s request, powerful anticorruption bodies and punished corrupt leaders, which created the predictability of enforcement. It is the certainty of punishment that curtails corruption and establishes true rule of law.

Through a reappraisal of rule of law and democracy the contributors provide for a fresh set of inquiries, from the State, consolidated and transitional democracies, to interstate, European and global scenarios. They converge in tackling empirical and normative questions, and suggest further connections between rule of law and democracy.

In 1996, Guillermo O’Donnell taught a seminar at the University of Notre Dame on democratic theory. One of the questions explored in this class was whether it is possible to define and determine the “quality” of democracy. Jorge Vargas Cullell, a student in this course, returned to his native country of Costa Rica, formed a small research team, and secured funding for undertaking a “citizen audit” of the quality of democracy in Costa Rica. This pathbreaking volume contains O’Donnell’s qualitative theoretical study of the quality of democracy and Vargas Cullell’s description and analysis of the empirical data he gathered on the quality of democracy in Costa Rica. It also includes twelve short, scholarly reflections on the O’Donnell and Cullell essays. The primary goal of this collection is to present the rationale and methodology for implementing a citizen audit of democracy. This book is an expression of a growing concern among policy experts and academics that the recent emergence of numerous democratic regimes, particularly in Latin America, cannot conceal the sobering fact that the efficacy and impact of these new governments vary widely. These variations, which range from acceptable to dismal, have serious consequences for the people of Latin America, many of whom have received few if any benefits from democratization. Attempts to gauge the quality of particular democracies are therefore not only fascinating intellectual exercises but may also be useful practical guides for improving both old and new democracies. This book will make important strides in addressing the increasing practical and academic concerns about the quality of democracy. It will be required reading for political scientists, policy analysts, and Latin Americanists.

The accession of eight post-communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe (and also of Malta and Cyprus) to the European Union in 2004 has been heralded as perhaps the most important development in the history of European integration so far. While the impact of the enlargement on the constitutional structures and practices of the EU has already generated a rich scholarly literature, the influence of the accession on constitutionalism, democracy, human rights and the rule of law among the new member states has been largely ignored. This book fills this gap, and addresses the question of the consequences of the "external force" of European enlargement upon the understanding and practice of democracy and the rule of law and among both the main legal-political actors and the general public in the new member-states. A number of leading legal scholars, sociologists and political scientists, both from Central and Eastern Europe and from outside, address these issues in a systematic and critical way. Taken together, these essays help answer a fundamental question: does the European Union have the potential of promoting and consolidate democracy and human rights?

Reports of scandal and corruption have led to the downfall of numerous political leaders in Latin America in recent years. What conditions have developed that allow for the exposure of wrongdoing and the accountability of leaders? Enforcing the Rule of Law examines how elected officials in Latin American democracies have come under scrutiny from new forms of political control, and how these social accountability mechanisms have been successful in counteracting corruption and the limitations of established institutions. This volume reveals how legal claims, media interventions, civic organizations, citizen committees, electoral observation panels, and other watchdog groups have become effective tools for monitoring political authorities. Their actions have been instrumental in exposing government crime, bringing new issues to the public agenda, and influencing or even reversing policy decisions. Enforcing the Rule of Law presents compelling accounts of the emergence of civic action movements and their increasing political influence in Latin America, and sheds new light on the state of democracy in the region.

This book explains how the rule of law emerges and how it survives in nascent democracies. The question of how nascent democracies construct and fortify the rule of law is fundamentally about power. By focusing on judicial autonomy, a key component of the rule of law, this book demonstrates that the fragmentation of political power is a necessary condition for the rule of law. In particular, it shows how party competition sets the stage for independent courts. Using case studies of Argentina at the national level and of two neighboring Argentine provinces, San Luis and Mendoza, this book also addresses patterns of power in the economic and societal realms. The distribution of economic resources among members of a divided elite fosters competitive politics and is therefore one path to the requisite political fragmentation. Where institutional power and economic power converge, a reform coalition of civil society actors can overcome monopolies in the political realm.