The volume will be of interest to readers seeking to understand debates about democracy in developing societies and to grasp the concepts, theories and methods that are currently being developed to study Latin American politics.

Gerardo Munck, Argentinian by birth, received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of California in San Diego and teaches in the School of International Relations at the University of Southern California. His research focuses on political regimes and democracy, methodology, and Latin America.

• Introduction. Research Agendas and Strategies in the Study of Latin American Politics


• 1: Gerardo Munck: The Study of Politics and Democracy: Touchstones of a Research Agenda


• 2: Sebastián L. Mazzuca: Reconceptualizing Democratization: Access to Power versus Exercise of Power


• 3: Royce Carroll and Matthew Soberg Shugart: Neo-Madisonian Theory and Latin American Institutions


• 4: Michael Coppedge: Thickening Thin Concepts: Issues in Large-N Data Generation


• 5: Scott Mainwaring, Daniel Brinks and Aníbal Pérez-Liñán: Classifying Political Regimes in Latin America, 1945-2004


• 6: Michael Coppedge: Theory Building and Hypothesis Testing: Large-N vs. Small-N Research on Democratization


• 7: Jason Seawright: Democracy and Growth: A Case Study in Failed Causal Inference


• 8: Scott Mainwaring and Aníbal Pérez-Liñán: Why Regions of the World Are Important: Regional Specificities and Region-Wide Diffusion of Democracy


• 9: Andrew C. Gould and Andrew J. Maggio: Democracy, Dictatorship and Economic Development: A Model of Reference-Dependent Choices With Experimental Data


• References


• Index