About the Author

Guillermo O'Donnell was the Helen Kellogg Professor of Government and International Studies at the University of Notre Dame. He is the author of Counterpoints and co-editor of Poverty and Inequality in Latin America and The (Un)Rule of Law and the Underprivileged in Latin America, all published by the University of Notre Dame Press.

Jorge Vargas Cullell is coordinator of the Citizen Audit on the Quality of Democracy in Costa Rica and assistant director of the annual report on the State of the Nation, Costa Rica.

Osvaldo M. Iazzetta is professor in the School of Political Science and a member of the Research Council at the National University of Rosario, Argentina.

Reviews

"Guillermo O'Donnell is one of the most prominent contemporary political scientists. His work will have a major impact on rethinking the relationship between democracy, the state, and human development. He calls for a profound rethinking of the state's role in democratic theory and in human development." —Scott Mainwaring, University of Notre Dame "O'Donnell fundamentally re-envisions the term 'democracy,' no longer the once ubiquitous-now automatically assumed-polyarchy, but something that draws on literature on democracy, human development, and human rights to produce a radically new definition. Each of these areas, O'Donnell argues, bases its claims on the idea of human agency." —Latin American Research Review "...striking individual insights...."—Political Studies Review "The primary goal of this unique and compelling book is to provide the theoretical and empirical foundations for what the authors hope will be a new wave of interest in the quality of democracy." —Perspectives on Politics "This book deserves to be carefully read by anyone interested in democracy, and especially democracy in Latin America. Its main innovations are probably methodological and empirical rather than theoretical. . . . [T]he book will probably stimulate fruitful arguments about whether or not we need to re-evaluate Latin American democracies in light of the notion of democratic quality. It is a challenging, important, and complex volume." —The Americas