Introduction

When studying the intricacies of Latin American democracies from the 1980s until today, scholars focus on different aspects of institutions and the broader regime context in which they are immersed: elections, political parties, legislatures, executive-legislative relations, courts, judges, oversight bodies, informal institutions, alternative models of democracy, civil society, civic participation, participatory democracy, and so on. Representativeness and effectiveness, the two concepts this book addresses, are central dimensions in the analysis of these topics because they capture important aspects of democracy and democratization. As a result, there is a considerable body of literature on both. However, in spite of the development of these two individual concepts, there is surprisingly little work on institutions or regimes considering both variables simultaneously, and on their interaction and reciprocal influences. Moreover, there is little work in this direction on the judiciary, and work on civil society is not usually included in edited volumes on the topic of political representation.