ABSTRACT
On September 1, 1999, Panama's first woman president was inaugurated in a baseball stadium filled with adoring fans. Mireya Moscoso had grown up poor as the daughter of a schoolteacher in rural Panama. The end of Panama's military government in 1989 and two successive democratic elections in which power has alternated between populist parties have created the impression that the country's political system has matured and that democracy has finally been consolidated. The result has been cycles of elitist democracy and authoritarian populism that occur in slightly different form at various points in time, depending on the strength of various domestic political forces, the state of the global economy, and the level of involvement of the United States. The business sector diversified and expanded to the point that there was less direct correspondence between its interests and those of most traditional political parties.
