Publications by Year: 1999

1999
Dictating Democracy: Guatemala and the End of Violent Revolution
McCleary, Rachel. Dictating Democracy: Guatemala and the End of Violent Revolution. University Press of Florida, 1999. Publisher's VersionAbstract

Documenting a rare political occurrence, Rachel McCleary examines the evolution of the two major elite groups in Guatemala—the organized private sector and the military—during the country’s transition from authoritarianism to democracy. Arguing that the transition resulted from a stalemate over economic policy, she shows how the two elites altered their relations from disunity (during the period from 1982 to 1986) to unity (from 1993 to the present). Not only does she describe a nonviolent settlement, she also discusses the development of democracy in a country that was directly caught up in Cold War relations between the United States and the USSR. Thus she makes a serious contribution to the study of democratization as well as to Latin American history.