Learning Democracy: Citizen Engagement and Electoral Choice in Nicaragua, 1990–2001

Extract

Learning Democracy: Citizen Engagement and Electoral Choice in Nicaragua, 1990–2001. By Leslie E. Anderson and Lawrence C. Dodd. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. 336p. $24.00.

In opposition to the recent trend in democratization studies that sees this process as if the glass is half empty, this study of Nicaraguan democratization argues that the glass is half full. Recent history in Nicaragua includes momentous events, such as the fall of the Somoza dictatorship in 1979, the triumph of the Sandinista revolution, the subsequent Sandinista electoral victory in the presidential contest of 1984, and their later defeat in 1990, when voters rejected Daniel Ortega in favor of the mild-mannered, conservative Violeta Chamorro. Noting the voters' continuous embrace of what the authors call “democratic conservatism,” they conclude that “Nicaragua appears to be evolving into an inclusive, constitutional democracy” (p. 280). How was this possible, especially in a country that exhibited so few of the prerequisites traditionally associated with the successful establishment of democracy? And why did voters, the majority of them poor, reject the Sandinistas in 1990 and later elections, favoring candidates that came to undo most of what the Sandinistas had achieved in terms of social and economic equality? These are the most important questions Leslie Anderson and Lawrence Dodd seek to elucidate in this suggestive and informative book.