Palmer Featured in Inter-American Dialogue
David Scott Palmer, Professor Emeritus of International Relations at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, said that proposed reforms to Peru’s election’s process would not change the structural weakness of the legislative branch itself.
Palmer made the argument to Inter-American Dialogue, a leading media outlet for the study of Latin American and South American politics. He spoke in the Featured Q&A of the March 19 issue, entitled, “Would Proposed Reforms Improve Peru’s Democracy?”
From the text of the article:
“Peru has developed an extremely fragmented and personalized political system since the systematic undermining of political parties during the presidencies of Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000). Literally hundreds of ‘political groups’ participate in provincial and local elections, only to disappear as soon as the votes are counted…What the reforms would not change, however, is the underlying institutional weakness of the legislative branch and the party system itself. Until this changes, Peru’s democracy will remain weak and
unable to take full advantage of years of favorable developments.”
You can read the entire article here.
Palmer has published six books, most recently Power, Institutions, and Leadership in War and Peace: Lessons from Peru and Ecuador, 1995-1998. (Co-author, David Mares. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2012.) Learn more about him here.