The Consortium in Latin American Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University deserves gratitude for launching this series on “Latin America in Translation.” This translation clearly presents the complex analyses of a profound thinker, one who excels at elucidating the subtleties, contradictions, and paradoxes of today's democracies. Previously one of the pioneers of studying transitions from authoritarian rule, Garreton now focuses on the constraints on the successor regimes. His trenchant observations will interest political theorists as well as comparativists and Latin Americanists. He devotes the first half of the book to a broad treatment of current Latin American politics and the second half to a study of the crucial case of Chile. This powerful combination of the general and the particular renders this publication valuable for graduate courses, although it is too sophisticated for most undergraduates.

As the author points out, sociology has long been stronger south of the border than political science, particularly with the latter's recent emphasis in the United States on institutionalism. Historically, most Latin American intellectuals have seen politics as a reflection of society, rather than as a separate realm. Moreover, they have defined democracy more as social integration than as liberal individualism. However, as standard democratic institutions have gained practical importance and legitimacy in recent years, they have also begun receiving more empirical and theoretical attention as relatively autonomous entities. Without neglecting the socioeconomic context, Garreton both reflects and advances this shift away from structural determinism, previously identified with studies of dependency and development.

In his general chapters, the author frames the book in terms of four interconnected challenges to the disarticulated relations between the state and society in the posttransition democracies. First, these nations must improve the quality and efficacy of their democratic institutions, particularly the state, political parties, and social actors. Second, they need to expand citizenship by ensuring the equal inclusion and rights of all the members of society. Third, they have to devise a new development model that will move beyond neoliberal formulas for growth through postindustrial globalization. Above all, governments need to find new ways to redistribute benefits to the impoverished. Fourth, the Latin Americans should elaborate a fresh national project that will produce collective consensus, identity, and community behind a shared, sovereign vision of the future. If these challenges are not met successfully, Garreton fears that these countries will remain hollow democracies. Their political systems will exhibit little relevance to society and little ability to represent the nation or make decisions on its behalf. Without more robust states closely connected to civil society by democratic institutions, Latin America is in danger of ceding control over its destiny to global market forces.

Of greatest interest to political scientists, Garreton devotes most of his dissection of these challenges to the deficiencies of today's democratic systems. With his usual incisive disaggregation of concepts, he reminds us that there were three different types of democratization in contemporary Latin America: the founding of totally new democracies, as in Central America; the transitions from authoritarian back to democratic regimes, as in the Southern Cone; and the installation of democratic reforms, as in Mexico and Colombia. All of these processes remain partial because of persistent authoritarian enclaves and corruption. In the author's view, these democracies can only become complete and effective by strengthening, modernizing, and uniting the state, parties, and society. This thesis calls for a transformed state, as opposed to those who would subordinate it to the free market or to civil society.

With the backdrop of this overview, Garreton examines the Chilean experience. He offers his widely accepted interpretation that Chilean democracy before its downfall in 1973 enjoyed stability, representativeness, and effectiveness. However, it lacked social or ideological consensus, guarantees of majority rule, and unquestioned legitimacy. He then shows that these shortcomings generated a crisis opening the way to a military coup d'état. The resulting dictatorship pursued dual objectives. It wanted not only to destroy the previous system of political democracy, social integration, and statist economic nationalism but also to implant authoritarian rule, social atomization, and an open, market-oriented economy.

The return to democracy 17 years later took place within that radically altered context. This book synthesizes Garreton's influential argument that the transition required the united opposition to learn to defeat the regime through the dictatorship's own institutional rules, specifically the 1988 plebiscite to extend or terminate the government of Augusto Pinochet. Since 1990, the restored democracy, although fully consolidated, has struggled to overcome authoritarian residues, such as unelected powers. In a masterful summary of the continuing debates in Chile over how to deepen democracy, Garreton returns to the four challenges he highlighted for all of Latin America.

For mainstream political scientists unfamiliar with the discourse in Latin America, some of the sociological conceptualizing and theorizing may seem somewhat abstract and even obscure, particularly the notion of a national project. More empirical examples would give newcomers clearer references. They may also find the prose at times repetitive because the chapters are drawn from different sources. And they may wish for a more ample bibliography to lead them to further publications on these matters. Above all, however, they should welcome this visit with a brilliant mind tackling some of the central problems in Latin America and Chile over the last 30 years. For political and other social scientists concerned with the region, with democracy, and with political sociology, Incomplete Democracy constitutes essential reading.