The terms employed by the authors of these two books may be different, as are their titles, but the phenomena they identify are amazingly similar and the periods they examine are practically identical. What Francis Adams identifies as a “remarkable political transformation” and Tim Campbell calls a “quiet revolution” are the steps toward democratization and decentralization that have marked Latin American politics and society in the last two decades. Taking as their point of departure the political reforms of the state since the late 1980s, the empowerment of civil society through decentralization, and the fact of democratic transition itself, both authors paint a picture of progress and hope for a region of the world that not very long ago seemed mired in the throes of authoritarian governance and economic crisis attributed to nondemocratic, overcentralized, and inefficient state practices.

The most positive—if not celebratory—of the two is Campbell's The Quiet Revolution, which reads like an ode to decentralization and the gains it made in terms of efficiency, innovation, and revenue generation at the local level. The author's rosy view is tempered only as an afterthought, by the cautious recognition in a final chapter that the tendency toward greater income inequality across Latin America could serve as an obstacle to deepening these reforms, especially if it affects the legitimization of actors responsible for promoting the decentralization path. But these seem to be only minor concerns for Campbell. Adams, in contrast, is much more cautious about the durability of the political changes in domestic politics and policy. The starting premise of his book is that without the direct involvement of international actors and strong “external” support, the democratic transition under way in Latin America will not deepen, and perhaps even stall. Hence, his call for understanding of the key international organizations, actors, and policy regimes that will enable and support Latin America's political transition.

Some of the difference in tone owes to the fact that these two authors are concerned with different aspects of Latin America's recent political transformations. Adams seeks to understand democracy as an entire constellation of political guarantees and social changes, ranging from increasing political competition to empowering civil society to guaranteeing human rights to establishing social equity to decentralizing political participation. Hence, his focus on actors like the United Nations, the Organization of American States, and such civil society organizations as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch—as well as the usual subjects (international financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank).

In contrast, Campbell seems to be concerned primarily with the state reforms and grassroots political changes that facilitate neoliberal economic reform on the local level. International institutions and actors are practically absent; and politics of the big “p” kind hardly matters unless they impede decentralization aims. The social and political conditions on the ground—especially if they entail rights abuses or citizen organization around questions of power and accountability—do not generate much critical scrutiny either. Rather, Campbell's focus is almost exclusively on the ways decentralization empowers city-level authorities to undertake reform or revenue projects that spread the burden of financing development to citizens, while also generating local conditions in which private-sector actors are key partners in development. Stated simply, the overriding ethos of Campbell's book is pretty much the World Bank's neoliberal agenda, a fact of little surprise considering that Campbell manages the urban program of the World Bank Institute in Washington, D.C.

This is not to say that The Quiet Revolution is compromised as a piece of academic scholarship. It is an engaging and relatively comprehensive description of decentralization and how it works, and as a general text for undergraduate audiences it contains valuable material. The book begins by documenting the recent political changes in Latin America and offering an overview of major state reforms. It then moves onto a more historicized discussion of where and when decentralization first captured attention among Latin American nations (with Mexico and Chile identified as leading the pack). A subsequent section identifies six types of participatory mechanisms that were highly successful in strengthening decentralization. This part of the book is perhaps the most interesting because it is based on serious case study research. A final section raises questions about what it will take to further institutionalize such gains. And while all may not agree on Campbell's proposal for a new model of government based on contest, competition, and so-called civil markets, he does raise important and difficult questions about how to sustain the quiet revolution that is still not yet completely consolidated across the continent. One of the most innovative and important points to emerge in this section on prescriptions is the author's emphasis on empowering cities—and even metropolitan areas—so that they are not hamstrung in their aims to carry forward innovative strategies that enable local gains without compromising citizen priorities. To his credit, he clearly states that this call for new pathways “to city renewal” (p. 165) stands in tension with the World Bank's own preferred modus operandi of working directly with central government.

The World Bank is just one of the many organizations that Adams examines in Deepening Democracy, a book that also begins with an overview of changing structures of power and politics in Latin America. But Adams identifies problems where Campbell sees promise. Adams prefers to see energy and innovation for state reform and democratic progress resting in international hands, more than in the strategies of domestic political actors. His claim is that in an increasingly globalized world where domestic politics do not operate in a vacuum and where international conditions mold opportunities for development on the local level, it is wise to analyze international actors and whether their aims correspond or conflict with domestic ones. Because this approach contrasts so starkly with Campbell's emphasis on local actors, the question arises as to why. One possible explanation for the divergent views of these authors may be traced to the units of analysis employed. Adams's focus is democratic progress (or standstill) as a feature of the nation-state, whereas Campbell's focus is on the locality, mainly in cities. One can only wonder whether their divergent assessments about the most significant institutional actors, not to mention their disagreements about pitfalls and possibilities associated with recent political reforms, might converge more if both were examining the same scale of action.

Of course, the fact that Adams is more concerned with national progress may be the cause as much as the effect of his preoccupation with international actors, whose programs target large-scale reforms that make sense primarily on the national scale. From judicial reform to anticorruption projects to the strengthening of electoral institutions to efforts to weed out human rights violations to social empowerment, most of the international organizations identified by Adams have fundamental reforms of the national state and legal system in mind. Only a few of their programs, like institution-building efforts supported by such nongovernmental organizations as Ford and by other key actors such as the Organisation of American States, are intended to operate on the regional or subnational level. Yet this may be precisely the challenge: to prod international institutions to take seriously both the subnational and the national levels of decision making, and to develop programs or reform efforts that combine both levels of analysis through engagement with both domestic and international actors.

If one were to look for tough questions to pose to Deepening Democracy, it would be why so little progress has been made with a plethora of major international organizations committed to many of same tasks. Adams does a wonderful job of analyzing the programs of the most relevant global actors, and he offers a critical analysis of the policies of each, identifying the biases, constraints, or organizational limitations that prevent these organizations from accomplishing as much as they would like. This is particularly evident in the discussion of the United Nations and the restrictions its own charter imposes on its political work within Latin America, yet it also comes through in the other chapters as well. But nowhere does Adams synthesize the entire picture and ask whether these organizations might in fact be working at cross-purposes, or perhaps even fragmenting the domestic scene in ways that might disempower civil society in its collective struggle to make national gains. Why have multiple organizations with global prestige and massive resources not collectively made more headway in deepening democracy across Latin America? Is it merely a matter of time; or the sheer magnitude of problems; or, is it because somehow they have not read the conditions well enough to know how to actually implement changing conditions from the bottom up in the same way as Campbell's local actors?

It could also be that many of the problems that international agencies and global actors seek to eradicate are better understood as regional or even transnational in scope, an observation that could sustain a call for more horizontal coordination within and between international agencies and individual Latin American countries, and perhaps a new scale of action. Again, the question of at what level(s) to intervene in identifying problems and crafting effective solutions is absolutely central, and one can only hope that the knowledge gained from these two books can push more scholars to work on this and other related questions in the near future.