Acción Democrática: Evolution of a modern political party in Venezuela

Abstract

The rapid increase of popular participation in LatinAmerican political processes has been reflected in thegrowing importance of the parties. One leading LatinAmericanist would "commend the field of Latin Americanpolitical parties to a whole generation of prospectivegraduate students in political science." Yet there havebeen relatively few serious efforts to follow this advice. As another acute student of the area has observed, "LatinAmerican political parties are outstanding in that verylittle research has been done on them. Thus, the fewexisting studies have tended to reflect disciplinary deficienciesby emphasizing the legalistic and historicalaspects of the situation rather than analyzing the dynamicsand inner processes.