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Democracy, Dictatorship, and Term Limits. By Baturo Alexander . Ann Arbor : The University of Michigan Press , 2014. 350p. $50.00.
Book Reviews: Comparative Politics
Democratic breakdowns can occur in two different ways. First, a democratic government may be toppled by a force external to the government (e.g., a military coup). Second, a democratically elected leader may choose to interrupt the democratic process. While most of the literature has focused on the former type of democratic breakdown, this book analyzes a phenomenon that is often associated with the latter form of democratic interruption: presidents' lack of respect for constitutionally mandated term limits. This is the first book on this subject in a long time, and it is a welcome addition to the literature on presidentialism, democratization, and democratic breakdowns.
As Alexander Baturo points out in the introduction, more than a quarter of the 200 term-bounded presidents who were elected between 1960 and 2010 managed to extend their stay in office. This phenomenon affects democratic development because the principle of alternation of power is key to the idea of democracy: A democratic regime is at risk if one leader become indispensable. Many of the presidents who did not respect their term limits ended up centralizing power and committing serious authoritarian excesses against opposition forces. Two good examples are Alberto Fujimori (president of Peru between 1990 and 2000) and Hugo Chávez (president of Venezuela between 1999 and 2013).
The main goal of this book is to investigate the factors that encourage presidents to play by the rules or to manipulate term limits. Although the main contribution is empirical, the discussion of the normative implication of the lack of term limits in the introduction and in Chapter 2 is very rich and detailed. Baturo's discussion of term limits and how they have been perceived in the history of...