Uncivil Movements: The Armed Right Wing and Democracy in Latin America By Leigh A. Payne. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000. 328p. $42.50.

Extract

Leigh Payne greatly enriches our knowledge of Latin American transitions from authoritarianism to democracy. The Armed Right Wing focuses on the role of violent right-wing groups and government responses to them in three Latin American countries, with application elsewhere. Explaining that uncivil social movements “use political violence … to promote exclusionary objectives … as a deliberate strategy to eliminate, intimidate, and silence political adversaries” (p. 1), Payne contrasts these movements with “civil” social movements. They employ rule-breaking (and violence) to “expand [rather than curtail] citizen rights and freedoms” (p. 1).