"Stokes's work is impressive for its all-too-rare combination of posing questions inspired by normative theory...Few scholars have a comparable vision and set of tools with which to address the implications for democracy when citizens are deprived of the opportunity to express themselves on the political alternatives available to them. With Mandates and Democracy...Stokes cements her position as one of the leading contemporary scholars of comparative democracy."

--Political Science Quarterly

"Nuanced and sophisticated.... Stokes leads scholars toward the analysis of crucial and ideational phenomena and thus breaks new ground for comparative politics."

--Perspectives on Politics

"This exceedingly timely volume presents solid scholarship and thus is broadly recommended."

--Choice

Publisher Web Site, June, 2003

Does it matter when politicians ignore the promises they made and the preferences of their constituents? If politicians want to be reelected or see their party reelected at the end of their term, why would they impose unpopular policies? Susan Stokes explores these questions by developing a model of policy switches and then testing it with statistical and qualitative data from Latin American elections over the past two decades. She concludes that politicians may change policies because unpopular policies are best for constituents and hence also will best serve their own political ambitions.

1. Elections, mandates, and representation
2. Electoral politics and economic policy in Latin America
3. Explaining policy switches
4. Are parties what?s wrong with democracy in Latin America?: neoliberalism without mandates: citizens respond
5. Mandates and democratic theory
6. Summary, predictions, unsettled questions
References.