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. I am grateful for many useful comments received during those meetings, including those of Carlos Acuña, Eduardo Gamarra, and William Smith, codirectors of the first mentioned project. I owe very special thanks to Laurence Whitehead, director of the SSRC project, not only for his helpful criticisms and suggestions but also for his generous efforts to make the present text a reasonably readable one-that he did not entirely succeed is certainly not his fault. I also thank my colleagues at CEBRAP and at the Kellogg Institute for several enlightening discussions. ABSTRACTThe article argues that for proper understanding of many processes of democratization, current conceptions of the state must be revised, especially with reference to its legal dimension. On this basis several contrasts are drawn between representative, consolidated democracies and the democratic (i.e., polyarchical) forms that are emerging in most newly democratized countries, East and South. From this perspective, various phenomena not presently theorized (except as deviations from a presumed modal pattern of democratization) are discussed. Concepts such as delegative democracy, low intensity citizenship, and a state that combines strong democratic and authoritarian features are introduced for the purpose of that discussion. RESUMENEste artículo argumenta que, para entender adecuadamente diversos procesos de democratización, las concepciones corrientes sobre el estado deben ser revisadas, especialmente en lo que se refieren a la dimensión legal del mismo. Sobre esta base el artículo discute varios contrastes observables entre democracias representativas y consolidadas y las formas democráticas (es decir, poliárquicas) que están emergiendo en muchos de los países recientemente democratizados. Desde esta perspectiva, varios fenómenos que no han sido teorizados (excepto como desviaciones de un patrón presuntamente modal de democratización) son discutidos. Conceptos tales como democracia delegativa, ciudadanía de baja intensidad y un estado que combina fuertes elementos democráticos y autoritarios, son introducidos en función de dicha discusión. An Introductory Warning:I must warn the reader at the outset. The present text contains ideas that are only summarily developed. I am in the process of writing a book in which these and other ideas, and their empirical referents, are treated much more properly. I decided to publish the present text after the gentle insistence of various colleagues persuaded me that it would make sense to offer for discussion, even in their present form, my views about themes and problems that I believe have been neglected at rather serious cost in the current studies on democratization. Given the character of this text, I have limited citations to the barest minimum: the arguments I present here draw on various streams of literature and many valuable contributions to which I will do proper justice in my book. I. The State and the New DemocraciesIn the last two decades, the breakdown of various kinds of authoritarian systems ha...

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High-quality democracy requires a truly democratic rule of law that ensures political rights, civil liberties, and mechanisms of accountability which in turn affirm the political equality of all citizens and constrain potential abuses of state power. How may the democratic rule of law ( état de droit, estado democrático de derecho, Rechsstaat ) be conceptualized and, insofar as possible, empirically gauged? By exploring a set of variables within the rule of law we can understand what makes it effective and how it relates to other aspects of the performance of democratic countries. This essay focuses on contemporary Latin America (especially Argentina and Brazil) where national-level democratic regimes often effectively coexist with undemocratic sub-national regimes—so-called “brown areas.”

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