Forging Democracy from Below: Insurgent Transit. Wood Hardcover<|

Forging Democracy from BelowInsurgent Transitions in South Africa and El Salvador\nAuthor(s): Elisabeth Jean Wood\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: Cambridge University Press, United Kingdom\nImprint: Cambridge University Press\nISBN-13: 9780521783231, 978-0521783231\nSynopsis\nThe recent replacement of authoritarian rule by democracy in both South Africa and El Salvador poses a puzzle: why did the powerful and fervently anti-democratic elites of these countries abandon death squads, apartheid, and the other tools of political repression and take a chance on democracy? Forging Democracy from Below, first published in 2000, shows how popular mobilization - in El Salvador an effective guerilla army supported by peasant collaboration and in South Africa a powerful alliance of labor unions and poor urban dwellers - eventually forced the elite to the bargaining table, and why both a durable settlement and democratic government were the result. Using interviews with both insurgent and elite ac.