O'Donnell, Guillermo (1936–)

Guillermo O'Donnell is a leading theorist of authoritarianism and democratization and one of the most distinguished Latin American social scientists. Born in Buenos Aires, he received a law degree from the National University of Buenos Aires and a Ph.D. in political science from Yale University. After teaching at various universities in Argentina between 1958 and 1975, he became a founding member of the Centro de Estudios de Estado y Sociedad (CEDES) in Buenos Aires, where he was a researcher from 1975 to 1979; from 1980 to 1991 he worked as a researcher in Brazil; and since 1983 he has taught at the University of Notre Dame, where he was also academic director of the Kellogg Institute for International Studies (1983–1998). He served as president of the International Political Science Association (1988–1991) and vice president of the American Political Science Association (1999–2000), and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1995.

O'Donnell's Modernization and Bureaucratic-Authoritarianism (1973) offered a pioneering analysis of the breakdown of democracies in South America in the 1960s that challenged the prevailing modernization theory and emphasized the political conflicts generated by an import-substitution model of industrialization. To capture the distinctiveness of the form of authoritarianism that ensued, O'Donnell coined the term "bureaucratic authoritarianism." O'Donnell also made seminal contributions to the study of democratization. Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Tentative Conclusions about Uncertain Democracies (1986), co-authored with Philippe Schmitter, was one of the most widely read works in political science during the 1980s and 1990s. Moreover, the book's analysis of the strategic choices faced by anti-authoritarian groups influenced many opposition leaders around the world. O'Donnell's research since the early 1990s has explored the question of the quality of democracy. His concept of "delegative democracy" highlights the concentration of power in the hands of elected presidents in contemporary Latin American democracies; he has also drawn attention to deficiencies in horizontal accountability and in the rule of law, and the failure of the state to guarantee the rights of citizenship.

See alsoDemocracy .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

O'Donnell, Guillermo. Modernization and Bureaucratic-Authoritarianism: Studies in South American Politics. Berkeley: Institute of International Studies, University of California, 1973.

O'Donnell, Guillermo. Counterpoints: Selected Essays on Authoritarianism and Democratization. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1999.

O'Donnell, Guillermo, and Philippe C. Schmitter. Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Tentative Conclusions about Uncertain Democracies. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986.

O'Donnell, Guillermo, Philippe C. Schmitter, and Laurence Whitehead, eds. Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Prospects for Democracy, 4 vols. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986.

O'Donnell, Guillermo, Jorge Vargas Cullell, and Osvaldo Iazzetta, eds. The Quality of Democracy: Theory and Applications. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2004.

                                   Gerardo L. Munck