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Consolidating Democracy Or Stopping At Polyarchy? An Evaluation Of The Chamorro Administration In Nicaragua (1990-1997), Roland D. Mckay

Journal of Undergraduate Research at Minnesota State University, Mankato

The period from 1990 to 1997, the tenure of the Chamorro administration, presents a salient and unique case study in Latin American ‘democratic consolidation’, although as we shall see, this concept is problematic when applied to Nicaragua. It is difficult to evaluate objectively the performance of the decade‐long tenure of the FSLN, since the government had civil war thrust upon it even as Sandinista tanks rolled into Managua’s Plaza Central in 1979. The process of democratic consolidation in Nicaragua began long before the 1990 election, however. The purpose of this paper, then, is to evaluate the Chamorro administration in terms …