Forrest D Colburn
Biographic Data
| ID | 435362 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Forrest D Colburn |
| GIVEN NAMES | Forrest D |
| FAMILY NAME | Colburn |
| SIGNATURE | COLBURN F D |
| AFFILIATIONS | Princeton University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 46 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 71 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 46 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1982 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Is Costa Rica's Democracy Failing
Costa Rica is arguably the longest continuously existing democracy in Latin America (though it only dates to 1949). In the last two decades, though, there has been a weakening of the country's democracy. The country's problems stem not from economic woes, but from corruption scandals that undermined the two traditional parties that had long provided stability. There has been a rise in multipartism, and incentives for political actors have changed…
The puzzle of Covid-19 in Central America and Panama
T he novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, which causes the infectious disease COVID-19, was declared by the World Health Organization (WHO) in March 2020 to be a pandemic. It is alarming how quickly and destructively it spread throughout the world. However, the disease has struck countries, and even regions, with varying intensity, raising questions about what makes populations vulnerable and about public policies' effectiveness to control the virus. T…
Nicaragua's surprising response to Covid-19
icaragua' s response to COVID-19 has been surprising; the government has not only dismissed the recommendations of world health authorities to take precautions but has flouted them by organizing large-scale public events The Nicaraguan government' s dismissal of the danger of COVID-19 has not only led to an international outcry, especially from neighboring countries, but has also put Nicaraguan doctors and other health professionals in an agonizi…
The Decay of The Central American Left
Fervent and widespread protests that broke out in April 2018 against Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua exposed the lack of legitimacy of that country's personalistic regime. Longstanding members of the Sandinista Front for National Liberation have deserted the organization, long a pillar of the left in Central America. In neighboring El Salvador, the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front came in a distant third in the presidential election of 3 Febr…
Latin America at the End of Politics
The Fading of Costa Rica’s Old Parties
The small Central American country of Costa Rica has been celebrated for its vigorous democracy. Elections have been long dominated by two political parties: the National Liberation Party (PLN) and the Social Christian Unity Party (PUSC). On 4 February 2018, however, an election was held with a surprising outcome. The winner of the first round was Fabricio Alvarado, an evangelical Christian singer and preacher from the small National Restoration …
Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance
Latin America’s New Turbulence: Trouble in the “Northern Triangle
Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador are weighed down by high crime, sluggish economies, and heavy reliance on remittances. And when significant political change has taken place, it has resulted in frightening political fragmentation
El Salvador’s Beleauguered Democracy
Salvadorans went to the polls on 2 February 2014 to select a new president. With current president Mauricio Funes of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) ineligible to run (El Salvador’s constitution prohibits consecutive presidential terms), voters were left to choose among Vice-President Salvador Sánchez Cerén of the FMLN and former San Salvador mayor Norman Quijano of the National Republican Alliance (known as Arena). In an ext…
Common Expositional Problems in Students' Papers and Theses
Words should be chosen and used carefully so that they convey the meaning or meanings that you intend—and do not convey any unintended or double meanings. Writing should leave little ambiguity or uncertainty about what you are referring to—unless some purposeful ambiguity is desired. Sometimes words that are abstract or superficial may be chosen to suit the writer's purpose. For example, there is a long tradition of euphemistic writing. But such …
Personalism and Populism in Nicaragua
Scholarship on populism has focused on the ways in which charismatic leaders trade economic benefits for political support and their ability to smother political institutions. But the Nicaraguan case suggests that attention should also be given to the other end of the polity—namely, the absence in the general population of a democratic culture that offers needed support for political institutions. In Nicaragua, the scarcity of informed, engaged, …
Varieties of Liberalism in Central America: Nation-States As Works in Progress
The Turnover in El Salvador
On 15 March 2009, Mauricio Funes, the candidate of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN)–a former guerrilla movement that laid down its arms in 1992 and reconstituted itself as a political party–won the presidential election in El Salvador, marking the country's first peaceful turnover of power since the nation-state became independent in 1821. But sweeping social and political change will probably be elusive; instead, political an…
Liberalism and Democracy
Liberalism Takes Root in Central America
Central America's unlikely route to liberal democracy may not have been perceived as leading to durable regimes. However, democracy has been resilient and even stable in Central America. Indeed, Central Americans, accustomed to being perceived as poor and unstable by their Mexican and South American brethren, have been smug about the locus of Latin America's ills being shifted to South America
Latin America at the End of Politics
Fragile Democracies
Latin America's democracies are not in danger of collapse at this time. But there are many real problems, and not many indications that these problems are being addressed with imagination and determination
Latin America at the End of Politics
The Vogue of Revolution in Poor Countries
The Decline of Communist Systems
The Vogue of Revolution in Poor Countries
Wallerstein's account of coerced labor on the periphery of the world economy.Also included are an extremely thorough treatment of Africa in the world by Frederick Cooper, and paired essays reviewing the peasantries of Africa and Latin America by Allen Isaacman and William Roseberry.An introductory essay by Stern and a meditative response to the core essays by Florencia E. Mallon complete the volume.The cumulative demonstration in these essays tha…
The Vogue of Revolution in Poor Countries
The Vogue of Revolutions in Poor Countries
Exceptions to urban bias in Latin America: Cuba and Costa Rica
This essay speculates on the structural conditions under which the peasantry in Latin America is able to prosper. Contemporary Latin American states invariably meddle in agricultural markets. Despite government affirmations to the contrary, peasants ordinarily do not benefit from state intervention in the agricultural sector. However, there are two exceptions to this pattern in Latin America, and surprisingly they are the cases which ideologicall…
The Fading of the Revolutionary Era in Central America
Essay| February 01 1992 The Fading of the Revolutionary Era in Central America Forrest D. Colburn Forrest D. Colburn Forrest D. Colburn is an assistant professor of politics at Princeton University. His most recent book is My Car in Managua (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1991), a collection of essays on daily life in Nicaragua during the Sandinista Revolution. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Current …
Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance
Peasant rebellions are uncommon. Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance explores peasants' foot dragging, feigned ingorance, false compliance, manipulation, flight, slander, theft, arson, sabotage, and similar prosaic forms of struggle. These kinds of resistance stop well short of collective defiance, a strategy usually suicidal for the subordinate. The central argument about peasant resistance is presented in the opening chapter by James Scott in …
Personalism and Populism in Nicaragua
Scholarship on populism has focused on the ways in which charismatic leaders trade economic benefits for political support and their ability to smother political institutions. But the Nicaraguan case suggests that attention should also be given to the other end of the polity—namely, the absence in the general population of a democratic culture that offers needed support for political institutions. In Nicaragua, the scarcity of informed, engaged, …
The Turnover in El Salvador
On 15 March 2009, Mauricio Funes, the candidate of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN)–a former guerrilla movement that laid down its arms in 1992 and reconstituted itself as a political party–won the presidential election in El Salvador, marking the country's first peaceful turnover of power since the nation-state became independent in 1821. But sweeping social and political change will probably be elusive; instead, political an…
The Vogue of Revolution in Poor Countries
Statism, Rationality, and State Centrism
Latin America’s New Turbulence: Trouble in the “Northern Triangle
Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador are weighed down by high crime, sluggish economies, and heavy reliance on remittances. And when significant political change has taken place, it has resulted in frightening political fragmentation
Rethinking socialism in the Third World
Revolution, though an important political phenomenon historically, seemingly remains so only in the Third World. Contemporary cases of revolution are all in poor, developing countries (Cuba, Cambodia, Mozambique, Angola, GuineaBissau, Ethiopia, Iran and Nicaragua). With the exception of Iran, the leadership of these revolutions has attempted to replace the old order with socialism. The relative success of socialism in these cases is of consequenc…
Grain marketing regulations
Post-Revolutionary Nicaragua: State, Class, and the Dilemmas of Agrarian Policy
Current Studies of Peasants and Rural Development: Applications of the Political Economy Approach
Much of the recent writing on peasants and rural development is based on a litical economy model. This approach, best exemplified by Samuel Popkin'sThe adtional Peasant, sees the peasant as a self-interested rational actor, and develops a unchaning investment logic to explain economic and political decisions. It is a more sophiticated approach than earlier attempts at applying a political economy model because it recognizes that income-maximizati…
The Decay of The Central American Left
Fervent and widespread protests that broke out in April 2018 against Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua exposed the lack of legitimacy of that country's personalistic regime. Longstanding members of the Sandinista Front for National Liberation have deserted the organization, long a pillar of the left in Central America. In neighboring El Salvador, the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front came in a distant third in the presidential election of 3 Febr…
El Salvador’s Beleauguered Democracy
Salvadorans went to the polls on 2 February 2014 to select a new president. With current president Mauricio Funes of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) ineligible to run (El Salvador’s constitution prohibits consecutive presidential terms), voters were left to choose among Vice-President Salvador Sánchez Cerén of the FMLN and former San Salvador mayor Norman Quijano of the National Republican Alliance (known as Arena). In an ext…
The People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia Masking and Unmasking Tragedy
Recent scholarship on Ethiopia describes the central oudine of events in the aftermath of the country's 1974 revolution. But the books that should be the most insightful, because of the theoretical ambitions of the authors, often disappoint because they obfuscate politics with abstract discussions of the "state." Three shortcomings of state theories are evident: they underestimate the impact of individual leaders, discount the content of ideology…
Privilege, Production, and Revolution: The Case of Nicaragua
Current Studies of Peasants and Rural Development: Applications of the Political Economy Approach
Much of the recent writing on peasants and rural development is based on a litical economy model. This approach, best exemplified by Samuel Popkin'sThe adtional Peasant, sees the peasant as a self-interested rational actor, and develops a unchaning investment logic to explain economic and political decisions. It is a more sophiticated approach than earlier attempts at applying a political economy model because it recognizes that income-maximizati…
Rural Labor and the State in Postrevolutionary Nicaragua
Barring the outbreak of internecine conflict in Central America, the greatest challenge to the Nicaraguan Revolution lies in rural Nicaragua. As in most developing countries, the severest poverty in Nicaragua has always been found in the rural areas. Somewhat paradoxically, however, the rural areas of the country are also the source of the nation's wealth: 90 percent of the foreign exchange, so necessary to a small state like Nicaragua, is derive…
Mexico's Financial Crisis
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. As you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button
Nicaragua under Siege
Essay| March 01 1985 Nicaragua under Siege Forrest D. Colburn Forrest D. Colburn Assistant Professor of Political Science, Florida International University Forrest D. Colburn has done extensive research in Nicaragua. His book on postrevolutionary Nicaragua will be published by the University of California Press in 1985. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Current History (1985) 84 (500): 105–108. https://doi.…
International Relations and Politics
Privilege, Production, and Revolution: The Case of Nicaragua
Post-Revolutionary Nicaragua: State, Class, and the Dilemmas of Agrarian Policy
De Guatemala a Guatepeor
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. As you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button
Embattled Nicaragua
Essay| December 01 1987 Embattled Nicaragua Forrest D. Colburn Forrest D. Colburn Assistant Professor of Politics, Princeton University Forrest D. Colburn is the author of Post-Revolutionary Nicaragua: State, Class, and the Dilemmas of Agrarian Policy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986) and the editor of Centroamérica: Estrategias de Desarrollo (San José: Editorial Universitaria Centroamericana, 1987). Search for other works by this …
Deteriorating Public and Private Sector Relations in Central America
The Central American countries are divided by profound political differences. Yet surprising similarities exist in the changing relations between the public and private sectors. Throughout the region, public and private sectors lock into a vicious circle. The inability of the state to provide order and social harmony creates disincentives for the private sector to invest or even to continue existing levels of production. The government responds b…
Fire From the Mountain: The Making of a Sandinista
Post-Revolutionary Nicaragua: State, Class, and the Dilemmas of Agrarian Policy
Statism, Rationality, and State Centrism
The Nicaraguan Revolution
Booth, John A. (1985), The End and the Beginning, The Nicaraguan Revolution, 2nd Edn, Westview Press (Boulder and London). 363 pp. ?43, pbk ?15. Barraclough, Solon and others (1988), Aid That Counts, The Western Contribution to Development and Survival in Nicaragua, Trans? national Institute (Amsterdam) and Coordinadora Regional de Investigaciones Economicas y Sociales (Managua). 157 pp. ?4.95. Close, David (1988), Nicaragua: Politics, Economics …
Grain marketing regulations
How Facts Replace Fads: Social Science and Social Development
The People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia Masking and Unmasking Tragedy
Recent scholarship on Ethiopia describes the central oudine of events in the aftermath of the country's 1974 revolution. But the books that should be the most insightful, because of the theoretical ambitions of the authors, often disappoint because they obfuscate politics with abstract discussions of the "state." Three shortcomings of state theories are evident: they underestimate the impact of individual leaders, discount the content of ideology…
Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance
Peasant rebellions are uncommon. Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance explores peasants' foot dragging, feigned ingorance, false compliance, manipulation, flight, slander, theft, arson, sabotage, and similar prosaic forms of struggle. These kinds of resistance stop well short of collective defiance, a strategy usually suicidal for the subordinate. The central argument about peasant resistance is presented in the opening chapter by James Scott in …
Thanks to God and the Revolution: The Oral History of a Nicaraguan Family
Winner of the 1991 Chicago Women in Publishing Award In a restaurant in Esteli, Nicaragua, Dianne Walta Hart, a visiting American scholar, and Marta Lopez, member of a Nicaraguan women's organization, began to talk of the Sandinista revolution and of the changes it had brought, especially for women. Their conversation was to continue at intervals over the next four years; it expanded to include Marta's mother, Dona Maria, her sister, Leticia, and…
The Fading of the Revolutionary Era in Central America
Essay| February 01 1992 The Fading of the Revolutionary Era in Central America Forrest D. Colburn Forrest D. Colburn Forrest D. Colburn is an assistant professor of politics at Princeton University. His most recent book is My Car in Managua (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1991), a collection of essays on daily life in Nicaragua during the Sandinista Revolution. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Current …
Rethinking socialism in the Third World
Revolution, though an important political phenomenon historically, seemingly remains so only in the Third World. Contemporary cases of revolution are all in poor, developing countries (Cuba, Cambodia, Mozambique, Angola, GuineaBissau, Ethiopia, Iran and Nicaragua). With the exception of Iran, the leadership of these revolutions has attempted to replace the old order with socialism. The relative success of socialism in these cases is of consequenc…
Managing the Commanding Heights: Nicaragua's State Enterprises
Exceptions to urban bias in Latin America: Cuba and Costa Rica
This essay speculates on the structural conditions under which the peasantry in Latin America is able to prosper. Contemporary Latin American states invariably meddle in agricultural markets. Despite government affirmations to the contrary, peasants ordinarily do not benefit from state intervention in the agricultural sector. However, there are two exceptions to this pattern in Latin America, and surprisingly they are the cases which ideologicall…
The Vogue of Revolutions in Poor Countries
The Vogue of Revolution in Poor Countries
Political science (37 works) · Law (26 works) · Economics (24 works) · Sociology (24 works) · Politics (23 works) · Political economy (20 works) · Law (15 works) · Development economics (14 works) · History (13 works) · Democracy (10 works)