Ordinary citizens during extraordinary times

Bremeo builds an argument around Sartori's proposition that citizen polarization is what has led to the demise of democracy. She argues instead that citizens in European and Latin American countries have not always intentionally chosen to side with undemocratic rulers. What appears to be mass civilian support for authoritarian rule in Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Brazil for the LA cases is actually a very small percentage of the population whose views did not reflect those of the majority. For example, in Uruguay most of the rioting in the late 70's was not from the broad left but mostly upper class university students. In Germany of course there was a tendency towards fascism but even then by the time that Hitler came into power the Nazi's did not have a lot of public support. in Brazil voters continued to support (heavily if i muss say) centrist parties and unlike what Sartori argues they did not move towards fringe parties. Bremeo argues that in most cases democracy fell because of the relationships between elites and the military. In almost all of her case studies the undemocratic leaders who led to the fall of democracy e.g. in Romania were invited to lead by the leaders who thought that they would be able maintain their hold on power but as we saw with the King in Romania elites did not always manage to control their appointed leaders. The economic down turn during this time period also shows that the shift from democratic to undemocratic rule might have had little to do with voters not wanting to be democratic and more to do with the economic response and that voters were fed up of the economy and the undemocratic politicians took advantage of the voter frustration. 

I would have liked to see more anecdotes, i like the book but it was just really blah...