Copyright (c) 1999 University of Miami Law Review

... Democracy is the anti-subordination perspective. ... Some of the most important limits to democracy are not incidental or accidental: they are critical, systemic, structural, and delib erate. ... With the coming to power of successive conservative administra tions pledging a "return to democracy" some aspects of "really existing democracy" have been consolidated while poverty and economic ine quality have only increased. Democracy in Nicaragua remains a distant horizon. ... The concept of foreign intervenor is broad enough to admit very different types of interlopers with competing agendas rather than one group with a single template. ... As civilian governments replaced military dictators, the U.S. agenda changed from propping up regimes that were merely authorita rian (i.e., right-wing) in order to prevent totalitarian (i.e., left-wing) rev olutions to schemes for supporting the consolidation of really existing democracy in Latin America. ... However, the clash between intervenors and "anti-poli tics" groups in Eastern Europe is at the core a disagreement about whether democracy is merely procedural or also substantive, in effect an argument about the adequacy of really existing democracy. ...