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Polarization and Legitimacy in Latin America

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2012

Paul E. Sigmund
Paul E. Sigmund
Affiliation:
PAUL E. SIGMUND is a Professor of Politics at Princeton University and author of Models of Political Change in Latin America (N.Y.: Praeger, 1970), The Overthrow of Allende and the Politics of Chile (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1978), and the forthcoming Liberation Theology at the Crossroads: Democracy or Revolution?
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Abstract

This article examines the trends of democratic transformation in Latin America, focusing on the notion that transitions there occurred despite the absence of the accepted cultural and economic preconditions for democracy. Radical leftist guerrilla movements historically inspired by Castro and the Dependencia politics that infiltrated the continent in the 1950s and 1960s were challenged by rightist military doctrines based on the national duty to protect the country and install order. This ideological polarization served as the ultimate impetus for moderation in policies on the continent. Sigmund is optimistic that the new consensus of conservatives, liberals, Catholics, and Marxists has made prospects for democracy in the region more positive now than at any time in history.

Type
Articles
Information
Ethics & International Affairs , Volume 3 , March 1989 , pp. 245 - 260
Copyright
© Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 1989

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References

1 See, for example, the classic article by Theotonio Dos Santos, “The Structure of Dependence,” which concludes, “Everything now indicates that what can be expected is a long process of sharp political and military confrontations and of profound social radicalization which will lead these countries to a dilemma: governments of force which open the way to fascism, or popular revolutionary governments which open the way to socialism.”American Economic Review, Vol. 60, No. 2 (1970) p. 236Google Scholar.

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4 See Rouquie, Alain, The Military and the State in Latin America, trans. Sigmund, Paul E. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987) chapters 4 and 11Google Scholar.

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6 See, for example, Wiarda, Howard, Corporatism and National Development in Latin America (Boulder: Westview Press, 1981)Google Scholar; Roett, Riordan, Brazil: Politics in a Patrimonial Society (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1978)Google Scholar; Moreno, Francisco José., Legitimacy and Stability in Latin America (New York: New York University Press, 1969)Google Scholar; Veliz, Claudio, The Centralist Tradition in Latin America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 For the evolution in official Catholic attitudes toward democracy, See Sigmund, Paul E., “The Catholic Tradition and Modern Democracy,”The Review of Politics, Vol. 49, No. 4 (September 1987) pp. 530–48Google Scholar.

8 See Brett, Donna Whitson and Brett, Edward T., Murdered in Central America (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1988)Google Scholar.

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