The traditional approach to Latin American studies has been through the historical account, emphasizing specific leaders or epochs of a given Latin American nation in change, based on the assumption, mostly implicit, that each of these events may be considered as a unique phenomenon, subject to individual interpretation. This diachronic approach can well serve as a fruitful point of departure for systematic empirical investigations into border Latin American cultures. The contribution of a generalizing science such as sociology need not be suspected of an abortive rebellion against these established and accepted procedures. Rather, an empirical inquiry into the similarities and differences between border Latin American culture and our own gives a new dimension to the field of Latin American studies previously unavailable. This paper will attempt to illustrate the type of possible contributions of border research by using recent empirical studies.

This study is a sequel to one done by this writer on the foreign policy of Jamaica from 1972 to 1977 (Lewis, 1981) and covers the remaining period during which the People's National Party (PNP), led by Prime Minister Michael Manley, presided over the government of the country.

In elections held on October 30, 1980, the PNP government was decisively defeated by the opposition Jamaica Labour Party (JLP). The latter had, in the previous elections of December 15, 1976, retained only 13 seats in Jamaica's parliament. When the Jamaica Labour Party administration took office, as the party had promised in its election manifesto, it reversed the central planks of the domestic and foreign policies of the PNP administration and reestablished a close relationship with the United States as the main element of its domestic and foreign policies.

The use of “group” as a unit of analysis has a long tradition in political science. Some proponents of this approach (Bentley, 1908; Hagan, 1966) define group in such a broad way as to simplify the study of politics little if any. An empirically more useful approach to the study of groups is that pursued by David Truman (1955), who concentrates his attention on interest groups. Although he never states that all of the politics of the United States can be understood through the study of interest groups, it is clear that Truman considers the study of such groups to be a central aspect and, in effect, hypothesizes that such would be the case in any political system. Whether this is in fact the case can be tested by cross-national studies. In one such study, Joseph La Palombara (1960) concluded that the important aspects of Italian politics are not explained satisfactorily by studying organized interest groups. This is in direct contradiction to Truman's implicit hypothesis, which would be refuted if numerous studies in other political systems concluded as La Palombara's did.

Robert F. Kennedy's observation that “progress is a nice word..but change is its motivator and change has its enemies,” could have been made for the remaining six, all physically small, British dependent territories in the Caribbean: Anguilla, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands (BVI), Cayman Islands, Montserrat, and the Turks and Caicos Islands (TCI). The persistent refusal by the majority of their respective peoples to consider independence, despite, in some of the territories, its propagation by political leaders and its blandishment — at least until recently — by the British, seems an anachronism.

One of the most curious phenomena ever to be recorded in the annals of Latin American church history was a peculiarly Brazilian institution known as the Catholic Electoral League. Lofty in its ideals but confused in their practice, disclaiming political party status yet directly involving the Church in every political campaign of the day, the League functioned between 1932 and 1937 as a political pressure group under the direct auspices of the Roman Catholic Church. It operated on a more national scale than the political parties themselves, which were still basically regional.

“Historically the spread of technical progress has been uneven,” declared Dr. Raúl Prebisch, Executive Secretary of the United Nations’ Economic Commission for Latin America, “and this has contributed to the division of the World economy into industrial centers and peripheral countries engaged in primary production, with differences in income growth.” This division of the family of nations into relatively-developed “centers” and the developing “periphery” lies at the core of the Prebisch theory of industrialism for Latin America.

The Prebisch “thesis”, already twelve years old, has grown out of the Latin-American experience and is gaining an increasing acceptance among Latin-American economists. The effort of this paper will be to lay open the elements of the Prebisch analysis uncritically at its several stages of development. But first it will be useful to review briefly the earlier development of economic growth theory in Latin America.

The international financial community has recently joined the arms control community in scrutinizing the relationship between military spending and economic growth. The Independent Group on Financial Flows to Developing Countries, headed by Helmut Schmidt, recommended (in Facing One World) that priority in financial assistance be given to countries that spend less than 2% of their gross domestic product (GDP) on security (The Economist, 1991a: 61). Robert McNamara, past president of the World Bank as well as a former US Secretary of Defense, supported this proposal in his speech before the World Bank Annual Conference on Development Economics (April 1991), recommending that military expenditures, as a percentage of GDP, be reduced by 50%. Nicole Ball, in Pressing for Peace: Can Aid Induce Reform?, argues cogently for conditioning international assistance on the initiation, or acceleration, of reforms in defense spending in the developing world (Ball, 1992).

What causes stark differences in living standards between subnational units? What can countries do to lessen such variations? This article argues that there is an aspect of national policy frameworks that impacts subnational provision of social services: the sensitivity of policy to the particularities of place. Place-sensitive policies make adaptations to the way social services are organized and provided across a country, so that they are better equipped to deal with the different characteristics of places and better support their well-being. When policies are place-sensitive, subnational provision is facilitated in poor, rural, and marginal locations in a country. In contrast, place-blind policies employ a one-size-fits-all approach that excludes people in vulnerable areas and aggravates inequalities in social service provision and social outcomes. By studying the Colombian case, this article demonstrates that a key placeblind feature of its healthcare model disproportionately affects small localities.

The foreign exchange market in Peru experienced the same kinds of overwhelming volatility and severe shocks as the rest of the national economy during the 1980s. Beginning in 1980, Peru's economy was buffeted by a severe decline in copper prices followed, in 1982, by a huge increase in real debt servicing costs as a result of the drop in industrial-country inflation and remaining high dollar interest rates. This simultaneous squeeze on export earnings and hike in debt service cost led to an inability to meet foreign debt commitments and, essentially, a cutoff from access to foreign capital.

Several years ago, in a general essay on Dominican politics, I wrote a few pages about the political role of the Dominican Armed Forces. I argued that “the history of the past few years in the Dominican Republic may best be viewed as a constant struggle among changing alliances, not in terms of confrontation between civilian authority and the military establishment” (Lowenthal, 1969: 40). I suggested that “far from being a professional institution dedicated to certain principles that impel its occasional entry into politics, the Dominican Armed Forces have never had any significant function beyond politics, except for plunder” (Lowenthal, 1969: 40). Painting a picture of constant struggle within the Dominican Armed Forces, for power and a chance at the spoils, I played down the importance, for understanding the political role of Dominican military officers, of institutional and ideological considerations.

The Brazilian government's National Steel Mill at Volta Redonda is considered by many to be a hallmark in the development of Brazilian industry and the symbol of a future Brazil. It represents to them a turning away from the old monoproductive agricultural pattern, with its inherent weaknesses, and an acceptance of industry with its promise of a fuller, more secure national existence. The Brazilians are proud of this iron and steel mill. Not only is it the largest such mill in Brazil, it is also the largest in all Latin America. To many it is an important step in the road toward a stronger world position. This is an important point in a continent often overlooked and taken for granted by the leading world powers.

The Antarctic Treaty was signed by twelve countries in 1959. This group, together with those countries having territorial claims prior to signing the treaty—Argentina, Australia, Chile, France, New Zealand, Norway, and the United Kingdom—would try with great difficulty to reconcile the opposing interests of (1) countries that for decades had been actively defending their claims of sovereignty over sectors of Antarctica; (2) superpowers that, while not asserting any claims of their own—although certainly reserving the right to do so in the future—did not accept those of other countries; and (3) a number of countries that had been invited to participate in the treaty because they had been active in Antarctica during the International Geophysical Year.

During the first half of the present century, about one million Mexicans were involved in a singular instance of large scale entry into the United States. Arriving just before the influx of foreigners abated sharply, they provide an example of recent immigration. In contrast to the experience of other groups entering one or more generations before, Mexican settlement occurred during the drastic changes caused by rapid economic growth and depression, by two world wars and the nation's reorganization for modern living. Nor did the newcomers from the South follow the traditional pattern of residence and occupation. Instead of locating in the densely urban and industrial Northeast of the United States, they flowed into rural areas in the Southwest, working in agriculture, railroad construction and related activities. Except for Canadian immigrants, the Mexicans were the only major immigrant group having relatively easy access to the home country by an overland route. Lastly, their distinctively Latin American culture has added novelty to history of immigration to the United States.

This article explores the role of informal customary institutions (usos y costumbres) in local public goods provision in Mexico. It argues that the presence of informal customary institutions offers submunicipal village communities considerable advantages in local distributive politics. Hamlet communities with dense customary institutions have higher collective action capacity to organize their citizens for small-scale protests in municipal centers, which grants them access to more social infrastructure projects controlled by municipal politicians. This article therefore suggests a novel theoretical mechanism through which customary institutions affect development outcomes: collective contentious action. The study tests the main empirical implications of this theory, drawing on an original survey of submunicipal community presidents in the states of Puebla and Tlaxcala and qualitative interviews.

As an instrument for governance, summitry is a novel structure for the management of contemporary hemispheric regionalism in the Americas. Such regionalism is a clear case of the “structuralist paradox” of international cooperation. This article attempts to explain the particular asymmetric regionalism in the Americas by using the concept of cooperative hegemony. The underlying hypothesis is that the U.S. government, since 1994, has pursued a strategy of cooperative behavior, at least in regard to power sharing, in two specific phases of hemispheric regionalism: agenda setting and institutionalization. This study tests the hypothesis through a content analysis of the main documents produced at the Miami, Santiago, and Québec summits, then relates these findings to the progress of institutionalization from 1994 to 2003.

This study analyzes whether Guatemalan success with the kingpin decapitation strategy of bringing major drug traffickers to justice has accomplished its greater objectives of reducing cocaine trafficking and drug-related violence. The analysis finds little evidence of success for the first objective in Guatemala but notable success for the second. One of the few studies to examine the application of this strategy outside Mexico and Colombia, its findings are interpreted in light of their contrasting experiences. The article provides an overview of drug trafficking in Guatemala and concise studies of two of its most important organizations targeted by the kingpin strategy.

History is written by the winners,” wrote Orwell (1970: 110); he went on to suggest that a totalitarian government “claims to control the past as well as the future.” Yet such a concern with controlling the past is not a distinguishing feature of totalitarianism; many examples of an ideological or legendary version of the past receiving government sanction can be found in nontotalitarian countries. While few governments or political parties can afford to ignore the past completely, it is undoubtedly the case that in some countries a “correct” interpretation of the past is of more pressing concern to contemporary politicians than it is in others. Since the early days of independence, Haitians have shown an absorbing interest in their past—not a dead “historical” past, but a living ideological past. The position which a Haitian has taken with respect to the past has been closely connected to his political commitments in the present, and rival parties have elaborated competing legends which function as legitimations of sheir current policies and interests.

Why are some Latin American states plagued by persistent policy volatility while the policies of others remain relatively stable? This article explores the political economy of natural resource rents and policy volatility across Latin America. It argues that, all else equal, resource rents will create incentives for political leaders, which will result in repeated episodes of policy volatility. This effect, however, will depend on the structure of political institutions. Where political institutions fail to provide a forum for intertemporal exchange among political actors, natural resource rents will result in increased levels of policy volatility. Alternatively, where political institutions facilitate agreement among actors, resource rents will be conducive to policy stability. This argument is tested on a measure of policy volatility for 18 Latin American economies between 1993 and 2008. The statistical tests provide support for the argument.

On 25 November 1985 the Republic of Suriname celebrated ten years of independent statehood. That decade witnessed a number of unexpected and quite extraordinary events in the former Dutch colony. Since the last free parliamentary elections in 1977, the country has endured: a military coup d'etat (1980) the arbitrary arrest and detainment of leaders of the “old” political parties (1980); the nullification of its constitution and civil rights (1980) and the imposition of a “state of emergency” (1982); the appointment by the military high command of five civilian cabinets (1981,1982,1983,1984, and 1985); a foreign and domestic policy that has swung erratically between far left and center; a cordial relationship with Cuba unceremoniously broken by Suriname following the US-led invasion of Grenada; the tragic and colossally stupid murder of 15 (possibly more) prominent Surinamers opposed to the revolution (1982); the suspension of more than US$1.5 billion dollars of Dutch foreign aid (1982); seven alleged counter-coups, one of which supposedly enjoyed the support of the CIA and several American mercenaries (1980-1984); deteriorating relations with the Netherlands, to the point where there is no ambassador in the Hague; a rather visionary attempt to dismantle the ethnic structure of pre-revo party politics by creating “one national party;” a cozy relationship with Libya under the guise of “cultural exchange;” and the rapid deterioration of a once booming economy. Now in 1986, in the midst of a dialogue with the “old” political parties, there is robust talk of a return to civilian government.