One of the three basic themes slated for discussion at the 1994 Summit of the Americas (9-10 December) is “Making Democracy Work.” Under this heading are topics related to combatting official corruption, dealing with narcotics trafficking, encouraging and expanding the roles played in civil society by the nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and enhancing the capacity of the Organization of American States (OAS) to strengthen democracy (Summit, 1994: 4-5). The other two major areas of consideration-Hemispheric economic integration and sustainable development - are also related to the need to stimulate and support the movement towards more democratic governments and societies.

One of the most neglected fields in current social science research until quite recently has been the problem of revolution. While some progress has been made in defining the stages of development once a revolutionary process has begun, and in clarifying the differences between revolts and social revolutions in the context of the underdeveloped world, the whole area of origins still remains a largely unexplored field. The debate is still quite fierce as to whether revolutionaries are marginal or integrated persons; or whether revolutions begin because of too rapid industrialization or because of too little; because of actual exploitation or because of rising expectations. In short, there has been a multiplicity of theories, but few concrete tests of many of these propositions.

In this analysis of contemporary economic and sociopolitical reality in the smaller states of the Commonwealth Caribbean— the so-called Lesser Developed Countries (LDCs) comprising Antigua, St. Kitts-Nevis and Montserrat (the Leeward Islands) and Dominica, Grenada, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent (the Windward Islands)—developments within the larger CARICOM countries—namely Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, and Barbados—will be discussed. All too often social science analysis of the Commonwealth Caribbean assumes a great deal of homogeneity among all CARICOM countries, therefore concluding that what might be a correct analysis of Jamaica, for example, is equally applicable to any of the smaller territories. This article shows that this assumption is often erroneous and can produce several pitfalls in perspective, diagnosis, and prognosis.

During the 1970s there have been several concrete developments in the Commonwealth Caribbean presenting the intellectual community with unprecedented tasks of interpretation. Broadly, the decade began with the massive “black power” upheavals in Trinidad and Tobago and culminated with the revolutionary overthrow of the neocolonial Gairy regime next door in Grenada.

In contrast to other countries in Latin America, Chile emerged from the chaotic postindependence period with a strong state apparatus. Fashioned by the leadership of Diego Portales and institutionalized in the Constitution of 1833, the Chilean state became (and remains) the central focus for national development. Portales was able to marry the existing social and economic order, which was sharply hierarchical, to the institutional structures of a corporate state. In doing so, he shaped political conflict throughout Chilean history into a series of struggles for inclusion in the coalition in control of the state apparatus at any given time. Problems of violence and instability can be seen as the the natural by-products of these multiple attempts to define and redefine both the legitimate scope and orientation of the state and the composition of the dominant groups exercising power.

Who is to blame when the political rhythm of an organized society slips into atrophy and chaos? This enigmatic question towers in the background of recent Colombian history. A country of relative political stability since the birth of Liberalism in the 1930's, Colombia's political life was suddenly rent in 1948 by a horrendous bloodletting which threatened to raze Bogotá and plunged the nation into anarchy. The real villain, wrote Vernon Fluharty, was the system itself. Although the civil war proportions of the violence that followed the bogotazo were ended during the military government of Gustavo Rojas Pinilla (1953-57), a fierce sequence of guerrilla activities continued to plague the countryside. Much of the violence was precipitated by young men who, having deserted their primary groups after the assassination of Gaitán, carried on the war against humanity as a way of life, often in the absence of any ostensible political motive or economic gain.

When barbados became the fourth English-speaking Caribbean country to achieve its constitutional independence, in November 1966, one of its prime responsibilities was to assume defense of the new state. How Barbados approached this problem of defense planning and policy-making in its first 22 years of nationhood (1966-1988) will be the focus of this study. No previous study devoted exclusively to this subject has been published in all this time, a most surprising omission.

Barbados defense policy may be divided into three phases which correspond, roughly, with the periods during which its two major parties — the Democratic Labor Party (DLP) and the Barbados Labor Party (BLP) — have alternated in power.

In recent years, working cooperatively through the Council of Central American Universities and working vigorously, too, as independent universities, the five national universities of Central America have been carrying through a tremendous program of academic reform.

Five major movements in Central American higher education have worked toward the elimination or reduction of the traditional isolation of the virtually independent professional schools of which the universities have been composed. These are:

1. 1. The creation of university cities in which the various divisions are brought together physically.

2. 2. The creation of general studies programs of a year or more into which all entering university students are placed.

3. 3. The development of departments in the basic disciplines which serve the pre-professional general studies program and also tend to offer for all of the professional schools in the university the courses in these basic subjects needed in professional curricula.

4. 4. The strong interest that is arising in post-graduate studies, especially of a regionally planned type.

5. 5. The growing concomitant interest in research with a view that it, like the training of many kinds of professionals, is necessary for the social, economic, and industrial development of Central America.

Great cities have historically demonstrated an affinity for riverine locations. Current activity in Venezuela points to the creation of a major urban node on the south bank of the Orinoco River, at its confluence with the Caroni (Figure 1). Since World War Two, but especially in the last decade, an important series of events within this area of Venezuela has pointed up the opportunity, if not the necessity, of bringing this long dormant region into the nation's developed, effectivelysettled domain. The mining and shipping of iron ore from El Pao by Bethlehem Steel's subsidiary, Iron Mines Company, initiated before the war but not operational until 1950, was the first major stimulus. The region was further awakened with the arrival of United States Steel's Orinoco Mining Company which opened up the Cerro Bolívar iron ore deposit. The first shipment here was in 1954. In both these projects, the developers had to bring in everything necessary for the beginning of operations.

Many authors (for example, Ostrogorski, 1964; Michels, 1962: 175 ff.; Weber, 1946: 101 ff.; Duverger, 1967: 182-197; Schlesinger, 1965: 766-767, 1967: 268; Seligman, 1967: 315; Stinchombe, 1965: 153; McKenzie, 1963: 581-591; Epstein, 1967: 167-233, 289-314) have noted that contemporary political parties are predominantly electoral organizations engaged in public office-seeking and dominated by elected officials. While American parties have always been characterized by office-seeking, this phenomenon was not intially characteristic of socialist, labor, or communist parties which endeavored to create a working-class subculture and to whom public office-seeking was only one of several activities. In many such parties, however, office-seeking has come to dominate or even replace a previously wide range of activities.

The human rights proclaimed and affirmed in the various international declarations, conventions, and covenants adopted since World War II fall into two broad categories: civil and political; and economic, social, and cultural. The former includes the traditional rights of man, such as the rights to life and liberty; the latter includes such rights as the right to work, to social security, and to the preservation of one's health and well-being.

International agreement in principle on most civil and political rights as human rights has been relatively easy to achieve; disagreement has occurred—and is likely to continue to occur-primarily over their precise meaning. Virtually everyone endorses, for example, a right to life; not everyone agrees, however, that capital punishment or abortion must therefore be prohibited by law.

This article studies how public investment and other types of spending by municipal governments shape perceptions of corruption in Mexico. We argue, drawing on various strands of literature, that investment in visible public works projects should lower corruption perceptions, given the well-known difficulties in directly observing corrupt acts. Contrary to our expectations and common assumptions in studies of public investment, we find that more public investment by municipal governments is associated, on average, with higher corruption perceptions. However, this effect is mediated by individuals’ education levels. For individuals with less formal education, higher public investment correlates with higher perceived corruption, while highly educated individuals perceive less corruption when municipal public investment is high. The study uses qualitative evidence from municipal audit reports to identify a possible mechanism driving this outcome: municipal investments may not be targeted to the poorer neighborhoods with greater public service deficits.

This article analyzes how market reform policies already in place affect social interests, and the feedback effects of those interests on reform processes. The variety of societal responses includes the creation of new societal organizations, reflecting the variable content and asymmetrical distribution of costs and benefits of the policies implemented. Because of this variety even in Peru, where the disorganizing effects of neoliberal reform appear to be strongest, it would seem that the societal impact of economic reform elsewhere in Latin America would also warrant more careful examination.

A set of discussion groups including leftist ex-guerrillas and rightist ex-paramilitaries in Colombia shows the limits for democratic deliberation in postconflict societies, but also points to ways that outcomes closer to the deliberative ideal might be obtained. A total of 342 ex-combatants agreed to sit down and talk politics under a number of experimental conditions, using three different protocols of engagement. Results show that consensus rule fosters simultaneously a more reasoned and common-good–oriented, and less self-interested type of discussion when compared to majority rule and unstructured “free talk.” Nevertheless, while it might be desirable to promote a better quality of deliberation in divided societies, it does not necessarily prevent antagonists’ tendency to polarize.

Mounting evidence suggests that Latin American democracies are characterized by politics and societies becoming more divisive, confrontational, and polarized. This process, which we define here as the “new polarization” in Latin America, seems to weaken the ability of democratic institutions to manage and resolve social and political conflicts. Although recent scholarship suggests that polarization is integral to contemporary patterns of democratic “backsliding” seen in much of the world, this new polarization in the region has not yet received systematic scholarly attention. Aiming to address this gap in the literature, the different contributions in this special issue revise the conceptualization, measurement, and theory of a multidimensional phenomenon such as polarization, including both its ideological and affective dimensions, as well as perspectives at the elite and mass levels of analysis. Findings shed light on the phenomenon of polarization as both a dependent and an independent variable, contributing to comparative literature on polarization and its relationship to democratic governance.

To say that the Brazilian scene has been volatile—politically and economically—during the past ten years is to risk an understatement. A mere listing of the presidents of Brazil during this limited period illustrates the point. It begins with the enormously popular— then and now—Juscelino Kubitschek, who represented the industrialization of Brazil and the move away from the coast with the decision to create a new capital in Brasilia. Then, the overwhelming electoral victory of Jânio Quadros—the enigma of Brazilian politics who had been such a successful Mayor and Governor of São Paulo only to resign the presidency after six months for reasons that still remain unclear today. Next came the then Vice President João Goulart, who was visiting Red China when he heard he was to become President. Although his powers were curtailed before he was allowed to take office, he served long enough to create an impression of corruption and leftward drift and the reality of almost runaway inflation—factors which led to the revolution of March, 1964, and the administration of Marshal Castello Branco.

Debates about democratization in developing countries have generally emphasized competitive elections, broad participation, and the protection of civil and political liberties. A survey of the first two years of PAN administration in the city of Puebla, Mexico, assesses government capacities and policy responses to social and economic demands. It suggests that excitement over the election of opposition party officials should be tempered pending evidence of the accommodation of such demands.

The data concerning Brazilian law students presented in this article are the result of a survey made by the author ini 1960 while studying the judiciary system of that country. The objective of the survey was to identify those students favorably disposed toward the judiciary and to examine their social and economic background. In the process, however, a large amount of data of a more general nature was collected. Besides significant variations between different universities, Catholic and state, and the various economic groups, the data provide an empirical examination of the results of the process of selection for higher education in Brazil and the economic groups from which the student is drawn. Some information concerning the students’ attitudes toward politics was also gathered.