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Elites, Elite Settlements, and Revolutionary Movements in Latin America, 1950–1980: Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Timothy P. Wickham-Crowley
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Extract

Social revolutions as well as revolutionary movements have recently held great interest for both sociopolitical theorists and scholars of Latin American politics. Before we can proceed with any useful analysis, however, we must distinguish between these two related but not identical phenomena. Adapting Theda Skocpol’s approach, we can define social revolutions as “rapid, basic transformations of a society’s state and class structures; and they are accompanied and in part carried through by” mass-based revolts from below, sometimes in cross-class coalitions (Skocpol 1979: 4; Wickham-Crowley 1991:152). In the absence of such basic sociopolitical transformations, I will not speak of (social) revolution or of a revolutionary outcome, only about revolutionary movements, exertions, projects, and so forth. Studies of the failures and successes of twentieth-century Latin American revolutions have now joined the ongoing theoretical debate as to whether such outcomes occur due to society- or movement-centered processes or instead due to state- or regime-centered events (Wickham-Crowley 1992).

Type
Special Section: Making History from Above and Below: Elite and Popular Perspectives on Politics
Information
Social Science History , Volume 18 , Issue 4 , Winter 1994 , pp. 543 - 574
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 1994 

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