Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7czq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T02:34:38.239Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Crisis and Democracy in Latin America

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Peter H. Smith
Peter H. Smith
Affiliation:
Professor of Political Science and Director of the Center for Iberian and Latin American Studies, and Simón Bolívar Professor of Latin American Studies at the University of California, San Diego
Get access

Abstract

Democratization in Latin America took place throughout the 1980s within a context of acute economic crisis, thus posing a sharp challenge to established theory. This essay examines alternative explanations-economic, political, institutional, international-for this paradoxical outcome. It is argued that the political impact of the debt crisis differs for the short, medium, and long terms. The analysis also devotes considerable attention to the concept of “democratization” and to the quality of Latin American democracies, which tend to contain pervasive authoritarian features. Careful reading of these phenomena can lay the foundation for new and enduring theoretical frameworks about the relationship between macroeco-nomic transformation and political change.

Type
Review Articles
Information
World Politics , Volume 43 , Issue 4 , July 1991 , pp. 608 - 634
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1991

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Herman, Edward S. and Brodhead, Frank, Demonstration Elections: U. S.-Staged Elections in the Dominican Republic, Vietnam, and El Salvador (Boston: South End Press, 1984)Google Scholar; and Karl, Terry, “Imposing Consent? Electoralism vs. Democratization in El Salvador,” in Drake, Paul W. and Silva, Eduardo, eds., Elections and Democratization in Latin America, 1980–85 (La Jolla, Calif.: Center for Iberian and Latin American Studies–Center for U. S.-Mexican Studies, 1986), 9–36.Google Scholar

World Politics 43 (July 1991), 608–34

2 Johnson, John J., Political Change in Latin America: The Emergence of the Middle Sectors (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1958)Google Scholar; Lipset, Seymour Martin, Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics (Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday, 1963), 27–63Google Scholar; Cutright, Phillips, “National Political Development: Measurement and Analysis,” American Sociological Review 28 (1963), 253–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar There were many variants on modernization theory, of course, and it is to be noted that Samuel P. Huntington placed as much emphasis on political institutionalization as on socioeconomic development; see Huntington, , Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968).Google Scholar

3 See Dealy, Glen, “Prolegomena on the Spanish American Political Tradition,” Hispanic American Historical Review 48 (February 1968), 37–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wiarda, Howard J., “Toward a Framework for the Study of Political Change in the Iberic-Latin Tradition: The Corporative Model,” World Politics 25 (January 1973), 206–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Wiarda, , ed., Politics and Social Change in Latin America: The Distinct Tradition (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1974).Google Scholar

4 O'Donnell, Guillermo, Modernization and Bureaucratic-Authoritarianism: Studies in South American Politics (Berkeley: Institute of International Studies, University of California, 1973).Google Scholar

5 Linz, Juan J. and Stepan, Alfred, eds., The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979)Google Scholar; Collier, David, ed., The New Authoritarianism in Latin America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979).Google Scholar

6 Wilkie, James W. and Ochoa, Enrique, eds., Statistical Abstract of Latin America, vol. 27 (Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center, 1989), 939Google Scholar, fig. 33.2; and Bank, World, World Development Report 1989 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 166–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar, table 2.

7 See Kuczynski, Pedro-Pablo, Latin American Debt (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988).Google Scholar

8 International Monetary Fund, World Economic Outlook, October 1989 (Washington, D. C.: International Monetary Fund, 1989)Google Scholar; and Inter-American Dialogue, The Americas in 1989: Consensus for Action (Washington, D. C.: Aspen Institute, 1989), esp. 3–4.Google Scholar

9 Figures vary slightly by source. See Wilkie and Ochoa (fn. 6), 991, table 3363; Comisión Económica para America Latina (CEPAL), Notas sobre la economía y el desarrollo, 485–86, Balancepreliminar de la economia de America Latina y el Caribe, 1989 (December 1989)Google Scholar, cuadro 3; and Inter-American Development Bank, Economic and Social Progress in Latin America, 1989 Report (Washington, D. C.: Inter-American Development Bank, 1989), 463Google Scholar, Table B-I.

10 For comparison, see William Glade and Cassio Luiselli, eds., The Economics of Interdependence: Mexico and the United States, vol. 2 of Green, Rosario and Smith, Peter H., eds., Dimensions of United States-Mexican Relations, 5 vols. (La Jolla: Center for U. S.-Mexican Studies, University of California, San Diego, 1989).Google Scholar

11 See Broad, Robin and Cavanagh, John, “No More NICs,” Foreign Policy 72 (Fall 1988), 81–103.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 One thoughtful effort to confront this problem appears in Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), Changing Production Patterns with Social Equity (Santiago de Chile: United Nations, Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, 1990).Google Scholar

13 Seligson, , “Democratization in Latin America: The Current Cycle,” in Malloy, James M. and Seligson, Mitchell A., eds., Authoritarians and Democrats: Regime Transition in Latin America (Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1987), 7–9.Google Scholar

14 O'Donnell, and Schmitter, , “Tentative Conclusions about Uncertain Democracies,” in O'Donnell, , Schmitter, , and Whitehead, Laurence, eds., Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Prospects for Democracy (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), pt. IV, p. 18.Google Scholar See also O'Donnell, , “Tensions in the Bureaucratic-Authoritarian State and the Question of Democracy,” in Collier (fn. 5), 285–318.Google Scholar

15 O'Donnell, and Schmitter, (fn. 14), pt. IV, p. 69.Google Scholar

16 On this and related points, see Levine, Daniel H., “Paradigm Lost: Dependence to Democracy,” World Politics 40 (April 1988), 377–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17 Stepan, , “Paths toward Redemocratization: Theoretical and Comparative Considerations,” in O'Donnell, Schmitter, and Whitehead (fn. 14), pt. 111, p. 65.Google Scholar

18 On the survival of political parties, see Cavarozzi, Marcelo and Garretón, Manuel Antonio, eds., Muerte y resurrección: los partidos politicos en el autoritarismo y las transiciones del Cono Sur (Santiago de Chile: Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales, 1989).Google Scholar

19 Baloyra, , ed., Comparing New Democracies: Transition and Consolidation in Mediterranean Europe and the Southern Cone (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1987), 3, 18, 47.Google Scholar

20 Arcaya, Oscar Godoy, ed., Hacia una democracia modema: la opción parlamentaria (Santiago: Universidad Católica de Chile, 1990)Google Scholar; Linz, , “Democracy, Presidential or Parliamentary: Does It Make a Difference?” (Paper presented to ACLS conference on Constitutions and Constitutionalism in Latin America, Punta del Este, Uruguay, November 1988)Google Scholar; idem, “The Perils of Presidentialism,” Journal of Democracy 1 (Winter 1990), 51–69; Diamond, Larry and Linz, , “Introduction,” in Diamond, , Linz, and Lipset, Seymour Martin, eds., Democracy in Developing Countries, vol. 4, Latin America (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1989), 24–27Google Scholar; and Lijphart, “Basic Choices in Democratic Constitutional Design,” Journal of Democracy (forthcoming).

21 Nino, Carlos Santiago, “Transition to Democracy, Corporatism and Constitutional Reform in Latin America,” University of Miami Law Review 44 (September 1989), 129–64Google Scholar; Reforma constitucional: Dictamen preliminar del Consejo para la Consolidación de la Democracia (Buenos Aires: Eudeba, 1986); and Reforma constitucional: Segundo dictamen del Consejo para la Consolidación de la Democracia (Buenos Aires: Eudeba, 1987).

22 For a view that emphasizes institutional factors in historical perspective, see Weiner, Myron, “Empirical Democratic Theory,” in Weiner, and Ozbudun, Ergun, eds., Competitive Elections in Developing Countries (Durham, N. C.: Duke University Press, 1987), 3–34.Google Scholar

23 See Stepan, (fn. 17), 64–84.Google Scholar

24 See Booth, John A. and Seligson, Mitchell, Political Participation in Latin America, 2 vols. (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1978–1979)Google Scholar; and Ochoa, Enrique C., “The Rapid Expansion of Voter Participation in Latin America: Presidential Elections, 1845–1986,” in Wilkie, James W. and Lorey, David, eds., Statistical Abstract of Latin America, vol. 25 (Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center Publications, 1987), 862–910.Google Scholar

25 See Stepan, Alfred, Rethinking Military Politics: Brazil and the Southern Cone (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988)Google Scholar, esp. chaps. 6 and 7.

26 See, e.g., Americas Watch Committee, Tolerating Abuses: Violations of Human Rights in Peru (New York: Americas Watch, 1988)Google Scholar; idem, The Killings in Colombia (New York: Americas Watch, 1989); idem, The Drug War in Colombia: The Neglected Tragedy of Political Violence (New York: Americas Watch, 1990); Amnesty International U. S. A., Guatemah: Human Rights Violations under the Civilian Government (New York: Amnesty International, 1989)Google Scholar; and Smith, Peter H., “Drug Wars in Latin America,” Iberoamericana (Sophia University, Tokyo) 12 (Summer 1990), 1–16.Google Scholar

27 Malloy, James M., “Economic Crisis and Democratization: Latin America in the 1980s,” The Latin American and Caribbean Contemporary Record 8 (forthcoming).Google Scholar

28 See Evans, Peter B., Rueschemeyer, Dietrich, and Skocpol, Theda, eds., Bringing the State Back in (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

29 For an insightful overview and critique, see Blasier, Cole, “The United States and Democracy in Latin America,” in Malloy and Seligson (fn. 13), 219–33.Google Scholar

30 See Schoultz, , Human Rights and United States Policy toward Latin America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

31 See Kirkpatrick, Jeane J., “Dictatorships and Double Standards,” Commentary, November 1979Google Scholar, republished in idem, Dictatorships and Double Standards: Rationalism and Reason in Politics (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982), 23–52.

32 The standard source in English is still Lincoln, Jennie K. and Ferris, Elizabeth G., eds., The Dynamics of Latin American Foreign Policies: Challenges for the 1980s (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1984).Google Scholar Over the past fifteen years Latin American scholars have produced a growing number of foreign policy studies for individual countries; it is now time for a fresh synthesis.

33 Apparent improvement in the tone of U. S.-Latin American relations under the Bush administration has more to do with realpolitik than with confianza, as Lowenthal himself has tacidy argued; see Lowenthal, Abraham F., “Rediscovering Latin America,” Foreign Affairs 69 (Fall 1990), 27–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

34 See, e. g., Lowenthal, Abraham F., “United States Policy toward Latin America: ‘Liberal,’ ‘Radical,’ and ‘Bureaucratic’ Perspectives,” Latin American Research Review 8 (Fall 1973). 3–25.Google Scholar

35 As emphasized by Levine (fn. 16).

36 See Rustow, Dank wart, “Democracy: A Global Revolution?” Foreign Affairs 69 (Fall 1990) 75–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar