[Access article in PDF] Book Review
Latin America:
Politics and Society since 1930
National Period
Latin America: Politics and Society since 1930. Edited by Leslie Bethell. Cambridge History of Latin America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Tables. Figures. Bibliographical essays. Index. vii, 489 pp. Cloth, $59.95. Paper, $21.95. For the second part of volume 6 of this authoritative series, Leslie Bethell has assembled a stellar international cast of authors. He has given them the daunting assignment of surveying vast aspects of the hemisphere's political history from the 1930s to the 1990s. There is also some attention to social history, but the chapters on social movements focus on their political manifestations more than their social roots. The contributors rise to the challenge with a high standard of scholarship and exposition, accompanied by masterful bibliographical essays. The resulting anthology would make a superb selection for an advanced undergraduate survey or a graduate seminar.
Most of the chapters are stronger on narrative than on interpretation, a rather curious outcome, since none of the authors is a historian. In part, this emphasis on empirical complexities rather than theoretical similarities may reflect different styles of social science. The North Americans and Latin Americans lean more toward concepts and generalizations, while the Europeans tilt toward descriptions of differences among individual nations. Whatever the explanation for their orientation, all the writers provide informative, sagacious country-by-country tours.
The first chapter, by U.S. political scientists Jonathan Hartlyn and Arturo Valenzuela on democracy, offers unusually clear conceptualization, organization, and analysis. They adopt a crisp definition of democracy, relying mainly on political--institutional and procedural--variables rather than economic or cultural factors. Hartlyn and Valenzuela emphasize the development of constitutionalism, the dilemmas of presidentialism, and the roles of political parties and elections. They examine these issues mainly in the five most durable democracies (Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Uruguay, and Venezuela), in contrast with three less successful experiences (Argentina, Brazil, and Peru), leaving aside principally authoritarian countries like Mexico. Their article is followed by a note on citizenship by Laurence Whitehead, a Briton.
Fellow Briton Alan Angell discusses the fierce struggles of the Left against its opponents and its own comrades. He dissects Trotskyist, Communist, Socialist, and populist parties, as well as guerrilla movements and numerous variants of Marxism. While chronicling the vicissitudes of the Left in a wide array of countries, Angell notes linkages with labor and intellectuals. He pays special attention to the impact of the Cuban Revolution, the Chilean Popular Unity, and the Nicaraguan Revolution. He closes with a commentary on the incoherence and weakness of the Left in the 1980s and 1990s.
Even more than Angell, French political scientists Alain Rouquie and Stephen Suffern emphasize differences among countries more than crosscutting patterns. They do so in a study of the politics of modern, professional armed forces. Despite the paucity of theory, the arguments and country vignettes are well presented. Rouquie and Suffern are especially cogent on the influence of the United States and the cold war after World War II. Like the other authors, they base their story on a splendid bibliography, one [End Page 188] distinguished by a refreshing lack of false modesty, wherein Rouquie's own writings are hailed among the most outstanding ever published on the Latin American military.
Ian Roxborough presents a lucid history of urban labor movements. He starts off with a sophisticated definition of the working class and its ambivalent place in the social hierarchy. He emphasizes structural as well as institutional and political factors that have shaped the proletariat's evolution. Roxborough traces that evolution through five chronological phases: the 1929 depression to World War II, the Second World War to the cold war, the rise of corporatism in the 1950s and 1960s, the emergence of more militant unionism from the 1960s to the 1980s, and the devastation of the debt crisis and neoliberalism from the 1980s to the 1990s. He examines these trends through a broad swath of countries. Although more willing to generalize than some of the...
Latin America: Politics and Society since 1930 (review)
Rent from DeepDyve