State Formation and Democracy in Latin America, 1810-1900 (review)

This is an ambitious comparative work that addresses the process of state formation (mainly understood as "power centralization," and the state's achievement of "capacity" and "autonomy" [p. 2]) and democratic or authoritarian regime outcomes in Argentina, Uruguay, and Colombia in the nineteenth century. Uruguay and Argentina are regarded as geographically, culturally and "structurally" (never precisely defined, though seeming to refer to domestic and international economics) analogous cases, suitable for analysis under J. S. Mill's "method of difference." Colombia, in contrast, is a dissimilar case that, when paired alongside Uruguay, seems fit for an application of Mill's "method of agreement" (p. 9). Paraguay and Venezuela are included as "control cases" in which the army played an overwhelming role in state-making and the regimes that emerged were quite different in nature from the other three, providing a 'negative' experience useful for further comparative reflection.

The book focuses mainly on collective action and the process of "polity formation" (p. 6). especially the interaction among political parties, the military, social movements (rural ones, in particular), and the state. The author argues that in addition to their critical function in defining citizenship and nationhood and establishing the army, political parties played crucial roles in state-building, sometimes becoming indistinguishable from the state itself. According to this view, civil-military relations are especially important, given the centrality of war and conflict to understanding the formation of ruling coalitions, taxation, resource appropriation and allocation, the establishment of central armies, and state-building in general, in Latin America and elsewhere. Finally, López-Alves maintains that rural movements were critical in shaping classes and class alliances and political parties, and thus in shaping states and regimes. His central thesis, condensing four different claims, is that in "agrarian postcolonial societies, types of war and the type and scope of mobilization of the rural poor during state formation shaped institutions, civil-military relations, and regime outcomes" (p. 46).

Except for the first chapter, which is dedicated to theoretical observations, larger comparisons with European and other cases, and a summary of the book's findings and main argument, the rest of the book is devoted to individual case studies. These are presented as an "in-depth" historical-comparative view of a series of similar factors, among them wars, the institutionalization of the military, and party activity. The author is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of California at Santa Barbara, so the emphasis on political and military institutions comes as no surprise. More unusual are his efforts to incorporate both social movements and, in a more limited and subordinate way, culture into the equation.

Commendable as a work of synthesis and as an industrious and creative comparative exercise, related to the comparative studies of other cases by D. Friedman and F. Mallon and the anthology by F. Safford and E. Huber, this book will probably elicit criticism on the part of country experts. Most likely because of space limitations, the discussion leaves out important segments of the available literature and incorporates little primary material. It will make some historians particularly unhappy, for, as seems typical of political science works, it paints with too broad a brush, sacrificing at times the complexity of the historical processes under evaluation. Nonetheless, it is a valuable addition to the academic literature and an indispensable work for any research library, certain to provide debate-provoking material for graduate seminars in the social sciences. It offers useful points for comparative researchers interested in furthering our understanding of state-building in the Americas.