The Making of Flawed Democracies in the Americas: The United States, Chile, Argentina, and Peru [1st ed.] 978-3-030-21177-6;978-3-030-21178-3

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-vii
Introduction: State Creation and Democratization in Four American States—The Nature of the Problem (Alex Roberto Hybel)....Pages 1-16
Theories of State Creation and Democratization (Alex Roberto Hybel)....Pages 17-58
Processes of State Creation and Democratization in the United States (Alex Roberto Hybel)....Pages 59-116
Processes of State Creation and Democratization in Peru, Chile, and Argentina (Alex Roberto Hybel)....Pages 117-203
Exploratory Hypotheses: Chile, Peru, and Argentina (Alex Roberto Hybel)....Pages 205-222
An Exploratory Theory of State Creation and Democratization in the United States, Chile, Argentina, and Peru (Alex Roberto Hybel)....Pages 223-237
Back Matter ....Pages 239-248

Citation preview

The Making of Flawed Democracies in the Americas The United States, Chile, Argentina, and Peru Alex Roberto Hybel

The Making of Flawed Democracies in the Americas

Alex Roberto Hybel

The Making of Flawed Democracies in the Americas The United States, Chile, Argentina, and Peru

Alex Roberto Hybel Marina del Rey, CA, USA

ISBN 978-3-030-21177-6    ISBN 978-3-030-21178-3 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21178-3 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the ­publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and ­institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: © Marina Lohrbach / shutterstock.com This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Preface

This study is the result of a lifelong journey that started in Argentina’s northern province of Corrientes more than 73 years ago. Nineteen years later, after living 15 years in Argentina’s capital, Buenos Aires, my mother, worried about my future in a country that lacked economic stability and had experienced multiple military coups during my relatively short life, suggested that we try our fortunes in the United States. I agreed without a second thought. It was an excellent, though risky decision. After only three years in the United States, I found myself serving in Vietnam as a photographer and journalist for the US Army, but the road ahead still seemed promising. Upon my discharge, I returned to my homeland of choice and embarked on a long and highly rewarding academic journey. During that voyage I taught at different institutions, not just in the United States but also in Uruguay, South Africa, Italy, Spain, Japan, and China, and managed to produce several works on various academic subjects. In 2011, I felt that it was time to reconnect with my roots. By then I had been teaching a course titled The Development of Democracies in Latin America, but I had written little about the subject, and solely for my students’ benefit and mine. On sabbatical, and convinced that I needed to get my “feet wet,” I recruited my daughter Gabriela, who had just finished her freshman year as an undergraduate student, to accompany me on a series of bus rides from El Calafate in Patagonia, Argentina, back to our home in Stonington, CT. Without a second thought, she said yes. v

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We started the bus trip as planned. After six weeks, Gabriela, who had to return to college, and my wife Jan, who had joined us for part of the trip, boarded a plane in Quito, Ecuador, to fly back to the United States. I completed the entire journey six weeks later. During my time alone, I envisioned this book. I was not interested in writing a book about the politics of various Spanish American states that repeated and interpreted the arguments presented by highly accomplished scholars. I cared about the distinct political journeys Spanish American states had to endure to get where they were today. Specifically, I wanted to understand why so many Spanish American countries had developed politically so differently, though they had been conquered and colonized by the Spaniards at about the same time. And I wanted to know why some of them had been more successful at creating their states and respective political regimes than others. My interest was accentuated and partially rerouted during my travel by train from Los Angeles, California, to Boston, Massachusetts. The question that caught my attention during that stretch of the trip was: The United States had been colonized decades after any of the countries I had just visited and was much larger; why, then, had it been more effective at consolidating the power of the state and at erecting a flawed, but nevertheless durable, democracy? I would have never been able to complete this book without my students’ hard work. I am thankful to Connecticut College for granting me multiple sabbaticals and the financial support provided by my endowed chair. As in every book that I have written, I remain indebted to my mother-in-law, Barbara Peurifoy, for her willingness to edit countless drafts. Her kindness, thoughtfulness, and intelligence continue to motivate me. My two daughters, Sabrina and Gabriela, brought to my life a form and level of joy that I was totally unaware existed before their births. And then there is Jan. She has been and is my anchor—the one who has made it all possible for the past 37 years. Marina del Rey, CA, USA 2019

Alex Roberto Hybel

Contents

1 Introduction: State Creation and Democratization in Four American States—The Nature of the Problem  1 2 Theories of State Creation and Democratization 17 3 Processes of State Creation and Democratization in the United States 59 4 Processes of State Creation and Democratization in Peru, Chile, and Argentina117 5 Exploratory Hypotheses: Chile, Peru, and Argentina205 6 An Exploratory Theory of State Creation and Democratization in the United States, Chile, Argentina, and Peru223 Index239

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction: State Creation and Democratization in Four American States—The Nature of the Problem

This book’s principal objectives are to address two interrelated questions: Why have certain states in the Americas been more successful than others at creating stable democratic regimes? Why have certain states in the Americas failed to create stable democratic regimes? To answer both questions, analyses are provided of the formation of four American states and the creation of their respective political regimes from the moment they attained independence to the present. Such analyses enable the investigator to isolate and evaluate the conditions that helped or hindered the development of each state and of its political regime. The detailed analyses are then presented in the form of explanatory hypotheses, which in turn facilitate a discussion of the future of democracy, both in general and in each of the states studied throughout the book. To answer the two aforementioned questions, four cases are investigated: The United States, Argentina, Chile, and Peru.

Rationale It is feared that democracy is in peril. Just a few decades ago, political scientists would not have voiced such a concern. They would have stated that people throughout the world were steadily recognizing that democracy was, in Juan J. Linz and Alfred Stepan’s words, the “only game in town.”1 They would have concurred with the two scholars that in places where democracy had been consolidated, the return to authoritarianism had © The Author(s) 2020 A. R. Hybel, The Making of Flawed Democracies in the Americas, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21178-3_1

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become an unacceptable alternative.2 Today, few analysts accept such bold assertions. The data seem to justify their apprehension. In the 1920s, only a very small number of sovereign states were led by regimes that had the basic components necessary for them to qualify as democratic. By 1990, that number had increased to 69, and by 2012 to 117. Between the years 2005 and 2013, however, more countries experienced a decline in political rights and civil liberties than an increase.3 Equally disturbing are the figures representing the percentage of millennials in developed democracies who actually support democracy. In the United States, the number of millennials who believe it is “essential to live in a democracy” is only 30 percent. In Australia, Great Britain, the Netherlands, and New Zealand, the percentage is at 40 percent or lower. Ironically, the last four states are among the 16 most developed democracies in the world. The numbers remain troubling as the analysis focuses on those who believe that it is preferable to have a “strong leader who does not have to bother with parliament and elections.” As could be expected, the percentages in places such as Russia, Romania, Ukraine, and Turkey oscillate between the high 50s to the high 70s. But sadly, though the percentages are much lower, they have increased in the United States and Germany, as well as in Mexico, Argentina, Peru, and Uruguay, four South American countries that seemed to have finally embraced democracy some two to three decades ago.4 Does the information just presented indicate that the world is beginning to witness the steady downfall of democracy and that the decline will not stop? Will a modified form of authoritarianism arise, one in which autocratic leaders limit the access to multiple sources of information in order to mold the preferences of the public? The questions beg another question: Should democracy be desired? Any serious attempt to answer the question forces analysts to recognize that despite its present allure among many people in various corners of the world, for much of history political leaders and philosophers did not view democracy favorably. Plato was among its earliest critics. He posited that oligarchies turn into democracies when elites overindulge, become idle and wasteful, and develop interests separate from those they rule. Then it is democracy’s turn to falter. A democracy becomes a tyranny when mob passion overtakes political reason and an autocrat becomes the darling of the masses. Machiavelli was no less critical. Democracies, he argued, cater to the whims of the people, who too often accept false ideas, misuse their resources, and fail to take into consideration potential threats until it is too

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late. The founders of the United States also feared democracy. John Adams warned that democracy never lasts long. Every democracy throughout history self-destructed. James Madison was equally troubled. But then came Winston Churchill, who told the world to keep in mind that “many forms of government had been tried and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”5 Churchill’s implicit warning must not be taken lightly. As any student of history knows, democracy has not always enabled the wisest to lead it, and too often has become victim of the whims of uninformed populists. But it should not be forgotten that though possession of an open and competitive political system has not always shielded democracy from grave errors, it has enhanced the chances to correct them before they become unbearably costly. Other political systems lack such safety measures. Moreover, no other type of political system has empowered the voices of those persons who throughout history have been forced to remain quiet to finally be heard and counted. Unsurprisingly, however, to this day, democracy remains afflicted by a major internal contradiction. Its survival, integrity, and welfare depend entirely on its capacity to remain open and competitive. The moment those two conditions are removed, a democracy is no longer a democracy. And yet, the common practice for those in power within a democracy has been and continues to be to try to retain power indefinitely. In a sense, thus, every democracy contains the seeds of its own destruction. It is that peculiar contradiction that inspired the writing of this work. It is the need to understand why and how political regimes that were not democratic and were led by political figures who did not aspire to create a democratic regime became democratic while others did not. Such an understanding can be attained only via the deliberate unfolding of their state-creation and political regime–formation processes from their birth to the present. The study of how democracies are formed is an old enterprise. Some analysts have focused on single cases, and others have compared cases from different regions. Based on their works, analysts have derived a multitude of arguments, often in the form of theories, in which they propose the conditions that have either facilitated or obstructed the creation of stable and effective democracies. Because democracies have emerged in every region of the world, and at different times, it would be futile to attempt to develop a theory of democratization applicable to states

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­ orldwide without first acquiring a clear understanding of the struggles w that states in particular regions endured as they strove to consolidate and legitimize their power and establish democratic regimes. Hence the rationale for focusing solely on the Americas, and specifically on the United States, Peru, Chile, and Argentina.

Methodology Process tracing is an analytical tool utilized to draw “descriptive and causal pieces from diagnostic pieces of evidence—often understood as part of temporal sequence of events or phenomena.”6 Stated differently, the investigator tries to identify the intervening steps or cause-and-effect links that might exist between the dependent and independent variables in different cases.7 As David Collier explains, process tracing helps (a) identify and describe political and social phenomena, (b) evaluate prior explanatory hypotheses, discover new ones, and assess the new causal claims, (c) gain insights into causal mechanisms, and (d) provide alternative ways of addressing challenging problems such as reciprocal causation, spuriousness, and selection bias. In short, process tracing strives to build a theoretical argument step by step by paying close attention to the sequential relationships between independent, intervening, and dependent variables that exist in one case, and ascertaining the extent to which those sequential relationships are reproduced in other cases.8 In cases where a similar sequential relationship does not emerge, the investigator attempts to find out whether different independent or intervening variables generated a different causal sequence.

Case Selection The decision to study the United States, Peru, Chile, and Argentina demands answers to two questions: Since the history and culture of the United States was so different from that of the Spanish American states, why incorporate the former in the comparison? Additionally, why compare Argentina, Chile, and Peru, but not other Spanish American states? The analysis presented in this book questions the contention that the inclusion of the United States in the comparison would elicit arguments of limited theoretical value. The United States’ pathway to democracy was neither predetermined nor intentional. Much of its evolution was defined by a combination of

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domestic and external factors that compelled US leaders to steadily transform their political system. As is demonstrated in this study, though differences existed between the ways the United States and the Spanish American colonies evolved into states and formed their respective political regimes, many similarities were present. The identification of the differences and similarities helps develop a better understanding of the types of obstacles and opportunities newly independent entities in the Americas encountered as they created their respective states and political regimes and, as a result, helps determine what enabled or prevented the development of democratic regimes. In short, despite the fact that the founders of the United States feared democracy, unintentionally they helped set up its foundation, which in turn served in a number of cases as a model for the Spanish American leaders who were determined to create their own sovereign states after gaining independence from Spain. With regard to the second question—Why study those particular Spanish American states?—it is evident that the comparison of other cases could also help elicit some valuable explanatory hypotheses. In a separate book, the state-creation and regime-formation experience of the United States is compared with those of Venezuela, Colombia, Mexico, Costa Rica, and Guatemala. Needless to say, there are many other cases that could also be studied, and it is the hope of this analyst that other investigators will assume such responsibility and compare their conclusions with those arrived at in the two volumes. There are several distinct rationales for selecting Chile, Peru, and Argentina. The processes of state creation and regime formation throughout Spanish America are bounded by paradoxes. Despite their geographical proximity and their invasion and settlement by the Spaniards at approximately the same time, Peru and Chile traversed different paths toward statehood and democracy. Chile was markedly more effective than Peru in both endeavors. Hence the question: Why? More specifically, what factors enabled the descendants of Chile’s colonizers to create a state and a democratic regime faster and more stable than Peru’s progenies? The quandary becomes more complex when Argentina is added to the comparison. Argentina initially possessed many of the conditions that should have enabled its leaders to create a state rapidly and to form a stable political regime. In fact, this belief led many analysts in the early days of the twentieth century to predict that Argentina, along with Australia, would soon become a highly developed state guided by a well-structured political regime. And yet, while Australia’s state and political regime

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evolved more or less as predicted, Argentina became entangled in a series of military coups that impaired the development of its political system throughout much of the twentieth century and early years of the twenty-­ first century. A tracing of the state-creation and regime-formation processes of Chile, Peru, and Argentina brings to the fore a series of distinct analytical challenges. It does so by revealing that conditions that have often been considered pertinent to the formation of democracies might in fact not always be significant. The comparison also exposes the importance of timing or, more to the point, the question of why accelerating the process of democratization in a recently created state might actually destabilize it. Via the analysis of the three states, it is possible to postulate an array of hypotheses that explain why Chile was able to create a state and a democratic regime faster than Argentina and Peru, and why Argentina was relatively more successful than Peru at carrying out both tasks. A few final points about the selection of cases merit consideration. Brazil is Latin America’s biggest country; has the largest population, economy, and military force; and houses one of the biggest democracies in the world. Those characteristics alone would justify its inclusion in the analysis. Two reasons dictate its exclusion. First, and possibly the most important one, this analyst does not possess the knowledge about Brazil needed to conduct a meaningful study. Second, the intent throughout the book is to conduct a comparative analysis of the United States and Spanish American states, not of the United States and Latin American states. This analyst recognizes that the comparison of Brazil’s state-creation and political regime–formation experience with those of the United States and a number of Spanish American states would bring to light some valuable argument, but that is not the intent here. To summarize, the four cases investigated throughout this book share both similarities and differences in the creation of their respective states and political regimes. The tracing of their evolutions helps reveal causal relationships between the conditions that facilitated the construction of stable and unstable states and of democratic and non-democratic regimes. It is imperative to keep in mind that the relationships between state creation and regime formation, though distinct, are generally dependent on one another. As the study shows, many states that initially were assumed to have attained stability, in fact had not; and political regimes that early on were deemed to be democratic, sometimes became

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non-democratic. To understand what brought such changes, it is essential to study the interconnections between the two. Stated differently, because setbacks in attaining state stability and achieving democracy were not uncommon, investigators are compelled to expose the conditions that brought about changes in one or the other process or in both at specific points in time and how those conditions differed from when some of those same entities were finally able to create stable states and form lasting democratic regimes.

Structure of the Book Chapter 2 is both conceptual and theoretical. An investigation of democratization and the conditions that facilitate, delay, or obstruct the process of liberalization has to be built on a set of well-defined concepts. Since part of the argument presented here is constructed on the contention that today’s democracies cannot emerge in failed states, the first assignment is to determine what constitutes a state, and then to discuss alternative theories of state creation and their possible applicability to the state-building process in the Americas. Disagreements regarding the definition of democracy persist. Charles Tilly notes that analysts choose among four types of definitions: constitutional, substantive, procedural, and process-oriented.9 Tilly’s analysis presents a rationale for combining the procedural and process-oriented methods in the definition. Because there are multiple theories of democratization, the first chapter ends with a summary and analysis of the most important ones. The empirical cases are built on axioms generally accepted by students of democracy. They are: Axiom 1: Democracies do not emerge in stateless territories or in states that have failed to consolidate and legitimize their power. Axiom 2: States that have existed for extended periods, and whose power and legitimacy may seem to have been consolidated, may lose some or all of both conditions. Axiom 3: Though the consolidation and legitimization of a state’s power is a necessary condition for the creation of a stable democracy, it is not a sufficient one—other factors can derail the democratization process.

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Axiom 4: None of today’s well-established Western democracies that began to create representative governments in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries did so with the intent of forming democratic regimes. Axiom 5: Conditions in the international arena can either weaken or strengthen the drive to create democratic regimes. The study of each country’s processes of state creation and political regime formation is conducted from the same vantage point. Initially, the focus is on each colony’s pre-colonial conditions. Each colony’s topography and natural resources are described in a summary form, along with the political, economic, and social systems in which its native inhabitants lived. Careful consideration is given to the size of the indigenous population, how extensively various indigenous groups interacted, and whether any of the existing societies had a hierarchical structure. In addition, attention is paid to the region’s abundance or lack of minerals, such as gold and silver, and the kinds of crops grown, or that could be grown. Also discussed are the colonizers’ general values, beliefs, and ideas; the way they tried to transform the human and natural conditions they encountered in the colonies; and the level of opposition they faced. This portion of the analysis is completed with a description of each colony’s political, economic, and social structure prior to independence, and with an evaluation of the types of tensions that afflicted each colony as the drive for independence was about to begin. Independence arrived differently in the various colonies. The third section identifies the core conditions that prompted the drive for independence and the obstacles each colony encountered. Since commitment to independence within each colony was not universal, the reasons for such divisions are discussed, along with the types of tensions the internal struggles generated. The hardships each colony confronted as it became independent affected the early stages of its state-creation process. Because the newly independent entities inherited different sets of problems from their colonial past, some were more effective than others at setting up the foundation of a new state. During this portion of the analysis, an attempt is made to identify the most cumbersome obstacles each prospective state encountered, explain how effective its leaders were at addressing those obstacles, and examine why some states consolidated their power and gained legitimacy sooner than others.

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As noted repeatedly, the processes of state creation and regime formation did not evolve separately. As the political elites in each newly freed state sought to consolidate and legitimize the power of the state, they also tried to create a political regime. The problems they faced varied. This part of the empirical analysis identifies and discusses the main factors that affected the state-creation and regime-creation processes, and the types of positive and negative effects that developments in one process had on the other. Specifically, the intent of this section is to: 1. Describe the processes of state creation and of regime formation for each state after it had attained independence; 2. Identify the elements that generated either positive or negative changes in the processes of state creation and regime formation within each state; 3. Discuss the tensions such changes engendered; 4. Isolate the conditions that facilitated the initial development of quasi-democratic regimes and, in certain instances, the circumstances that provoked their downfall; 5. Explain why some of today’s political regimes have been more effective at creating stable democracies than others. Each empirical case closes with a two-part examination. In the first part, the factors that either served democratization well or impeded its development are identified. The contents of the analyses can vary substantially from case to case. Because this study uses cases as building blocks and as a way of assessing the explanatory value of earlier conclusions, some analyses are more detailed and more complex than others. The second part examines the obstacles to further democratization. The empirical cases are arrayed in a particular order. Chapter 3 focuses on the transformations experienced by the United States as a state and its political regime. Chapter 4 compares the development of the Chilean, Peruvian, and Argentine states and their respective political regimes. Chapter 5 distills the arguments presented in the previous chapter and postulates a set of hypotheses. Chapter 6 brings together the conclusions arrived in the empirical analyses and presents them in the form of revised hypotheses. To answer the two questions postulated at the start of the Introduction, it is necessary to first address a different set of questions:

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. What compelled the colonizers to colonize? 1 2. What led the new inhabitants of the colonies to seek independence? 3. Why were the leaders of some colonies more inclined to seek independence than those of the other colonies? 4. What conditions helped or mired the consolidation and legitimization of the power of the state? 5. What conditions helped or mired the formation of stable democratic regimes? This is not the place to bring to the fore the multiple hypotheses postulated in the conclusion, but the presentation of a summary version of the arguments derived from them is justified. The comparative analyses of the processes of state creation and regime formation of the United States and three Spanish American states facilitate the design of several important arguments. First, the examinations establish that the values, beliefs, and ideas the Spaniards and British colonizers brought to the Americas influenced greatly their approaches to colonization—approaches that after independence affected significantly the processes of state creation and regime formation of the United States, Peru, Chile, and Argentina. Second, the analyses demonstrate that a region’s topography, natural resources, and characteristics of indigenous population also played a critical role in shaping the colonization processes of the Americas by the Spaniards and the British. Notwithstanding the similar values, beliefs, and ideas the settlers of the thirteen North American colonies brought with them, they encountered various natural and human environments, and as they adapted to them, they started to generate different economies, which in turn helped shape their political and social structures. By the time the leaders of colonies agreed to seek independence, the Northern and Southern Colonies had developed very different economies and social norms that would develop deeper roots as they sought to construct a state and a political regime. The same type of argument applies to the Spanish colonization of the Americas. Though the Spaniards were also guided by their own ­common set of values, beliefs, and ideas during the early colonization stages, the type of terrain, the kind and scope of the natural resources, and the size and nature of the indigenous population they encountered had profound effects on how they went about colonizing a region. Despite their common sets of values, beliefs, and ideas, the Spanish colonizers of Chile and Peru encountered two regions with very different natural and

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human characteristics that immediately affected the types of economies, and political and social interactions each group developed. In the case of both the British and the Spaniards, a region’s economic significance helped determine the size of the military—the greater a region’s economic importance, the greater the size of the military deployed by the colonial power. However, it is at this juncture that the processes began to differ markedly, not only between the British and the Spanish colonizers but also among members of the latter group. Though a great number of the British colonizers were deeply religious and developed strict rules of social behavior, the structures of control they imposed on other colonizers were markedly less hierarchical and rigid than those created by the Catholic Church. In Spanish America, the relationship between the two sets of factors was relatively simple—the greater a region’s wealth and size of its indigenous population, the larger the size of the armed forces deployed by the Spanish monarchy and the number of clerics posted by the Catholic Church. Third, this study concurs with analysts who have noted that though both the British and Spanish colonizers traversed the Atlantic in search of a more prosperous material life, the role religion played in their lives differed measurably. A vast number of British colonizers emigrated in order to be able to practice their own faith freely. Though anti-Catholicism was predominant among the various Protestant sects that settled in the North American colonies, and though many of them demanded the strict enforcement of their religious doctrine, its practice was not controlled by an all-­ powerful centralized church. The lives of the Spaniards and their progenitors in the Americas were bounded by a religious construct that was as severe and hierarchical as the one they had left behind in their homeland. These differences between the Spanish American and the British American colonies would be reflected in their state-creation and regime processes. The fourth finding is related to the arguments postulated by Stein Rokkan and Charles Tilly in their analyses of state creation in Europe. Both analysts stress that the first step in the state-construction process entails generating an agreement between competing elites. In the Americas, a small number of factors determined the likelihood rival elites would agree on how to structure the new state. Representatives of the thirteen North American colonies had comparatively little difficulty in reaching a consensus. Influenced by their deep belief that they should protect individual and state freedom, initially they settled on creating a

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confederation of thirteen independent and sovereign states and setting up a Congress with very limited central power. By 1878, after recognizing that their original design was faulty, they agreed to transform the ­confederation into a federal system in which power was divided between three bodies, and states retained substantial sovereignty. The leaders of Argentina, Chile, and Peru found the task of deciding what power structure to impose on their respective former colonies markedly more complex, some more than others. Typically, the challenge they all faced was determining whether to create a federal or a unitary state. Leaders of a state where regional divisions had been substantial had a much harder time agreeing to create a federal or a unitary state than leaders of a state where regional divisions had been minor or non-existent. Moreover, in Spanish America, the Catholic Church compounded the problem in cases in which critical divisions existed between those who aspired to create a unitary state and those who advocated forming a federal one. In those situations, advocates of a unitary form invariably wanted the Catholic Church to continue playing the vital role it had played during the colonial period, while supporters of a federalist arrangement argued that it should not. The presence of such reinforcing cleavages explains why, as a group, Spanish American states were markedly less effective at consolidating the power of the state than the United States, and why some Spanish American states found the task less cumbersome than others. The fifth finding is closely related to the fourth one. As other scholars have noted, military force has been one of the most commonly used and effective means for creating a state and forming its regime. Its constant use, however, did have a negative effect—the longer political leaders relied on martial means to address critical domestic political problems, the longer it took them to consolidate and legitimize the power of the state. For much of the nineteenth century, newly empowered Spanish American political leaders used their own militias to address political, social, and economic differences. The stronger the reinforcing cleavages, the longer they relied on martial means. During that period, political rivals advocated economic growth and created their own distinct political parties. The need to generate economic growth and the emergence of rival political parties did not bring a reduction in violence; rivals continued to use force in an attempt to impose their will and vision on others. The economic cleavage that divided northern and southern in the United States was initially manageable. However, the divide intensified during the first six decades of the nineteenth century as their distinct economies grew and

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new states were incorporated. Military force was never used during that period, in no small measure because since the conception of the federal system, the principal actors shared the belief that despite the presence of a federal government in Washington, each state continued to retain substantial control over its own political, economic, and social affairs. The decision by southern states to take up arms came about when their leaders became convinced that the president elected in 1860 would overstep the power and authority of the executive office and take away the right of states to decide what was best for them. In short, the potential to rely on military means to resolve critical political, economic, and social matters was present within each state in the Americas after they had attained independence. The likelihood that such potential would be realized, however, varied significantly between the United States and the three Spanish American states, and between Argentina, Chile, and Peru. The sixth argument explains the connection between economic growth, the rise of non-status-quo parties, and military activity. Every newly created state in the Americas underwent an economic transformation. Differences on how to generate economic growth and development divided political leaders. Economic growth was accompanied by demands that voting restrictions be reduced or eliminated, by the emergence of political parties with distinct political, economic, and social agendas, and by the increase in actual political participation. As those changes ensued, the military evolved, but its evolution varied, depending on the state and region within the states. In the United States, the military did not seek to dictate the country’s political path. Its involvement during the Civil War was the exception. On the other hand, the armed forces of Argentina, Chile, and Peru intervened repeatedly to prevent the political participation of unacceptable political leaders and/or parties, and to remove those who upon assuming power generated too much uncertainty or threatened to challenge the status quo. By the twentieth century, the military’s continuous use of force throughout much of the nineteenth century had helped generate and reaffirm the conviction that as an institution it was the only one capable of understanding, representing, and protecting the interests of the state. In sum, the rationale for using military force in Argentina, Chile, and Peru changed. During much of the nineteenth century, military force was used to determine what form the state would assume and/or whether the Catholic Church would continue to play the role it had played during the colonial period. Political leaders also used martial means to assume power

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or remove rivals from power. Economic growth, the emergence of anti-­ status-­quo political parties, and the increase in voter participation transformed the use of force underlying principle measurably. As the self-proclaimed defender of the national interest, the armed forces chose to act as the final arbitrator as to which political parties could participate in the political process and who would be allowed to govern. The seventh inference brings to light the critical but very different effects the Second World War, the Korean War, the Cold War, and the end of the Cold War had on the United States and a substantial number of Spanish American states. Participation by African Americans in the Second World War and the Korean War helped strengthen their argument that they merited equal rights. Though other factors also contributed, the wars enhanced the status of African Americans and reduced, but did not eliminate, the racism that had permeated the American political system since its conception. The Civil and Voting Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965 were a reaffirmation of the equal status deserved by African Americans and people in general, regardless of gender, race, or religion. In the early stages of one of their studies, Larry Diamond, Jonathan Hartlyn, and Juan Linz claim that studies have provided little support for the view that the source of Latin America’s political turmoil and democratic failures was primarily external. Subsequently, however, they acknowledged that throughout history, international factors have had an impact, sometimes crucial, on the development of Spanish Latin  American regimes.10 Their argument needs to be placed in a sequential framework. The end of the Second World War brought to the fore the Cold War. The net impact of the Cold War on Spanish American states was negative. The fear of communist takeovers emboldened the military, often with the backing of the United States, to intervene if they suspected that a communist takeover was likely. Thus, between the early 1960s and middle 1980s, military regimes became the norm in Argentina, Chile, and Peru. Two more inferences must be considered. Military regimes in Argentina, Chile, and Peru failed to cure their countries’ economic ills. With the end of the Cold War and communism no longer perceived as posing a critical threat, attempts to create democratic regimes throughout Spanish America gained momentum. The so-called third wave of democratization, however, was driven more by discontent with the failure by military regimes to solve grave economic problems than by deep public commitments to creating political systems governed by democratic

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norms and rules. No longer able to justify their domestic political involvement, military regimes gave in to domestic and international pressures to authorize the establishment of democratic governance. The reduction in the domestic political role played by military regimes, however, did not always give way to the creation of effective democratic systems.11 Failures by a few embryonic democracies to resolve the economic problems that had afflicted the military regimes of earlier years led to the rise of authoritarian populist regimes.

Notes 1. Juan J.  Linz and Alfred C.  Stepan, “Toward Consolidated Democracy,” Journal of Democracy, Vol. 7, Number 2, April 1996: 14–33. 2. See Roberto Stefan Foa and Yascha Mounk, “The Signs of Deconsolidation,” Journal of Democracy, Vol. 28, No. 1 (January 2017). 3. See Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2014. 4. Foa and Mounk, “The Signs of Deconsolidation,” and “Democracy Index 2016: Revenge of the “deplorables””, The Economist Intelligence Unit. 25, January 2017. 5. Winston Churchill, Churchill by Himself, edited by Richard Langworth (New York: Public Affairs, 2008), 574. According to Langworth, Churchill was quoting someone else. 6. David Collier, “Understanding Process Tracing,” in Political Science and Politics, 44 (No. 4), 2011: 823–30. 7. See Alex Roberto Hybel, The Logic of Surprise in International Conflict (Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath and Company, 1986), 18. See also Hybel’s chapter 1, endnote 57, 23. 8. Ibid. 9. Charles Tilly, Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 7–11. 10. See Larry Diamond, Jonathan Hartlyn, and Juan J. Linz, “Introduction: Politics Society, and Democracy in Latin America,” in Larry Diamond, Jonathan Hartlyn, Juan. J. Linz, and Seymour Martin Lipset, Democracy in Developing Countries (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1999), 57–60. 11. For an explanation as to why a reduction in the domestic political role played by military regimes did not always give way to the creation of effective democratic systems, see Alex Roberto Hybel, The Challenges of Creating Democracies in the Americas (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019).

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Bibliography Collier, Simon. 1967. Ideas and Politics of Chilean Independence: 1808–1833. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Print. Diamond, Larry, Jonathan Hartlyn, and Juan J. Linz. 1999. Introduction: Politics Society, and Democracy in Latin America. In Democracy in Developing Countries, ed. Larry Diamond, Jonathan Hartlyn, Juan J. Linz, and Seymour Martin Lipset. Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers. Foa, Roberto, and Yasha Mounk. 2017. The Signs of Deconsolidation. Journal of Democracy 28 (1): 5–15. Print. Freedom House. Freedom in the World, 2014. Web. 24 Jan. 2017. Hybel, Alex Roberto. 2008. The Logic of Surprise in International Conflict. Lexington: D.C. Heath and Company. Print. ———. 2019. The Challenges of Creating Democracies in the Americas. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Langworth, Richard. 2008. Churchill by Himself. New York: Public Affairs. Print. Linz, Juan J., and Alfred Stepan. 1996. Toward Consolidated Democracy. Journal of Democracy 7 (2): 14–33. Print.

CHAPTER 2

Theories of State Creation and Democratization

Introduction Every stable democracy dwells in a well-structured state. The processes of creating a state and a democracy are different and yet linked. This chapter is divided into two parts. The first section discusses and evaluates alternative definitions of the state and theories of state creation. The second one examines and assesses different conceptualizations of democracy and theories of democratization.

The State As explained by Charles Tilly, an organization that controls the population occupying a defined territory is a state insofar as it is characterized by the following conditions1: . It is differentiated from other organizations in the same territory; 1 2. It is autonomous; 3. It is centralized; 4. Its divisions are formally coordinated with one another. Jorge Dominguez’s version of the state differs somewhat from Tilly’s. Dominguez defined the state as “a set of institutions with claim to legitimate monopoly of force over a certain territory and an ability to exercise it.”2 By asserting that a state is a set of institutions with claim to legitimate © The Author(s) 2020 A. R. Hybel, The Making of Flawed Democracies in the Americas, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21178-3_2

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monopoly of force, Dominguez concurred  with Tilly that such institutions are different from other organizations in the same territory, are autonomous, and are either centralized or divided but formally coordinated.3 Tilly, however, did not specify the way the state controls the population, while Dominguez emphasized that such control is a function of the state’s claim to the monopoly of force.4 Both Tilly and Dominguez stipulated that for an entity to be a state, it must be sovereign. In 1758, Eric Vattel proposed that sovereignty helps maintain the relationship between the “international community and the preservation of the separate existence of its parts.” It does so by legitimizing the right of only one actor to claim possession and control over a certain territory and its population, and by setting up a system of relations among the entities that make up the international system.5 Analysts agreed that for an entity to be a state, it must be sovereign both internally and externally. Internally, the state must be able to claim supremacy over all other institutions within a particular territory and population. Externally, it must be able to assert its independence from outside authorities.6 In short, the state refers to an organization, or a set of institutions that is guided by specialized personnel who control a consolidated territory and its population, and that is recognized as the ultimate sovereign authority by other organizations operating in the same territory and by the agents of other states.7 Subsequently, analysts divided states into two categories— “weak” and “strong.” According to Peter Katzenstein, the distinction between the two is determined by the extent to which a state can attain national objectives. “The number and range of policy instruments emerge from the differentiation of state and society and the centralization of each.”8 Students of states in the developing world have proposed the inclusion of two additional categories: failed and collapsed states. A failed state is one that is “deeply conflicted, dangerous, and contested bitterly by warring factions.” The state cannot control its borders—it lacks authority over sections of its territory.9 A collapsed state is an extreme version of a failed state. A collapsed state displays a vacuum of authority in which security is equated with the rule of the strong, and political goods are obtained through private or ad hoc means.10 For some social scientists, the modern state is not an entirely autonomous actor, and its strength is not static. Timothy Mitchell proposed that the “boundary between the state and society is elusive, porous, and mobile.”11 Theodore Lowi emphasized that “there is no single dimension of strength, and there is no single dimension of autonomy. In fact, there

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are several dimensions of each, and any given state could be placed high or low on any of the dimensions of strength or autonomy.”12 And Theda Skocpol reminded analysts that state autonomy “is not a fixed structural feature of any governmental system. It can come and go…the very structural potentials for autonomous state actions change over time.”13 This study is attentive to Skocpol’s warning during the empirical analysis of the processes of state creation in the Americas that follows this chapter.

Theories of State Creation Few analysts have paid more attention to the issue of state formation than Charles Tilly and Stein Rokkan. Their initial focus was  the processes of state creation throughout Europe. Their general argument was that entities north and west of the city belt in the middle of Europe—France, England, and Scandinavian states—were markedly more successful at forging centralized states earlier than the territories in the center of Europe, which remained fragmented until the nineteenth century. Their capacity to create centralized states depended on relative ethnic, religious, and language homogeneity, as well as access to extractable resources. Control over resources, however, could not be attained without the presence of a powerful army. According to Tilly, the ability of a European entity to form a state was generally determined by whether it possessed the following advantages:14 . Access to extractable resources; 1 2. Relative invulnerability to military attacks or conquests for significant periods; 3. Competent political leaders; 4. Powerful army and success in wars; 5. Homogeneous population; 6. Capacity to design a strong coalition with the major segments of the landed elites; 7. Advantageous position within the international system. Tilly presented two major arguments. One of his principal contentions was that a society that is culturally divided will be less willing to accept the authority of the state than a culturally homogeneous one. Mindful that cultures change, he added that regional European actors that took firm strong steps to homogenize the population by promoting the adoption of

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a state religion, expelling minorities, institutionalizing a national language, and standardizing education, were much more successful at creating stable and unified states than those that tolerated diversity.15 He also noted that the continuous, aggressive competition for trade and territory among changing European states of unequal size made war a driving force. To fight a war, a political entity had to build an effective political machine. Initially, this task placed a heavy burden on the population in the form of taxes, conscription, and requisitions. If the political actor was militarily successful, it would have in place political institutions capable of delivering revenues for other purposes, and it would possess an army with the power to enforce the government’s will over stiff resistance.16 The centralized state apparatus typically started in one or more fairly well-populated cities. By means of capital, “urban ruling classes extend their influence through the urban hinterland and across far-flung trading networks.”17 Rokkan’s argument parallels Tilly’s. State building, explained Rokkan, could be divided into four phases. The first step entails “a period of political, economic, and cultural unification at the elite level: a series of bargains are struck and a variety of cultural bonds are established across networks of local power-holders and a number of institutions are built for the extraction of resources for common defense, for the maintenance of internal order and the adjudication of disputes, for the protection of established rights and privileges and for the elementary infrastructure requirements of the economy and the polity.”18 During the second phase, the center creates new channels of contact with the peripheries in order to induce the population to identify more closely with the political system. In the third phase, there is an increase in the level of participation of the masses through the establishment of privileges of opposition, the creation of political parties, and the extension of the electorate. In the final phase, the state experiences a growth in the agencies of redistribution.19 With the various phases in place that an entity has to complete in order to become a state, Rokkan isolated the conditions that affected the ability of European actors to accomplish such an objective. First, the “only efforts of aggressive state-building took place on the fringes of economic Europe. In the smaller of these peripheral nation-states, the typical sequence was one of gradual build-up at the ethnic center, rapid imperial expansion, [and] consolidation within a more homogeneous territory.”20 Second, democracy in Europe began to take form only after political, economic, and cultural unification at the elite level had been attained and channels of contact between the center and the periphery had been established.

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Nation building, as already noted, is related to state creation. The drive to form a nation requires building a national identity, unifying administrations, and roping in territories that were accustomed to high levels of autonomy and had resisted centralization.21 Before the era of mass politics, the transition from state building to nation building and to the development of unified cultures depended greatly on three factors. States that underwent the Protestant Reformation were markedly more effective than states that did not experience such change. States that were not deeply divided along linguistic and ethnic lines were also more effective.22 Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan presented an analysis that addresses questions similar to those just articulated. They first differentiated the state from the nation. The nation lacks autonomy, agents, or rule. Its only resources are derived from the psychological identity developed by leaders and the people within a state.23 Based on this differentiation, they asked: “Under what empirical conditions are the logics of state policies aimed at nation-building congruent with those aimed at crafting democracy?” Conflicts between the different policies, they explained, are reduced “when almost all of the residents of a state identify with one subjective idea of the nation, and when that nation is virtually coextensive with the state. These conditions are met only if there is no significant irredenta outside the state’s boundaries, if there is only one nation existing (or awakened) in the state, and if there is little cultural diversity within the state.”24 When such conditions are present, governmental leaders can pursue democratization and nation-state policies at the same time. The United States did not become either a state or a democracy overnight. In Saskia Sassen’s words, a powerful and legitimate state “evolved out of a loose confederation—eventually a federation—with extensive decentralized powers residing at local levels, with a culture of local self-­ government, and with strong participatory democracy.”25 What made it possible for a vast territory with a variety of climates and means of production, with inhabitants with different interests, morals, and policies, to become a legitimate state? An examination of existing studies of the United States’ state-creation experience reveals that the common shortcomings they all share are failures to explain its actual evolution as a state and the reasons it evolved in the manner it did. Seymour Martin Lipset argued that the distinctive basic values that emerged during the post-independence period have persisted with vigor since the early parts of the nineteenth century. Such a generalization, however, is not particularly helpful, because as he acknowledges,

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it is not his intent to prove the relationship between values and institutions but to illuminate it.26 Samuel Huntington’s work was markedly more specific than Lipset’s. Huntington proposed that there are three patterns of political modernizations: Continental, British, and American. There is no need at this stage to discuss the differences and similarities between the three. For present purposes, all that is required is to explicate the manner in which the American pattern differed from the other two, but principally from the British. In the seventeenth century, noted Huntington, the state replaced fundamental law as the source of political authority, and within each state a single authority replaced the many sources of authority that had existed during the feudal era. In the newly independent American states, its people continued to adhere to fundamental law as the source of authority for human actions and as an authoritative restraint on human behavior. Moreover, sovereignty was never concentrated in a single institution or individual. Instead, it was dispersed throughout society and among many political bodies.27 The distinctions identified by Huntington are helpful as one tries to understand the initial stages of the state-creation process in the United States. But as he also noted, it was not the intent of his discourse to explain the transitions the United States experienced as a state, and the types of effects such transitions had on the US polity.28 Decades later, Stephen Skowronek argued that American leaders tried to create a state with a structure that would differ measurably from the type of framework the arising European entities were designing. Skowronek concurred with Alexis de Tocqueville, Marx, and Hegel, all of whom, in their own distinct ways, argued that the United States was the great anomaly among Western states.29 Hans Daadler did  not necessarily challenge the conclusions arrived at by the aforementioned scholars, but emphasizes that though the United States sought to create a different type of state system, ultimately it is an offshoot “of English political traditions, whittling down the royal powers of colonial days in favor of elected chief executives at federal and state levels, giving greater weight to representative principles, creating institutional checks, and balances both in central institutions and in the federal makeup of the new polity, and providing a greater role for popular control and election.”30 Despite the fact that Skowronek’s work was not designed to explain the evolution of the United States as a state, his work merits careful consideration.31 The sovereignty of the United States, he wrote, was embodied in 13 separate state legislatures. This kind of power distribution left

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­ overnment “at the mercy of fast-changing popular sentiments.” Aware of g the destabilizing effects of such a loose arrangement, those who met in Philadelphia in 1787 tried to create a state organization that would enable a central government to control the territory and would distribute power between three branches that would share it equally at the national level. “Constitutional federalism,” he added, “inhibited the penetration of central power throughout the nation by ensuring the integrity of these states, each with its own institutional organization, legal code, and law enforcement apparatus.”32 By the start of the last quarter of the nineteenth century, political and economic leaders, along with members of the intellectual elite, recognized that they had to readjust the organization of the state designed in 1787. They concluded that in order to deal with the forces of industrialization, Washington would need to expand the administrative capacities of the central state. The modernization of the state did not involve making it more efficient—instead, it entailed “building a qualitatively different state.”33 Spanish American states entered the processes of independence and state creation nearly half a century after the United States had been recognized as a sovereign entity by the European states. A number of students have sought to explain the conditions that facilitated and obstructed the process of state creation throughout Latin America. According to Frank Safford, the literature on state building in Spanish America could  be divided into three categories. One stresses the significance of Spanish American culture, the second contends that structural economic problems were the principal influences, and a third emphasizes that conflicting ideologies and fear of the lower classes were the defining factors.34 As an alternative, Safford proposed a more complex argument. He contended that a combination of seven factors enabled or inhibited state development in Spanish America during the nineteenth century. Independently, they are (i) economic geography, including topography, resources, and relative economic integration; (ii) political geography, including geographic and transportation conditions affecting political integration; (iii) relative economic and fiscal strength; (iv) relative public acceptance of the political systems, regardless of whether it was framed in the constitution or not; (v) the extent to which the civilian authorities control the military; (vi) the role of the Catholic Church; and (vii) the relative vulnerability of the evolving state to external pressure or attack.35 The significance of those factors, added Safford, varied from one state to another, as did the way they were combined. Their variance is explained in the empirical chapters.

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In an extensive comparative analysis of five Latin American states, Fernando López-Alves postulated  several additional arguments. He first proposed that state formation throughout Latin America has been defined as a process whereby elites committed to creating states overcame deeply seated opposition from their populations and vanquished regional political leaders. The common task has been to explain the differences in the timing of the centralization of power, and to delineate the conditions under which those who sought to create the state succeeded or failed.36 Based on that foundation, he argued that the feudal characteristics of rural life in Argentina, Uruguay, and Colombia are poor predictors of state making, and that mode-of-production arguments regarding state creation in Latin America are not particularly relevant. Though he acknowledged the significance of domestic structural elements, he stressed that the inclusion of war and conflict-resolution factors enhance measurably the predictive quality of a theory of state creation. “Conflict and concomitant collective action,” he explained, “determined access to the means of production, altered property relations, created new classes, and displaced old monopolies and land and trade.” He then added that whether the state was able to recruit members of the nobility and secure their support during wars affected the timing and character of class alliances and the development of state bureaucracies. Based on the above generalizations, López-Alves advanced several hypotheses. Presented in summary form, they are the following: 1. Failure on the part of a rebellious upper class to coalesce against the central power accelerated power centralization. 2. When the landed gentry were defeated in their own domains, the process of centralizing power took place faster. 3. The locations of wars were significant. When wars ensued within the area controlled by the central government and territory nearby, the process of power centralization proceeded at a slow pace. If battles were fought far away, the state makers enjoyed a better economic environment. In those cases, political leaders were able to invest more resources in the construction of a central army, which in turn strengthened the elites’ capacity to consolidate the power and authority of the state.37 The Resource Curse or Paradox of Plenty Theory has been proposed to explain the process of state creation in states with extensive mineral wealth.

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According to the theory, states rich in minerals and fuel are predisposed to generate high levels of corruption, ineffective governance, and violence.38 Terry Karl used elements of the theory to explain the type of impact Venezuela’s dependence on oil revenues had on its state capacity. Venezuela, she notes, relied extensively on petrodollars. This reliance expanded the state’s jurisdiction and weakened its authority as other extractive capabilities withered. As a result, when faced with competing pressures, state officials, accustomed to relying on the progressive use of public spending as a substitute for statecraft, ultimately weakened the state’s capacity to address problems.39 The first thing that becomes evident from the brief discussion is that analysts are not in agreement as to which are the leading factors that help explicate the state-creation processes throughout Latin America. For Frank Safford, the most important ones for each country are political and economic geography; economic and fiscal strength; public acceptance of the political systems; extent to which the civilian authorities control the military; role played by the Catholic Church; and vulnerability to external pressure or attack. López-Alves emphasized that the feudal characteristics of rural life in several of the Latin American countries are not good predictors of state creation. For him, the leading causes were conflict and concomitant collective action. Together they determined access to the means of production, altered property relations, created new classes, and displaced old land and trade monopolies. Related to the issue of conflict was whether those striving to create the state and consolidate its power were able to recruit members of the nobility and secure their support during wars. Their level of success affected the timing and character of class alliances and the development of state bureaucracies. In related arguments, López-Alves proposed that the process of centralizing the power of the state was less cumbersome when the members of the rebellious upper class were unable to unite against the elites at the center, when the landed gentry were defeated in their own domains, and when battles took place in distant regions not controlled by the central government. Terry Karl did not posit a theory of state creation. Instead, her objective was to apply elements of the Resource Curse Theory to explain the effects oil has had on the capability of the Venezuelan state. She did not suggest that all resourcerich states are destined to experience Venezuela’s fate. At the same time, it is evident that there is no consensus among a­nalysts as to what steps resource-rich countries must take in order to avert the negative repercussions so many similar states have experienced.40

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For present purposes, it is not necessary to engage in a critical analysis of the various theoretical alternatives. Such an analysis evolves from the empirical cases.

Democracy It is not the intent of this study to explain the evolution of democracy as a concept or as a political regime. In the pages that follow the focus is directed to a discussion of the concept of democracy in the contemporary era. The simplest way to ascertain what a democracy is, is by asking: How does one know that a political regime is actually a democracy? The answer is not self-evident. According to Robert Dahl, a contemporary democracy is a political system that is “completely or almost completely responsive to all its citizens.” A political system will remain responsive to the preferences of its citizens only if they have unimpaired opportunities to: . Formulate their preferences; 1 2. Manifest their preferences to one another and to the government by individual and collective action; 3. Have their preferences weighted equally, with no discrimination because of the content or source of the preference. For the aforementioned opportunities to exist, the regime must provide its citizens the following guarantees: . Freedom to form and join organizations; 1 2. Freedom of expression; 3. Right to vote; 4. Eligibility for public office; 5. Right of political leaders to compete for support and votes; 6. Access to alternative sources of information; 7. Free and fair elections; 8. Institutions for making government policies depend on votes and other expressions of preference.41 The extent to which the eight conditions are present in a contemporary political regime can be represented along two dimensions: liberalization (public contestation), and inclusiveness (participation). Throughout

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­ istory, political systems have varied in terms of which, or whose, political h preferences were accounted for when policies were made. At one extreme, the government responded to the political preferences of only one person; at the other extreme, it weighted equally the political preferences of all the citizens and formulated its policies based on the preferences of the greater number. Political systems, however, have also varied in terms of the barriers or opportunities they extended for “the expression, organization, and representation of political preferences and thus in the opportunities available to potential oppositions.” The fact that all the eligible adult citizens in a political system had the right to vote did not mean that such a regime respected their votes. For such votes to be meaningful, the voters had to have open access to political institutions that they could employ openly to challenge the government.42 By positioning public contestation on the vertical axis and participation on the horizontal one, Dahl created a theoretical space in which he placed at least four types of regimes. On the lower left corner, where public contestation and participation are non-existent, Dahl situated closed hegemonic regimes. These are regimes that ban completely the expression, organization, and representation of political preferences, and prohibit any form of organized dissent and opposition.43 Diagonally across, on the upper right corner, Dahl placed polyarchies. These are regimes that “impose the fewest restraints on the expression, organization, and representation of political preferences and on the opportunities available to opponents of government.”44 On the upper left corner, above closed hegemonic regimes and to the far left of polyarchies, he located competitive oligarchies. These are regimes that authorize an increase in public contestation but at the same time limit extensively the number of participants. In other words, though opportunities to oppose the government exist, only a small number of individuals are authorized to participate in the political process. And finally, on the lower right corner, to the far right of closed hegemonic regimes and below polyarchies, he positioned the inclusive hegemonies. In these regimes there are no major constraints on participation, but the participants lack access to organizations with the authority and power to project dissent and oppose the government.45 Wolfgang Merkel interpreted  democracy differently. Dissatisfied with earlier conceptualizations of democracy, he proposed that liberal ­democracy involves more than public contestation and participation. Each liberal democracy, he noted, consists of five partial regimes with these requirements:

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1. It must have an electoral regime that is competitive and transparent. That is, elections must be equal, general, regular, free, and fair. 2. Elections and the pursuit of collective interests must be allowed by granting citizens the right to freedom of speech, of opinion, of association, and of demonstration. 3. Civil rights that contain and limit the exercise of power by the state must exist. 4. Power between the executive, legislative, and judiciary bodies must be divided, and each must be accountable. 5. The government must be able to govern without the threat of being vetoed, overruled, or overthrown by a non-elected group.46 Merkel’s third requirement, civil rights, is intended to protect the individual from “the tyranny of the majority.” As he put it, in a constitutional democracy, decisions concerning the rights of individuals “have to be put out of reach of any majority of citizens or parliament …. The executive and legislative branches need barriers that prevent individuals, groups or the political opposition from being oppressed by a democratic (majority) decision.”47 Merkel was not alone when he emphasized the last condition. In democracies, wrote Guglielmo Ferrero, the “opposition is an organ of popular sovereignty just as vital as the government. To suppress the opposition is to suppress the sovereignty of the people.” Or as explained by Giovanni Sartori, “majority rule is only a shorthand formula for limited majority rule, for a restrained majority rule that respects minority rights.”48 The fourth condition, accountability of powers, refers to the division of power between mutually interdependent and autonomous bodies: the executive, the legislative, and the judiciary. The presence of the fourth condition does not necessarily guarantee that an extra-constitutional actor, such as the military, would never usurp the authority of the three branches. Though in well-established democracies control over the military is properly defined, this type of mechanism is not always present in regimes striving to become democracies. Thus, the fifth condition postulates that non-elected groups must never have the capacity to restrict the ability of the elected representative to govern. Analysts of Latin American politics concur. Liberal democracy, wrote Larry Diamond, “requires the absence of reserved domains of power for the military or other actors not accountable to the electorate, directly or indirectly.”49 Merkel expanded the argument with the contention that for a political regime to be considered a democracy, the five aforementioned conditions

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must be mutually embedded; that is, certain partial conditions must support the performance of other partial conditions. Political rights and civil rights, for instance, enable the holding of free elections. The division into partial regimes, moreover, serves several analytical purposes. First, it enables the analyst to identify defects within a democracy. Second, by aggregating the defects within a democracy, the analyst can compare them with the defects of other democracies. And third, it enables the analyst to conduct a systematic and comparative analysis of the way in which defects in a partial condition affect other partial conditions.50 Merkel completed his analysis with the identification of four types of defective democracies. In an exclusive democracy one or more segments of all adult citizens are “excluded from the civil right of universal suffrage.” In an illiberal democracy “constitutional norms have little binding impact on government actions and individual rights are either partially suspended or not yet established.” In a delegative democracy the division of power is not well rooted and the power of the executive branch is not kept fully in check by the legislative and judiciary branches. And finally, in a domain democracy the effective conditions that prevent the illegal intervention by unelected officials, such as the military, are absent.51 Merkel’s types of democracy are built on the idea that certain defects are qualitatively worse than others. Defects present in an exclusive democracy are considered to be the worst, while defects found in either a delegative or a domain democracy are thought to be the least troublesome.52 In his work, The Theory of Democracy Revisited, Sartori reminded  us that the first task of a definition is to assign limits, and that the standard way of delimiting a concept is by establishing its opposite. Thus, in order to determine what a democracy is, one must also establish what it is not. He also prompted us to keep in mind that when discussing democracy, it is critical to differentiate between two questions: “What is democracy?” and “How much democracy?” These two questions complement one another, but in order to answer the second question, one must first establish what a democracy is, and what it is not. Sartori contended that the tendency to overlook the critical difference between both questions is a result of our general tendency to place tremendous emphasis on quantitative analysis. He did not suggest that such focus is misplaced; instead he proposed that it often compels us to overlook the value of differentiating between regimes that are democratic and those that are clearly not. Failure to attend to this distinction could easily lead one to infer that all political regimes are to a lesser or greater degree a democracy.53

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Dahl’s and Merkel’s alternative conceptualizations of democracy did not address the problem identified by Sartori. Neither framework enabled the analyst to determine when a political regime is no longer a democracy. The problem can be best identified in the form of distinct but related questions: When does a polyarchy become a competitive oligarchy? Is a competitive oligarchy a defective democracy? When does a defective democracy become a non-democracy? A partial analysis of the political conditions in the United States during the final decades of the nineteenth century and the first few decades of the twentieth century can help illustrate the problem. During that period, the level of political competition between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party was intense, but not every adult was allowed to participate. White women who had been born in the United States, or who had been naturalized and were in “good moral standing,” were legal citizens; members of neither group, however, had the right to vote until 1920. African American men were recognized as citizens in 1867 but were denied the right to vote for two more years. Then, between 1896 and 1900, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Alabama, and Virginia adopted “grandfather clauses” in order to prevent former slaves and their descendants from voting. Many of these clauses remained in place until the mid-1960s. Native Americans were not considered citizens until 1924, and in many states, they were denied the right to vote until 1957. Thus, were one to adhere to Merkel’s criteria that a democracy protects the civil rights of adults to participate in elections, speak freely, voice their opinions, and associate, one could claim that in the year 1900 the United States was both an exclusive democracy and an illiberal democracy, but still some kind of democracy. The above argument begs the question: How do we justify categorizing the United States as a defective democracy in 1900 when more than half of its citizens did not possess the legal right to vote? More directly, why even label the United States a democracy? Were one to rely on Dahl’s alternative classification, in 1900 the United States was a competitive oligarchy, not a polyarchy. Or if one were to use Guillermo O’Donnell’s terminology, it was a democratic oligarchy, as less than half of the adult population who were born in the United States or who were naturalized citizens and over the age of 21 possessed the right to vote. Though other states throughout the globe that were permitting only a portion of its population to participate in the electoral process did not have to cope with

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a racial divide, they would also be depicted as a competitive oligarchy or a democratic oligarchy rather than a polyarchy. Based on Sartori’s argument and the example just presented, it is clear that one must first differentiate democratic regimes from non-democratic ones. A competitive oligarchy is not a democracy, not even a defective democracy. This distinction does not preclude determining which democratic regimes are more or less democratic. In short, a minimum standard must be designed to determine when a regime begins being, or stops being, a democracy. The modern demos is a vast, atomized, and depersonalized mass society, incapable of functioning as a collective decision-making body. This condition forces the members of the demos to rely on representatives to design policies. In such a world, free elections become the protectors of the people’s power. Representatives make policies, but free elections force policy makers to account for the preferences of the demos during the policy-making process. Without open access to information, however, free elections would express nothing. To the extent that free elections protect the power of the people, open access to information ensures that the representatives do not undermine such power. In addition to representation, elections, and access to competing sources of information, the contemporary democratic state is characterized by the presence of political parties. As Dahl noted, “elections cannot be contested in a large system without organization. To forbid political parties would make it impossible for citizens to coordinate their efforts in order to nominate and elect their preferred candidates.”54 A regime is non-democratic when contested elections are not permitted. The absence of public contestation can take at least two forms. In its first form, the state has only one party, which is a duplicate of the state. A party-state system is a “system of unitarism.”55 Communist, Nazi, and fascist regimes fit in this category. In its second form, the state has one party and permits the presence of secondary minor parties. This system is non-competitive, because the state does not authorize the peripheral parties to compete with the hegemonic party on an equal footing. A hegemonic party system remains undemocratic even if competition were to ensue among leaders of the party. It is not the case, as Maurice Duverger argued, that to the extent that competition within a party ensues freely, the system can be categorized as being democratic. Competition within a party between leaders who do not have to consider the voters’ preferences is very different from competition when such preferences must be taken

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into account. Competition in the first case lacks the elements that make a system democratic: electoral competition and free elections.56 To the extent that public contestation focuses on the degree of opposition permitted, participation focuses on whose preferences the system considers. As already explained, constitutions have differed throughout history partly by dictating who possessed the legal right to participate in the electoral process. Thus, if by democracy one means the rule or power of the people, then one must first determine who the people are. The analysis must begin with the question: “What persons have a rightful claim to be included in the demos?”57 According to Dahl, the Strong Principle of Equality provides the ground needed for the criteria of inclusion. In line with this principle, all members of an association “are adequately qualified to participate on an equal footing with the others in the process of governing the association.”58 Dahl then used the principle to infer that the “demos should include all adults subject to the binding collective decisions of the association.”59 Dahl’s rule rejects the contention that since what has been thought to constitute a “people” has varied throughout history, responsibility for defining the populace should rest on the populace itself. He did not agree with Joseph Schumpeter, who wrote that it is “not relevant whether we the observers admit the validity of those reasons or of the practical rules by which they are made to exclude portions of the population; all that matters is that the society in question admits it.”60 To agree with Schumpeter’s justification, noted Dahl, was to accept the argument that if a group of people within an association were not considered to be “people” by another group also in the same association, the system could not be considered to be undemocratic. Dahl was cognizant of how difficult it is to rely on logical criteria to determine who the people are. On the one hand, he questioned the idea of relying on the principle of competence to decide who should be part of the demos. This principle has been used repeatedly to prevent women, artisans, laborers, those without property, and racial minorities from acting on behalf of their own interests. Moreover, whenever such constraints existed, those who were part of the demos did not necessarily protect the interests of those who were excluded from the political process. Dahl did  acknowledge that the rule has always been applied to ensure that ­children were not considered part of the demos, and argues that such a stand is justified.61 He accepted its application to children by siding with John Locke, who argued that though children were denied certain rights,

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they received them as they mature, while for excluded adults “the bonds of . . . subjection” never “quite drop off.”62 Dahl concluded that though it was necessary to rely on a judgment of competence, it was imperative to use a standard that helped reduce the arbitrariness of such a judgment. O’Donnell concurred, adding the very important clarification that in a democracy the “attribution of rights and obligations is assigned by the legal system to most adults in the territory of a state.”63 This brings us back to one of the original questions. When does a political regime stop being democratic? Neither O’Donnell nor Merkel provided clear guidelines. Throughout his analysis, O’Donnell referred to an “inclusive democracy,” to a “non-inclusive democracy” and to an “oligarchic democracy.” These three references generate confusion. By classifying one type of government as an inclusive democracy, O’Donnell was proposing that a regime in which there was  political competition between parties but not every adult citizen was authorized to vote, could also be referred to as a democracy, albeit an oligarchic democracy or a non-­ inclusive democracy or, as Merkel called it, an exclusive democracy. Based on this unclear differentiation it is difficult to determine when a democracy ceases to be a democracy. The boundary between a democratic and a non-democratic regime is delineated along the public contestation axis, which indicates whether free competition between at least two political parties is permitted, and along the participation axis, which specifies the extent to which a state’s adult citizens can participate in the electoral process. Accordingly, a political regime is democratic if all adult citizens are empowered to participate in contested-free elections between at least two political parties. It is non-­ democratic if political competition between at least two political parties is not permitted, or if the criteria of inclusion provided by the Strong Principle of Equality are not applied. Adherence to the proposed rule would indicate that the United States did not become a democracy until after 1965. At that time, of more than five million African Americans of voting age living in 11 southern states, only 1.4 million were registered to vote. Moreover, during debates in the Senate, 18 southern Democratic Senators and one Republican Senator launched a filibuster designed to prevent the passage of the Civil Rights Act. No single senator explained his intent to deny racial equality, and consequently his opposition to the idea of creating a democracy, more unmistakably than Richard Russell (D-GA) when he stated: “We will resist to the bitter end any measure or any movement [that] would have a

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t­ endency to bring social equality and intermingling and amalgamation of the races in our Southern states.”64 Using Merkel’s argument, one could counter the above argument by contending that though a substantial portion of the African American population, particularly those residing in the South, could not vote because of the many voting restrictions they encountered, and were not allowed to intermingle freely with whites, the United States was a democracy, albeit a defective one, because ultimately the discriminatory practice was eliminated legally by the representatives of the people. This kind of argument, however, has to cope with the fact that throughout the history of Western political regimes, the extension of suffrage was periodically expanded by granting the right to vote to a group of people who had been excluded, and that those who actually ruled in favor of the enlargement were representatives of a group of people, albeit a small one. Hence, if we were to follow the same logic, one could contend that a political regime in which only members of the nobility had the legal right to vote and be elected to parliament was a democracy—a defective one, but nevertheless a democracy. As already noted, to argue that there must be a well-defined boundary between a democratic regime and a non-democratic one is not to propose that all democratic regimes are equally democratic. Because preferences within a state can vary notably, no single political party can represent all of them at all times; hence, there is competition between political parties. The level of competition is dictated by constitutional design.65 Certain constitutions decree that elections use proportional representation and multimember electoral districts, while others rule that elections be bounded by a plurality system and single-member districts. Of the two, the first one is more “democratic.”66 As Sartori, an ardent defender of the “elite” theory of democracy noted, if democracy is rooted in the concept of the people’s power, then logic dictates that “true representation is, and can only be, proportional representation.”67 Proportional representation is more democratic in the sense that it facilitates the formation of a multiparty system, while plurality elections promote the construction of two-­ party systems. One of the critical differences between these two types of systems is that in a proportional-representation type of system the political parties are responsive, in the aggregate, to a broader set of preferences than in a plurality-type system.68 Stated in Dahl’s terms, public contestation is greater in the first system than in the second one.69 It can be proposed, thus, that a democracy’s degree of democracy is in part determined

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by its level of public contestation—the broader the range of preferences the political parties can respond to, the more democratic the regime. A democratic regime’s capacity to address a wide range of preferences is not the only determinant of its level of democracy. Elections alone do not guarantee that the elected officials will be permitted to perform their assigned roles. Throughout history, there have been many cases in which elected officials were prevented from assuming office, Congress or the Judiciary was dismissed, or the holder of the executive office was either toppled or forced to resign by a group or organization insulated from the electoral process.70 Those actions engender an analytical problem. Let us imagine a regime in which there is political competition between the parties, information flows relatively unhindered, civil rights are fairly well protected, and public participation is not restricted in any of the forms identified earlier. At the same time, however, the voters’ level of dissatisfaction and the tension between the competing parties have grown measurably. Then, after repeated failed attempts on the part of the elected political leaders to resolve their differences, the military intervenes, topples the government, and dismisses the Congress; and some of the military officers decide who should rule or appoint some of their own as the new rulers. Is the regime that was toppled a non-democratic regime? Or is it a democratic regime that was not solid enough to protect itself by resolving the existing tensions, and thus unintentionally empowered the military to take over the reins of government? It is not possible to draw a precise line that separates one category from the other. However, it is feasible to differentiate between two types of regimes: one is structured according to democracy’s basic tenets and exists uninterruptedly for an extended period, but at some point it is toppled by the military; the other is a regime that, despite its one or many attempts to adhere to democracy’s basic tenets, is ousted by the military shortly after its creation. The crucial factor in this comparison is the longevity of the political regime. The regime in the first case can be characterized as a defective democracy; the regime in the second case never managed to achieve the status of democracy. In other words, durability matters.

Theories of Democracy What are the conditions that enable certain countries, but not others, to develop stable polyarchies? To address the question, Dahl asked that we assume that originally all regimes were non-polyarchical.71 From this

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beginning, one can envision five different forms of development. In the first transition, a non-polyarchical regime encounters favorable conditions and develops into a stable polyarchy. In the second transition, a non-­ polyarchical regime faces unfavorable conditions and remains a non-­ polyarchy. Transitions three, four, and five all begin with a non-polyarchical regime that faces mixed or temporarily favorable conditions, but then each follows a different course. In the third track, a non-polyarchical regime becomes temporarily an unstable polyarchy, then returns to its original state and does not change again. In the fourth transition, the unstable polyarchy once again becomes a non-polyarchy, but is then able to transform itself into a lasting polyarchy. In the fifth and final transition, a regime repeatedly oscillates between a non-polyarchy and a polyarchy. Having proposed the alternative paths different countries might follow, Dahl contended that a country’s chance to develop a polyarchy is dependent on whether the following conditions exist72: 1. Means of violent coercion are dispersed and controlled by the civilian government. 2. Those who control the means of coercion are subject to the democratic process. 3. Power, influence, authority, and control are dispersed from single center toward a variety of entities. 4. Society is marked by a “relatively high level of income and wealth per capita, long-run growth in per capita income and wealth, a high level of urbanization, rapidly declining or relatively small agricultural population, great occupational diversity, extensive literacy, a comparatively large number of persons who have attended institutions of higher education, an economic order in which production is mainly carried on by relatively autonomous firms whose decisions are strongly oriented toward national and international markets, and relatively high levels of conventional indicators of well-being, such as physicians and hospital beds per thousand persons, life expectancy, infant mortality, percentage of families with various consumer durables, and so on.”73 5. People are culturally homogeneous, or are at least not segmented into strong and distinctive subcultures. 6. People are supportive of democratic institutions, particularly in their political activities. 7. Government is free of threats by foreign powers hostile to democracy.

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Dahl’s identification of the conditions that enhance a state’s chances of creating a stable democratic regime is helpful, and yet limited. One can concur with his claim that the likelihood that a democracy will emerge is greater when the means of coercion are dispersed and controlled by civilian leaders who are subject to the democratic process. What that statement does not explain is how that condition develops. For instance, in a number of Latin America countries the military often acted as an independent entity, with very limited control from civilian political leaders. With the passage of time, however, the military started to lose some of its control of the means of coercion, and civilian political leaders began to dictate its proper role. What brought about that change? Linz and Stepan addressed some of the concerns just voiced. They wrote that in a modern polity, “free and authoritative elections cannot be held, winners cannot exercise the monopoly of legitimate force, and citizens cannot effectively have their rights protected by a rule of law unless a state exists.” The creation of the state is a necessary condition for a regime to become a consolidated democracy, but not a sufficient one. Five other mutually reinforcing conditions must also be present. They are the following74: . A free and lively society; 1 2. A relatively autonomous political society; 3. Laws that regulate the actions of all the political actors and the government, and that protect individual freedoms and associational rights; 4. A functional state bureaucracy; 5. An institutionalized economic society. Linz and Stepan then postulated that a state that has a plurality of national, linguistic, religious, or cultural societies, will have great difficulty creating and maintaining a stable democracy.75 For a somewhat more detailed discussion of the extent to which different factors contributed to the creation of democratic regimes and their consolidation in Latin America, it is helpful to rely on, and when appropriate combine, the conclusions derived by Jeff Haynes in his book Democracy in the Developing World: Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East, and by Larry Diamond, Jonathan Hartlyn, Juan Linz, and Seymour Martin Lipset, in their edited book titled, Democracy in Developing Countries: Latin America.

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Haynes reviewed the effects three distinct conditions had on the consolidation, or the failure to consolidate, democracy in Latin America. They are:76 political culture and the legitimacy of the post-authoritarian regime, political participation and institutions, and economic and international factors. Based on the analysis of the aforementioned factors, Haynes proposed that in the consideration of cultural conditions, what matters is whether a political regime is backed by a civic culture “characterized by high levels of mutual trust, tolerance of diversity and a propensity for accommodation and compromise.” The development of such a culture is the by-product of democratic institutions and structures working jointly over time. More to the point, institutions help engender and disseminate democratic values and beliefs among the people of the state.77 Political leaders, added Haynes, particularly in developing states, are rarely willing to relinquish power. States in developing countries are the locus of a process in which “state rulers are defined by and obtain their power and resources on the basis of their office holding.” Power-holders in such entities are disinclined to relinquish power, and typically they rely on the military to either retain power or topple those in power. Or as he noted, in many cases the military intervenes to help “defend members of the political and economic elite from the rigors of democracy.” To obstruct this process, a strong civil society must be present. The last issues Haynes addressed were whether economic and international factors affect the democratization process. He took as his starting point a question posited by Adam Przeworski, Michael Alvarez, José Antonio Chibub, and Fernando Limongi. The four scholars asked: What conditions should be present in any country for it to have a democratic regime the following year? They contended that for a country to have a democracy in the following year, it must already have a democracy in place, must be affluent, must experience economic growth but with no-­ more-­than-moderate inflation, must undergo a decline in inequality, must face a favorable international climate, and must have parliamentary institutions.78 Finally, Haynes pointed out that despite an initial drive by developed countries and institutions in the Western world to use a range of means to compel non-democratic regimes to transform themselves into democracies, the outcomes have been disappointing. Though initially, efforts by members of the international community seemed to compel some developing countries to hold their first free elections, as time went by the intensity of the external appeals and pressures weakened.79

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Diamond and his co-editors presented and assessed the relevance of a greater number of potential “causal” variables. Within those variables, they sometimes identified conditions that impact them. They are the following80:



. Historical legacies, paths, and sequences; 1 2. State structure and strength; (a) The crisis of state expansion and economic intervention; (b) Centralization and decentralization; (c) The military; 3. Political institutions; (a) Parties and party systems; (b) Constitutional structure; 4. Political leadership; (a) Founding of democratic leadership; (b) Political adaptation and reform; (c) Response to economic crisis; (d) Response to generalized political crisis; 5. Political culture; (a) Sources of political culture; (b) Effects; 6. Socioeconomic development and economic performance; (a) Economic performance; 7. Inequality, class and other cleavages; 8. Civil society and associational life; (a) The mass media; 9. International factors; (a) US Policy

The three authors’ first contention was that colonial rule throughout Spanish America did not leave behind a homogeneous legacy. They then added that though it is very likely that the dissimilar experiences and obstacles encountered by the colonies affected differently the newly created states’ efforts to democratize, equally significant were the disparate circumstances surrounding the achievement of independence. They also noted that in order to understand the roots of authoritarianism that were quite prevalent throughout Spanish America, one must also focus on the political, social, and economic developments for the period between 1825 and 1900.81

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Their argument is essentially true, but at the same time it is important to recognize that each territory’s own unique colonial experience had important effects on its leaders’ efforts to shape the state during the decades immediately after independence. As is shown in the empirical analyses, such variances must be taken into account in order to explain the acute disparities in the capacities of Chile’s and Peru’s respective leaders to consolidate the power of the state. Diamond, Hartlyn, and Linz acknowledged the importance of this factor when they affirm that the constant conflicts between the centers and the peripheries in the emerging republics complicated the process of state building for decades. What they did not emphasize is that such struggles did not ensue equally in each of the emerging republics. For instance, the challenges faced by Peru’s center during the early stages of state creation were markedly greater than those encountered by Chile’s center. In the case of Peru, though Lima occupied the center during the colonial period, it had to tackle the competing interests and demands of many peripheries. In Chile, on the other hand, most of the power during the colonial period resided in Santiago. The differences in the intensity of the challenges encountered by Peru’s and Chile’s centers did not disappear with independence, and those differences had direct impacts on the two regimes’ respective capacities to form the state. An important point Diamond, Hartlyn, and Linz made—and one with which scholars in general concur—is that democracy is threatened both by the absence of an authoritative state and by the presence of very dominant state institutions. One of the common problems during much of the nineteenth century was that most Latin American leaders had great difficult creating effective state institutions, and that during parts of the twentieth century the common tendency of leaders was to establish domineering states.82 When one compares the powers of states across the two centuries, it is unquestionable that their powers were much greater in the latter century. But this generalization disregards that not all Latin American states in the nineteenth century were equally ineffective, and that not all of them were equally oppressive in the twentieth century. This observation brings us back to the earlier claim that in order to understand the initial differences among the newly independent states, it is imperative to delineate the types of regional, political, economic, and social structures they inherited from their respective colonial eras, and to describe the way such structures evolved as time went by. It is via the analysis of such processes that one can begin to understand why states and their respective democratic regimes developed differently.

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With regard to what role the military played and should play throughout Latin America to ensure the development of stable democracies, analysts, including Diamond, Hartlyn, and Linz, have been  almost of one mind. Democracy can emerge and can be sustained only when the military accepts the supremacy of civilian authorities elected freely by the people. As self-evident as this last contention may seem, it has limited theoretical utility. The following questions must also be answered: 1. How long did it take for the military to become a well-organized institution? 2. What made it possible for the military to transform itself into a well-­ organized institution? 3. What led the military to decide in a great number of cases that it was the only institution capable of resolving the political, economic, and social issues afflicting their respective states? 4. What compelled the military to start accepting that it had to acquiesce to the dictates of freely elected civilian political leaders? Answers to those questions should help analysts develop a better understanding of why the processes of state creation and democratization were more cumbersome in some instances than in others. A related, but different, argument could be made with regard to the role of political institutions in the fostering of a stable democracy. Democracy will not emerge—and if it emerges it will falter—unless it is built on a constitution that advocates the rule of law, representative institutions, elections, legal systems, and political freedom. Latin American countries encountered great difficulties as they tried to create the aforementioned institutional organizations and structures. Diamond, Hartlyn, and Linz emphasized these two points. But once again, what they did not discuss at any length is that some states had to overcome greater obstacles than others as their respective political leaders went about designing their political regimes. Stated in simpler terms, it is important to explain why some states were compelled to write more constitutions than others, and why some states were afflicted by a greater number of military coups than others. Can political leadership have a positive or a negative effect on the creation and protection of democratic regimes? Diamond, Hartlyn, and Linz proposed that it can. The writers of the various empirical studies throughout their book support the argument. Their claim has been that a “ ­ flexible,

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accommodative, consensual leadership style is more successful in developing and maintaining democracy than a militant, uncompromising, confrontational one.”83 This study neither supports, nor objects to, such an argument; instead it contends that as presented it faces two crucial methodological problems. First, to avoid postulating a circular argument, the analyst must design a priori measures of political leadership styles. Second, the causal significance of political leadership cannot be ascertained until it is tested under specific structural conditions. As Karl has pointed out, contingent choices must be placed in the context of the structural constraints that shape them.84 To demonstrate that political leadership played a significant role in the formation and protection of a democratic regime, the investigator must select at least two states in which the domestic and international political, economic, and social obstacles and opportunities faced by their respective set of leaders were quite similar, and in which one group succeeded at developing and maintaining democracy while the other did not.85 In short, though this objection is not designed to question the significance of leadership styles, the extent to which they matter cannot be ascertained unless the analyses are conducted with independent measures of leadership styles and under controlled conditions. Students of Latin American politics are not of one mind with regard to the role of political culture. Some analysts view political cultural as a secondary phenomenon that accompanies another and is caused by it. Others contend that the nature of culture is too plastic and too malleable to have a decisive effect on whether a state will become democratic or not. The three aforementioned authors advanced a nuanced line of reasoning that this study adheres to and that social constructivists also support. Social constructivism has three interconnected foundations. First, it asserts that material structures do not exist independently of the identities of the social actors interpreting them. Second, it states that the identities of social actors shape their interests, preferences, and actions. And third, it emphasizes that social actors and normative structures are reciprocally formed.86 In short, according to social constructivism, the structure of meaning takes its form through time as the system’s leading actors legitimize it. A legitimized structure of meaning helps define the social identities of actors, and these definitions in turn help shape their interests and actions. Thus, the relationship between a domestic system’s structure of meaning and the identities, interests, and actions of social actors is not unidirectional. Just as the domestic system’s structure affects the identities, interests, and

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actions of social actors, they, in turn, mold the international system’s structure of meaning. Or in Diamond, Hartlyn, Linz’s own words, their empirical cases “strongly suggest a reciprocal relationship between the political culture and the political system.”87 The three noted scholars added two important qualifiers to the last declaration. First, they asserted that in most cases the choice of democratic values by political elites preceded the presence of democratic values among members of the general population. Then they proposed that in a great number of cases, the decision on the part of conservative elites to create a democratic regime was a pragmatic, calculated strategy. Their general conclusion is partly correct but not nuanced enough. Among the Latin American political leaders who advocated the formation of representative systems after they had freed themselves from Spain, none sponsored universal participation. They were influenced by many of the ideas and values being promoted both in the United States and throughout various Western European countries, which for a prolonged period refused to extend such a right to every adult male member of the population. In Latin America two reinforcing, but distinct, beliefs obstructed attempts to revise the law. Like their European counterparts, during the early decades after the declaration of independence, the leaders of Latin American states argued that men who did not own property, did not pay taxes, or could not read and write, were not sufficiently responsible to cast their votes. Such an argument gained greater intensity in states with vast indigenous populations. The common sentiment among the political elites of those states was that they would be undercutting their own political, economic, and social privileges were they to extend voting rights to the original inhabitants of the Americas. In short, students of Latin American politics  have acknowledged that states with substantial ethnic cleavages typically have greater difficulty democratizing. From this generalization, however, it should not be inferred that states without ethnic cleavages always found the path toward democracy less cumbersome. Regional cleavages have also acted as barriers to the building of democratic regimes.88 As economic development gained momentum, and as the well-being of those who remained disenfranchised improved and they started to demand the right to vote, political elites recognized that it would be in their interests to widen the size of their electorate. Such a right did not apply immediately to the indigenous peoples of all Latin American countries. They were first allowed to vote in Guatemala in 1945, in Bolivia in 1952, in

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Peru in 1978, in Ecuador in 1979, and in Colombia in 1991.89 Since then, their capacity to have their voices and demands addressed has increased measurably, but it has yet to reach a level proportional to their numbers. A culture of democracy did not start gaining roots until the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. Elected civilian officials failed in a great number of cases to engage in constructive dialogues in order to formulate constructive solutions to the multiple political and economic ills they encountered. Their failure empowered military leaders to declare that they were the only ones able to protect the national interest and bring about political stability along with economic development and growth. For a while, civilian leaders and members of the general public either accepted, or had no choice but to accept, the argument postulated by the military. Most military governments, however, did not succeed in bringing about the positive results they had promised. As it became evident that military rule was not the solution, the clamor for democratic rule intensified. But did the demand for change increase because democratic values still lingered in the minds of many members of the political elites and the ­public in general? Or was the upsurge prompted by a rational process, one in which political leaders and the public finally recognized that adherence to democratic government was the only real alternative to military rule? According to Arturo Valenzuela, the decision to opt for a democratic regime was a calculated strategy conducted by conservative forces.90 Valenzuela’s conclusion, however, begs the question: Why advocate a democratic regime instead of another type of regime? What Valenzuela did not explain, along with Diamond, Hartlyn, and Linz, is that in politics, values and beliefs do not exist independently of interests. As Robert Merton reminded us, politics is always about interests, but interests are always rooted in values, beliefs, and ideas.91 Initially it was noted that a common argument advanced by scholars is that political elites began to adopt values and beliefs associated with democracy before the general public did. And yet, toward the end of the twentieth century and start of the twenty-first century, political leaders in several Latin American states initiated anti-democratic structural changes. The leaders of Venezuela, Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Nicaragua imposed constitutional changes that led many analysts  to question the claim that the changes were designed to promote the values associated with democracy. Their leaders’ actions, however, do not seem to have undercut the Argentinians’ and Venezuelans’ commitment to democracy.

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In both cases, though the people have been highly critical of their respective governments, the majority continues to believe that democracy is the only viable form of government. Does their commitment suggest that, despite the anti-democratic measures initiated by their leaders, the values and beliefs generally associated with democracy have actually developed deep roots among the people? This question is revisited shortly. It is argued that every democracy needs a pluralistic, autonomously organized civil society in order to check the power of the state and give expression to popular interests via the democratic process.92 According to Larry Diamond, a civil society refers to the “realm of organized social life that is open, voluntary, self-generating, at least partially self-supporting, autonomous from the state, and bound by a legal order or set of shared rules.” A civil society is distinct from “society” in general. It must exist in a democracy in order to express collectively the public’s “interests, passions, preferences, and ideas, to exchange information, to achieve collective goals, to make demands on the state, to improve the structure and functioning of the state, and to hold state officials accountable.”93 The function of a civil society is to serve as an intermediary between the private world and the state. A civil society is not a political society, because a political society encompasses organized actors whose central goal is to gain access to the state or to gain control of the state. Moreover, a civil society excludes individual and family life; groups that are organized for recreational, entertainment, or religious purposes; and individual business firms. How is a “pluralistic, autonomously organized civil society” formed?94 To develop a better understanding of the relationship between civil society and democracy, one must once again refer to the state-creation process. During the first phase of building a state, a territory’s preeminent elites engage in a series of bargains and establish a variety of networks to create bonds with local power-holders. Jointly they start creating institutions designed to extract resources for common defense, maintain internal order and adjudicate disputes, protect established rights and privileges, and create the elementary economic and political infrastructure. During the second phase, the center creates new channels of contact with the peripheries in order to induce their populations to identify more closely with the political system. Democratization begins in the third phase. At this stage, there is an increase in the level of participation of the masses. The increase takes place through the establishment of privileges of opposition, the creation of political parties, and the extension of the electorate. In the fourth

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stage, the state experiences a growth in the agencies of redistribution.95 According to this differentiation, thus, civil society begins to shape itself during the second phase. It begins to gain importance as the people within the state start to develop norms and values that transcend their own narrow interests, and as they start to organize themselves with the intent of demanding changes to the existing structures. Diamond proposed that civil society can affect democratization in three distinct, but not entirely independent, ways. It can attempt to do the following: 1. Aid political elites in consolidating democracy and strengthening its foundations; 2. Control the power of the state by holding [it] accountable to the law and public expectations; 3. Generate the transition from authoritarian rule to, at least, an electoral democracy. A civil society’s role with regard to the third condition can vary depending on circumstances. A fissure within an authoritarian regime, such as an internal cleavage within the regime between its hard-liners and its soft-­ liners, has in some instances compelled civil society to initiate a public upsurge strong enough to force the regime to relinquish control. In other cases, the transition has ensued even without the existence of a division within the authoritarian regime. In such instances, typically the driving entities were one or more non-governmental organizations that succeeded in convincing hundreds of thousands of citizens to take to the streets to demand changes, and also succeeded in enlisting the backing of international actors.96 Before discussing the role of civil society, it was stated that though most Argentinians and Venezuelans are highly critical of their “democratic governments,” they remain committed to democracy. It seems quite evident, therefore, that a civil society that is committed to acting “collectively in a public sphere to express their interests, passions, preferences, and ideas, to exchange information, to achieve collective goals, to make demands on the state, to improve the structure and functioning of the state, and to hold state officials accountable” is a society that is defined by a culture of democracy. It is a society with this type of culture that can have a positive effect on democratization. Conversely, a society that has a civil society that

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lacks a culture of democracy, or has a very weak one, will not affect the process of democratization in any significant way. We can now turn to the next set of factors identified by Diamond, Hartlyn, and Linz—the nature of the international environment and the actions initiated by powerful international actors. The authors of the various empirical cases concurred on two points. First, they proposed that the political structures Latin American leaders created were borrowed from abroad, particularly the democratic models adopted by some European states and the United States. At the same time, they contended that external actors were not the leading source of political turmoil and democratic failures throughout Latin America.97 This study will qualify the last argument. Specifically, it will demonstrate that though for extended periods blame for failing to consolidate democracy can be placed principally on the shoulders of Spanish Americans themselves, the United States also played a substantial, negative role. The actions by the Eisenhower administration against the democratically elected Guatemalan government of Jacobo Arbenz in 1954 were not inconsequential. Declassified US intelligence documents reveal that for more than 30  years the United States was involved in equipping and training Guatemalan security forces that murdered thousands of civilians in the country’s civil war. Moreover, one cannot dismiss the impact of Operation Condor, a campaign of political repression and terror designed by the dictatorships of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay to eliminate Soviet or communist influence and ideas throughout Latin America. Although the United States was not a member of the organization, it provided financial and technical assistance to the operation. It is difficult to measure the effects that US involvement had on democratization in the six aforementioned Latin American states, but it is fair to assert that any time a foreign actor helps the promotion of repression and terror, democracy is not well served. The last contention must be balanced, at least partially, with the acknowledgment that after the end of the Cold War, the United States launched a doctrine designed to persuade many of its Latin American counterparts to rebuild their democratic regimes and open their markets. It is difficult to ascertain whether Washington’s efforts actually contributed to the reestablishment of democratic regimes in the states in which they reemerged. It is unquestionable, however, that the political leaders of Nicaragua, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Argentina steadily imposed, or tried to impose, structural changes that actually undercut their r­ espective

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original democratic structures and, consequently, directly challenged Washington’s post-Cold War prodemocracy doctrine. In short, it would be a grave mistake to discount the value of focusing on the potential effects international actors have had on the process of democratization in Spanish America, for two reasons. First, though in most cases the actions by international actors have not been the leading determinant of whether a regime has become a democracy, in a few situations they have hindered the process. Second, international actors have not attempted to affect the political regimes of each Spanish American entity equally. Therefore, in those cases in which international actors sought to transform a state’s political regime, it is incumbent on analysts to ascertain whether the interferers’ actions, when compared to non-­ international factors, affected the process.

Conclusion To summarize, this study is built on the argument that to understand why some states in the Americas have been more effective at creating democratic regimes than others, it is imperative to focus on the evolution of their respective states and political regimes, to identify the factors that either aided or obstructed the processes at different points in time, and to isolate potential causal relationships. This study concurs with the contention that stable democracies are built on states that have consolidated and legitimized their power. It also agrees with the proposition that democracy is threatened by the presence of very dominant state institutions. These two declarations make it clear that the state-creation and democratization tasks, though distinct, are interconnected. Thus, it is the responsibility of investigators to isolate the principal contradictory tensions that arose at different points in time in different entities, beginning with the end of the colonial period. As analysts examine the immediate post-independence period—the remaining nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the first decade of the twenty-first century—they distinguish those tensions that were or were not resolved at different stages, and the new ones that might have emerged. In addition, they identify changes in the nature and structure of the various states and their respective regimes. The analyses of multiple cases facilitate the design of multiple interconnected hypotheses.

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Notes 1. Charles Tilly, “Reflections on the History of European State-Making,” in Tilly, ed. The Formation of National States in Western Europe, 70. Tilly’s definition attempts to reflect the convergence of ideas about the notion of stateness by the authors in the same volume. The notion of state autonomy has come under severe criticism lately. As a critic put it: “States and societies are not singular, opposed, and dichotomous entities. They are differentiated into multiple components that interact with each other in diverse and complicated ways. . . . Rather than being simply a cluster of administrative personnel and bureaucratic institutions, it is more accurately a shifting state-society complex. It remains the ‘state’ only as a symbol for policy legitimacy and as a ‘site’ for the policymaking interactions of state-society complexes.” Albert Yee, “State-Society Complexes and State Autonomy in Political Analysis.” Unpublished paper (1993), 1. See also Bob Jessop, The State: Past, Present, Future (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 2015). The issue of state autonomy is addressed at the end of this section. 2. Jorge Dominguez, “Political Change: Central America, South America, and the Caribbean,” Myron Weiner, Samuel Huntington, eds., Understanding Political Development (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1987), 66. Needless to say, there are many other definitions of the state. But this is not the place to address them, with the exception of the one posited by Eric Nordlinger. According to Nordlinger, definitions like the ones just postulated, which make reference to individuals who, or institutions which, have a legitimate monopoly of coercive power, are problematic. “They refer to variables rather than universal elements. While most states enjoy a coercive monopoly, and while it is often a legitimate one, since states differ and change in these respects they should not find their way into a definition of the entire universe of states.” Moreover, Nordlinger challenges the tendency to define the state in the context of institutions. Institutions, he contends, do not engage in authoritative action; only individuals do. Nordlinger’s alternative is to define the state as “all those individuals who occupy offices that authorize them, and them alone, to make and apply decisions that are binding upon any and all parts of a territorially circumscribed population. The state is made up of, and limited to, those individuals who are endowed with society-wide decision-­making powers.” Nordlinger’s challenge and the alternative he proposes have limited value. First, his definition does not escape the problem he attributes to those who place the emphasis on the legitimate monopoly of power. States differ and change in terms of how much authority their representatives have to make decisions, and how binding their decisions are. Second, as

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will be explained shortly, the concept of legitimacy, which is closely linked to sovereignty, pertains to a system of relations, and some states are not more sovereign or legitimate than others; an entity is not a state if it is not legitimate or sovereign. Third, although Nordlinger is correct in stipulating that individuals, not institutions, engage in authoritative actions, the authority of such actions resides not with the individuals but with the institutions. The authority of the decision-maker, in other words, is a function of the authority of the institution in which s/he works. And finally, by placing the emphasis on individuals rather than institutions, Nordlinger is unintentionally contending that every time a new group replaces a core group of individuals, the state changes. Obviously, this would not be the case. See Eric A.  Nordlinger, “Taking the State Seriously,” in Myron Weiner, Samuel Huntington, eds., Understanding Political Development (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1987), 362 and 363. 3. For a set of institutions to possess a monopoly of force, its various parts must have a center, be formally organized, and be autonomous and able to differentiate themselves from another set of institutions. 4. For a similar contention, see Gianfranco Poggi, The State. Its Nature, Development and Prospects (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), 21. 5. John Gerard Ruggie, “Continuity and Transformation in the World Polity: Toward a Neorealist Synthesis,” in World Politics, Vol. 35, No. 2 (Jan. 1983): 278. 6. Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977), 8. 7. This definition borrows directly from the definitions posited by Finer and Tilly. See Tilly, 1975: 70. 8. See Peter Katzenstein, “Conclusion: Domestic Structures and Strategies of Foreign Economic Policy,” in Peter Katzenstein, ed., Between Power and Plenty (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978), 308 and 311; and Stephen Krasner, Defending the National Interest (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), 56–7. 9. Robert I. Rotberg, “Failed States, Collapsed States, Weak States: Causes and Indicators,” in Robert I. Rotberg, ed., When States Fail: Causes and Consequences (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), 5. 10. Ibid., 9. 11. Timothy Mitchell, “Go Beyond the States Response,” in American Political Science Review, Vol. 86, No. 4 (December 1992): 1017. 12. See Theodore Lowi, 1988. “The Return of the State: Critiques,” American Political Science Review, Vol. 82, No. 3 (September 1988): 891. 13. Theda Skocpol, “Bringing the State Back In: Strategies of Analysis in Current Research,” in Peter Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer and Theda

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Skocpol, eds. Bringing the State Back In (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 14. 14. Tilly, “Reflections on the History of European State-Making,” 40–44, and 632–3. Tilly does not include the last condition as part of his initial set, but it is evident that he believes accounting for the structure of the international system in the study of state formation is critically important. He acknowledges, however, that the last condition may have played a more important role among political entities that sought to become states after the major European powers and the United States had given form to the contemporary international structure. Tilly borrows this argument directly from Immanuel Wallerstein’s The Modern World-System (New York: Academic Press, 1974). 15. An important distinction must be made at this juncture between state-­ making and nation-building. The problem of state building, as Gabriel Almond and Bingham Powell contend, entails the problem of penetration and integration, while the problem of nation-building involves the problem of loyalty and commitment. See Gabriel A. Almond and G. Bingham Powell, Comparative Politics: A Developmental Approach (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1966), 35. It seems that having a culturally homogeneous population is more important for nation-building than it is of state building. But at the same time, one must consider that a culturally divided state that seeks to become a nation-state is more likely to become an unstable state than is a culturally homogeneous nation that seeks to become a state. This is another way of saying that regardless of whether the process entails creating a state, or creating a nation out of a state, invariably it is easier to homogenize a population that is relatively homogeneous than one that is highly heterogeneous. 16. Jeffrey Herbst, States and Power in Africa (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 41–2. 17. Charles Tilly, “The Formation of European States, AD 990–1990,” in Stephen K. Sanderson, ed., Sociological Worlds: Comparative and Historical Readings on Society (Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 2000), 234. 18. Stein Rokkan, “Dimensions of State Formation and Nation-Building: A Possible Paradigm for Research on Variations Within Europe,” in Tilly, ed., The Formation of National States in Western Europe, 1975, 563. It is not this study’s intent to contend that Rokkan’s theory is applicable to Latin American politics. However, his theory is constructed on an analytical framework that could be used in the analysis of state building in Latin America. 19. Ibid., 571–2. 20. Ibid., 577. 21. Rokkan, “Dimensions of State Formation and Nation Building”, 577.

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22. Ibid., 581–2. 23. Juan José Linz and Alfred C. Stepan, “Toward Consolidated Democracies,” Journal of Democracy, Vol. 7, No. 2 (April 1997): 22. 24. Ibid. 25. Saskia Sassen, Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 121. 26. Seymour Martin Lipset, The First New Nation: The United States in Historical and Comparative Perspective (Basic Books, 1963). 27. Samuel Huntington, “Political Modernization America Versus Europe,” World Politics, Vol. 18, No. 3 (April 1966): 379–382. 28. Ibid., 379. 29. Stephen Skowronek, Building a New American State (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 6–7. 30. Hans Daalder, State formation, parties and democracy. 40. 31. Skowronek, Building a New American State. Sassen also touches on the period covered by Skowronek, but much of her analysis relies on his work. 32. Ibid., 20–22. 33. Ibid., 4. 34. Fernando López-Alves, State Formation and Democracy in Latin America, 1810–1900 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000), 35. 35. Frank Safford, “The Construction of National States in Latin America, 1820–1890,” in Miguel Centeno and Agustin E.  Ferrero, State Nation Making in Latin America and Spain (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 25–6, and 55. 36. López-Alves, State Formation and Democracy in Latin America, 15. 37. López-Alves, “State Formation . . .” 19, and 22–3. C. G. Thies concurs with López-Alves’s last hypothesis. Thies contends that throughout Latin America the rivalry between states had a positive effect on the capacity of the state to extract resources while the rivalry between internal had a negative effect on state building. See C. G. Thies, “War, rivalry, and state building in Latin America,” American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 49, No. 3 (2005): 451–456. 38. Jonathan Di John, “The ‘Resource Curse’: Theory and Evidence,” Real Institute Elcano, December 15, 2010. http://www.realinstitutoelcano. org/wps/por tal/web/rielcano_en/contenido?WCM_GLOBAL_ CONTEXT=/elcano/elcano_in/zonas_in/sub-saharan+africa/ari1722010 39. Terry Lynn Karl, The Paradox of Plenty: Oil Booms and Petro-States (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 16. 40. For a fairly comprehensive review of alternative recommendations, see Meaza Zerihun Demissie, The Natural Resource Curse in Sub-Saharan Africa: Transparency and International Initiatives (Hattiesburg, MS:

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University of Southern Mississippi, 2014). https://eiti.org/files/The%20 Natural%20Resource%20Curse%20in%20Sub-Saharan%20Africa.pdf 41. Robert Dahl, Regimes and Oppositions (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974), 2. 42. Ibid., 1–2. 43. Sartori would consider these regimes to be autocratic regimes. 44. Dahl, Regimes and Oppositions, 3. 45. Robert Dahl, Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971), 7. 46. See Merkel, “Embedded and Defective Democracies,” 33–58. 47. Ibid. 48. Both quotes appear in Giovanni Sartori, The Theory of Democracy Revisited, Part One (Chatham, NJ: Chatham House Publishers 1987), 31–2. 49. Larry Diamond, Jonathan Hartlyn, Juan J.  Linz, and Seymour Martin Lipset, Democracy in Developing Countries: Latin America (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1999), xi. 50. Ibid., 43. 51. Ibid., 49–50. See also David Bosold and Christian Achrainer, “Democratization and Security in Central and Eastern Europe and the Post-­Soviet States,” 14. https://dgap.org/en/article/getFullPDF/20148 52. See Jørgen Møller and Svend-Erik Skaaning, “Post-communist regime types: Hierarchies across attributes and space,” in Communist and Post-­ Communist Studies, 2010, Vol. 1: 51–71. 53. See Sartori, Theory of Democracy Revisited Part One. 54. Robert Dahl, Dilemmas of Pluralist Democracy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), 36. 55. Ernest Barker, Reflections on Government (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1942), 288. 56. Giovanni Sartori, Parties and Party Systems (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 49–50. 57. See Dahl, Democracy and Its Critics, 119. 58. Ibid., 31. 59. Ibid., 120. 60. Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1947), 243–45. 61. Dahl also points out the arbitrariness of imposing a child/adult dichotomy “on a process of development that is not only continuous but varies between different persons.” See Dahl, Democracy and Its Critics, 127. 62. Ibid., Note 10, 354. 63. Guillermo O’Donnell, “Democratic Theory and Comparative Politics,” Studies in Comparative International Development, Vol. 36, No. 4 (December 2000): 22.

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64. Quoted in Carolyn Maull McKinstry, While the World Watched (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2011), 193. The contention that the United States did not become a democracy until after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is not a new one. See O’Donnell, “Democratic Theory and Comparative Politics,” 24, footnote 29. 65. For a detailed comparative analysis of the relationships between constitutional designs and political performances, see G.  Bingham Powell, Contemporary Democracies (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982). 66. It is not important to address at the moment whether a system that relies on proportional representation with multimember electoral districts is more stable and more efficient than one that relies on plurality elections and single-­member districts. This study will address such a concern in the s­ ection that seeks to explicate how different political systems affect performance. 67. Sartori, The Theory of Democracy Revisited. Vol. One, 54. 68. This study acknowledges that there is significant variance within multiparty systems. At this juncture, however, it is sufficient to point out the difference between a party system in which only two parties compete, and one in which three or more compete. 69. This study does not suggest that in a proportional representation-type system the government per se will be responsive to the preferences of more people than in a plurality-type system. It merely contends that in the first system, because there are more parties covering a wider ideological spectrum, a broader set of preferences can be represented at election time than in the second system. 70. See O’Donnell, “Democratic Theory and Comparative Politics,” 16. Merkel’s argument was discussed earlier in the chapter. 71. Dahl, Democracy and Its Critics, 241. 72. Ibid., Chapters 17–18. 73. Ibid., 251. 74. Linz and Stepan, “Toward Consolidated Democracies”: 17. 75. Ibid., 24. 76. Jeff Haynes, Democracy in the Developing World: Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004), 198. 77. Ibid., 199. 78. Adam Przeworski, Michael E. Alvarez, José Antonio Chibub, and Fernando Limongi, “What Makes Democracies Endure,” in Larry Diamond and Marc F.  Plattner, eds., The Global Divergence of Democracies (Baltimore, MD: The John Hopkins University, 2001), 168. 79. Haynes, “Democracy in the Developing World,” 205. 80. Larry Diamond, Jonathan Hartlyn, and Juan Linz, “Introduction: Politics, Society, and Democracy in Latin America,” in Diamond, Hartlyn, Linz, and Lipset, eds., Democracy in Developing Countries: Latin America, 9.

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81. Ibid., 7–60. 82. Ibid., 15. 83. Ibid., 33. 84. Terry Lynn Karl, “Dilemmas of Democratization in Latin America,” Comparative Politics, Vol. 23, No. 1, (October 1990), 1. 85. A similar type of analysis could be conducted within a state but at different points in time if and when the domestic and international structural conditions faced by the leaders were quite similar. 86. A.  Wendt and R.  Duvall, “Institutions and International Order,” in E. Otto-Czempiel and J. Rosenau (eds.) Global Changes and Theoretical Challenges: Approaches to World Politics in the 1990s, Lexington: Lexington Books, 1989, p. 60. 87. Diamond, Hartlyn, and Linz, “Introduction: Politics, Society, and Democracy in Latin America,” 39. 88. Ibid., 53. 89. In the United States Native Americans were not granted the right to vote until the late 1920s. 90. Arturo Valenzuela, The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes: Chile (Baltimore: John Hopkins, 1978), 59. 91. Robert Merton, The Sociology of Science (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973), 120. 92. For a well-organized discussion of the evolution of the modern conceptualization of civil society see John W. Harbeson, “Civil Society and Political Renaissance in Africa,” in John W.  Harbeson, Donald Rothchild, and Naomi Chazan, eds., Civil Society and the State in Africa (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1994), 1–32. 93. Larry Diamond, Development and Democracy: Toward Consolidation (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), 221. 94. For an extensive analysis and critique of the concept civil society, see Bakry M.  El Medini, “Civil Society and Democratic Transformation in Contemporary Egypt: Premise and Promises,” in International Journal of Humanities and Social Science, Vol. 3, No. 2 (June 2013): 14–26. 95. Ibid., 571–2. 96. Diamond, Development and Democracy: Toward Consolidation, 240–262. 97. Diamond, Hartlyn, and Linz, “Introduction: Politics, Society, and Democracy in Latin America,” 57.

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Rotberg, Robert I. 2003. Failed States, Collapsed States, Weak States: Causes and Indicators. In When States Fail: Causes and Consequences, ed. Robert I. Rotberg. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Print. Safford, Frank. 1987. Politics, Ideology, and Society. In The Cambridge History of Latin America. From Independence to C.1870, ed. Leslie Bethell, vol. 3. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Print. ———. 2014. The Construction of National States in Latin America, 1820–1890. In State and Nation Making in Latin America and Spain: Republics of the Possible, ed. Miguel Angel Centeno and Agustin E.  Ferraro. New  York: Cambridge University Press. Print. Sartori, Giovanni. 1976. Parties and Party Systems: A Framework for Analysis. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Print. ———. 1987. The Theory of Democracy Revisited, Part One. Chatham: Chatham House Publishers. Print. Sassen, Saskia. 2006. Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Print. Schumpeter, Joseph A. 1947. Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy. Harper & Brothers. Print. Skocpol, Theda. 1985. Bringing the State Back In: Strategies of Analysis in Current Research. In Bringing the State Back In, ed. Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Peter B. Evans, and Theda Skcopol. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Print. Skowronek, Stephen. 1982. Building a New American State. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Print. Thies, Cameron G. 2005. War, Rivalry, and State Building in Latin America. American Journal of Political Science 49 (3): 451–465. Web. 24 Jan. 2019. Tilly, Charles. 1975. Reflections on the History of European State-Making. In The Formation of National States in Western Europe, ed. Charles Tilly. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Print. ———. 2000. The Formation of European States, AD 990–1990. In Sociological Worlds: Comparative and Historical Readings on Society, ed. Stephen K. Sanderson. Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers. Print. Valenzuela, Arturo. 1978. The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes: Chile. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press. Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1974. The Modern World-System. New  York: Academic Press. Print. Wendt, Alexander, and R. Duvall. 1989. Institutions and International Order. In Global Changes and Theoretical Challenges: Approaches to World Politics in the 1990s, ed. Ernst-Otto Czempiel and James Rosenau. Lexington: Lexington Books. Print. Yee, Albert. 1993. State-Society Complexes and State Autonomy in Political Analysis. Unpublished Paper. Print.

CHAPTER 3

Processes of State Creation and Democratization in the United States

Introduction It was never the intent of the designers of the United States’ Constitution to create a democracy, and yet eventually a minimalist type of democratic regime emerged. The following questions guide the analysis throughout this chapter: What conditions facilitated or obstructed the creation of the United States as a legitimate state? What conditions facilitated or obstructed the formation of a legitimate and stable democratic regime in the United States? How long did it take to create a legitimate and stable democratic regime in the United States? What kind of a democratic regime was formed in the United States? How well does the democratic regime created in the United States compare with those formed in other developed states and in Spanish American states? The creation and solidification of the United States as a state, and the transformation of its political regime, went through six stages. In each stage, there were conditions that either aided or hindered the state-­ creation process and the formation of its political regime. The analysis of the six stages is preceded by a discussion of the colonial period and the type of political system under which the thirteen colonies existed and interacted with one another. © The Author(s) 2020 A. R. Hybel, The Making of Flawed Democracies in the Americas, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21178-3_3

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The Colonial Period Early attempts by the English to colonize in 1586–1587 and then in 1602 ended in failure. Conditions improved in 1607 after King James I had chartered the Virginia Company, which was composed of two joint stock companies—the London Company and the Plymouth Company. In April of that same year, Englishmen reached the eastern coast of the United States in present-day Virginia. Under the auspices of the London Company, they built Jamestown, the first permanent English colony. The early colonists came in search of quick riches, but without their families. Disease and starvation soon hindered their task. By 1616, some 80 percent of all English immigrants had died. Between 14,000 and 21,000 members of the Powhatan nation, also known as the Virginia Algonquians, lived in the eastern section of Virginia. They hunted deer, elk, and bison, and by rotating acreage, they grew corn, beans, and squash throughout the Chesapeake Bay area. After a few skirmishes, the Algonquians and the colonists began to exchange goods. Their relationship began to change in 1617, when the colonists sent their first 20,000-pound shipment of tobacco to England. By then tobacco had become a highly sought product throughout Europe. Within 40 years, colonists were exporting 15 million pounds yearly.1 The increase in demand for tobacco affected the occupants of Virginia in several ways. First, it enabled its colonists to survive. Second, it attracted a wave of merchants, traders, and settlers, many of whom were accompanied by their families. Third, because the demand for labor was so high, two new approaches were initiated. In 1618, the colony created the “headright policy,” which stipulated that any person who migrated to Virginia would automatically receive 50 acres of land, and any man who paid for his own passage would receive 50 more acres. The continuous demand for greater labor led to the sale to the Virginia colonists of 20 Africans, who were transported by a Dutch slave ship. This transaction led to the establishment of slavery. During this period, the Virginia Company created in Jamestown the House of Burgesses, a limited representative body composed of white landowners.2 The rapid growth of tobacco cultivation and its exportation also brought about an increase in the demand for more land, and it was not long before the colonists began to expand beyond Jamestown’s ­boundaries. The Powhatan opposed the expansion. In 1622, they attacked several settlements in Virginia, killing between 350 and 400 colonists. The colonists responded in form many times over. Moreover, to strengthen Britain’s

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control over the colonies, King James I dissolved the Virginia Company and transformed Virginia into an official crown colony. Unable to withstand England’s superior power, the Powhatan agreed to become subjects of the King of England, to cede most of their lands, and to be confined to a small reservation for which they paid an annual tribute to the colony.3 A different mindset guided the creation of the New England colonies. The English who established their colonies in New England in the 1620s had goals grander than those who settled in Virginia. Though New England colonizers also sought economic profit, they brought with them a strong sense of religious commitment instilled by their Puritan background. King Henry VIII’s decision during the first half of the sixteenth century to keep the ecclesiastical structure of the Anglican Church mostly Catholic, with the English monarch instead of the pope as its leader, drew the ire of the Puritans. By the start of the seventeenth century, weary of the ongoing challenges voiced by the Puritans, King James I warned that if they did not conform to his authority and that of the Anglican Church, he would force them “out of the land.” Both sides tolerated one another until 1625, when Charles I succeeded his father. Determined to strengthen the hand of English Catholics, Charles I appointed bishops devoted to restoring Anglican orthodoxy and cutting back the role played by Puritan ministers as leaders of the Anglican Church. He weakened the capability of the Puritans to voice their opposition when he dissolved Parliament in 1629 and went on to rule arbitrarily for the next 11 years. Between 1630 and 1640, some 20,000 Puritans moved to New England. Many of those who contemplated a move to the region believed that England’s latest economic and social ills signaled that God disapproved of their homeland. For them, America symbolized an opportunity to carry on the work of Jesus. In New England, they would be able to “display the efficacy and power of the Gospel both in zealous preaching, professing, and wise talking under it, before the faces of these poor blind Infidels.” As noted by the 1629 charter of the Massachusetts Bay Company, its principal objective was to “win and incite the natives of the country to the knowledge and obedience of the only true God and Savior of mankind, and the Christian faith.”4 In their new home, the colonists encountered a variety of indigenous groups, who shared the Algonquian language. Most of the indigenous groups of the New England region practiced a seasonal economy, engaged in hunting and fishing, and supplemented their diet by growing corn, beans, and squash. Villages were composed of a few hundred people, who

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were related through a clan kinship structure and were mobile. In winter, they built long houses that were occupied by more than one clan, and they cached food supplies in semi-subterranean structures. In warm weather, they left their winter camps and built light wigwams and villages near coastal and waterfall locations.5 The colonies created by New England’s new immigrants differed from those who colonized Virginia. Unlike those who settled in Virginia, colonists in Plymouth, Massachusetts Bay, Connecticut, and Rhode Island generally came in family groups who had owned small parcels of land in England. Upon their arrival in New England, they tended to replicate their home environments, creating towns made up of independent landholders. The New England climate and soil prevented the development of large-scale plantation agriculture, which discouraged the formation of a system of extensive landholdings that required large numbers of slaves or indentured servants to grow labor-intensive crops. Disease aided the new settlers in their relations with Native Americans. By the time the Puritans arrived, French and Portuguese fishermen, who had been fishing along the New England shores since the early sixteenth century, had transmitted a lethal pandemic of smallpox to New England’s Native American population that killed as many as 90 percent of them. Moreover, because of the colder weather they encountered, the New England colonists were not afflicted by the death rate experienced by the Virginia colonists. A relatively healthier environment, coupled with political stability and the substantial presence of family groups among the early immigrants, enabled the New England population to grow from 21,000 to 91,000 people by 1700, while of the 120,000 English who arrived in the Chesapeake area, only 85,000 white colonists remained in 1700.6 Like the colonists in Virginia, those who moved to New England sought to interact with the Native American groups they encountered. In the early years, both parties benefited from the interaction. But as was the case in Virginia, the relatively peaceful arrangement did not last long. Initially, the New England colonists viewed America’s natives as members of an uneducated society who deserved external assistance in order to realize their potential. Many Puritans were guided by the belief that it was “not the nature of men, which makes them barbarous and uncivil.” The colonists believed that with a change in education, the nature of the Native Americans would be “greatly rectified and corrected.”7 Determined not to replicate Castile’s cruel treatment of Native Americans, the New England colonists assumed they could rely on kind actions instead. While the

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Spaniards had conquered the West Indies “with rapiers point and musket shot, murdering so many millions of naked Indians,” the English would use “fair and loving means, suiting to our English natures.”8 Gentle actions, moreover, would help convince Native Americans to embrace Christianity, and conversion would lead to a successful colonial enterprise. Not every colonist shared the belief that Native Americans would embrace Christianity if treated fairly. Just like the Spaniards, who had used their experience in the Canary Islands to guide their initial dealings with America’s indigenous population, a significant number of Englishmen applied the knowledge they had acquired during their colonization of Ireland for the same purpose. After its loose dominion that began in the twelfth century, the English kingdom decided four centuries later to widen and solidify its control over Ireland. The decision elicited violent responses from the Irish. Angered by the Irish’s “barbaric” reaction and unwillingness to embrace England’s “superior” civilization, the English waged on them a war of terror and intimidation. “[N]othing but fear and force can teach duty and obedience to such rebellious people.” The reaction had its intended effect. As the publicist for an English leader boasted, the Irish were filled with terror “when they saw the heads of their fathers, brothers, children and kinsfolk, and friends, lie on the ground before their faces, as they came to speak to the colonel.”9 With victory came control of great estates by Protestant settlers from England and Scotland. Though the way the colonists initially sought to colonize varied by region, in the long run they all took similar steps. When it became evident that Native Americans would not acquiesce peacefully, most of the colonists, including those who had originally advocated humane treatment, began to advocate the use of force, savagery, and harsh reprisals to achieve their ends.10 In 1636, the Pequot, whose hegemony in the Connecticut area had been severely undermined, went on the offensive. The settlers retaliated, and by the end of April 1637, they had nearly destroyed one of New England’s most powerful tribes. By 1690, wars and diseases brought by immigrants had destroyed much of the Native American population living along the eastern parts of the United States, while the new American population had risen to a quarter of a million. In New England, with its stony terrain and harsh winters, the new settlers had difficulty building sizable farms. The presence of large forests and harbors, however, led them to develop sawmills and engage in shipbuilding trade. Typically, they resided in villages and towns near the harbors, and each village had its own church, school, and town hall. Farmers in the

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surrounding areas worked small tracts of land and provided sustenance for residents in the immediate region. By the end of the colonial period, New England was the most ethnically homogeneous region in North America. Moreover, though it had the highest rate of family immigration, and thus a high birth rate, it also had the fewest immigrants coming from Continental Europe. Its low rates of non-English immigrants have been attributed to New Englanders’ cultural intolerance. By 1776, 26 percent of the colonialists lived in the New England region; of those, 97 percent were white, and 3 percent were black.11 The Middle Colonies included Pennsylvania, New  York, New Jersey, and Delaware. In the eighteenth century, the Scots-Irish made Philadelphia their leading gateway into America and settled in the backcountry. Quakers dominated Philadelphia. Not far north, the Dutch became the predominant presence in New York, and their merchants played a critical role in establishing Manhattan as an important center of commerce. Danes, Norwegians, Swedes, English, Scots, Irish, Germans, Poles, Bohemians, and Portuguese soon joined them. By the end of the colonial period, of the 24 percent of the colonists who lived in the Middle region, 94 percent were white, and 6 percent were black.12 The Southern Colonies—Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia—were mostly rural settlements. By the late seventeenth century, the economies and social structures of Virginia and Maryland consisted primarily of farmers working on small tracts of land and owners of large plantations. The proprietors of big homesteads in Virginia’s tidewater region were the dominant political force. They controlled the best land and depended on the labor provided by black slaves. The inhabitants of South Carolina and North Carolina relied on their easy access to thick forests to develop wood for export and shipbuilding industries. Because of the heavy dependence on farming large tracts of land, the composition of the population in the Southern Colonies differed greatly from those in New England and Middle Colonies. Not counting the indigenous population, the Southern Colonies served as the home for 48 percent of the colonies’ inhabitants. Due to the large presence of black slaves, the Southern Colonies were the most ethnically diverse. In that region, the black population was only 1.5 times smaller than the white one, while in the Middle Colonies, it was nearly 16 times smaller, and in the New England colonies 32 times. The variance in the regional ratio of the black and white populations would

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eventually become “a social question of major political importance.”13 What is more, because initially most of its newly arrived people were single men looking to make fortunes, the South had a lower birth rate. Its lower birth rate was compounded by very high death rates produced by malaria, yellow fever, and physical violence. It was not long before Britain’s colonies became almost self-governing, with London too far away to rule. The thirteen colonies lacked a common center and showed little desire to attain a modicum of unity. When problems of governance emerged, they sought solutions within their own political capitals. Few engaged in intercontinental trade; each producer sold his products either overseas or within his own colony, most likely in the local markets.14 Though each colony was highly protective of its own independence, they all developed a standard culture, one that remained connected to England. Each one relied on the English model to structure its political system of governance, and each government and most churches adopted English as the official language. They were united by a commitment to frugality, virtue, and industry, and by an innate aversion toward corruption, idle public officials, and arrogant governments. These values had arisen in England, and they defined the core of Whig ideology, which linked “liberty to balanced government, and despotism to the over-mighty executive and to moral corruption.”15

The Processes of State Creation and Political Regime Formation First Transformation None of the governments established in the colonies was democratic. The governor of each colony served as its chief enforcement officer and was appointed, with few exceptions, by the king, not by the common people of the colonies or by elected members of the colonial assemblies. Moreover, prior to the 1700s, the level of religious tolerance varied from region to region; it was high in the Middle Colonies, very low in the New England regions, and moderate in the South. Catholics could not vote in five colonies, Jews were excluded from participating in four colonies, and nonmembers of the Congregational Church were prohibited from casting their ballot in Massachusetts. Of no less significance, servants, paupers, women (except widows in New England), Native Americans, and African

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Americans were barred from participating in the political process in each of the colonies. Of the remaining population, made up of white males, those who did not own a minimum amount of property—or did not pay taxes, as was the case in South Carolina—were also excluded from political engagement. The common justification for applying the rule was that property ownership demonstrated that the individual had a stake in society, was competent, and was independent from others. In short, their political systems had assemblies that were oligarchies, with low inclusiveness and moderately high liberalization. The colonists did not forge the idea to break away from Britain overnight. One of the crucial issues arose when the British Parliament passed the Sugar Act in 1764 and the Stamp Act in 1765. Both increases in British tax revenues were designed to help pay for the deployment of British forces on American soil. Opposition to Britain’s actions began to grow shortly after the acts were approved. Residents in Boston asked: “If taxes are laid upon us [British subjects] in any shape without ever having legal representation where they are laid, are we not reduced from the character of free subjects to the miserable state of tributary slaves?”16 Colonists in New  York, Virginia, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Connecticut also expressed their discontent. Violence followed. Warned by British merchants and manufacturers that if the acts were not repealed, the resultant rebellion by the colonists would harm Britain’s trade and would generate an increase in unemployment, Parliament rescinded both enactments. Tension between the colonies and London continued to grow. Britain did not help its cause when it decided in 1773 to impose a heavy tax on the sale of tea in Massachusetts in order to rescue the ailing East India Company from bankruptcy. Led by the House of Burgesses in Virginia, which stated that an “attack made on one of the sister colonies to compel submission to an arbitrary tax is an attack on all British America,” representatives from the colonies began to debate how to best respond to Britain’s actions.17 Clashes between Britain’s and colonialists’ forces in April 1775 did not instantly convince the leaders of the colonies that independence was their best solution. Many hoped for reconciliation, while others doubted that independence was possible. Nevertheless, their common sentiment was that the king, parliament, and the voters in Britain had been infested by corruption. The colonists found a voice in Thomas Paine’s Common Sense pamphlet. In it he argued that the British monarchy was “the most prosperous invention the Devil ever set foot on for the promotion of idolatry.” He added that with independence Americans would assume the “power to begin the world over again. A situation similar to the present, hath not

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happened since the days of Noah until now.”18 In early July 1776, representatives of the colonies, with the exception of New York, voted in favor of independence. The Declaration of Independence was a necessary, but not a sufficient, step. Each state’s constitution shapes political organizations internally and influences the way they interact with one another and vie for power. Men and women strive to create a constitution that reflects their beliefs and ideals. Their goals, however, will come to naught if they fail to account for the peculiarities of the people who will be affected by the charter, and the idiosyncrasies of the territory they inhabit. One of the first challenges the writers encountered was how much power to grant the government of the former colonies. At one end stood the unitary system, in which the central government would be given extensive power over the territory ruled by the state. At the other end stood the confederate system, in which power would be  distributed among the provinces, departments, or states that were loosely associated with a weak central government. Between the two extremes stood the federal system. In this system, authority would be divided between the self-governing parts and the center. The Articles of Confederation adopted on November 15, 1777, reflected both the deep mistrust representatives of the new states had toward the idea of granting major decision-making power to a central government and their determination to retain the power each of the respective former colonies had amassed during the colonial period. Article II of the Confederation makes both points clear. “Each state,” it notes, “retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power and jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this Confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled.”19 The initial end result, thus, was not the birth of a state, but the creation of a loose confederation of sovereign states, with a weak government at the center. In short, the first transformation entailed the conversion of thirteen colonies into a confederation. Congress was established to act as the government of the newly established free states, but its power and authority were limited. Each state had its own government, and each one viewed itself as a sovereign entity. The resulting overall state structure reflected, on the one hand, the common set of values that united the representatives and, on the other hand, the determination on the part of the representatives of each colony to protect its independence. The relationship between liberty and an individual’s control over his own property helped build the rationale for independence. Borrowing from John Locke, Americans viewed property as the means to define their

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freedom and to differentiate themselves from slaves. Slavery, argued Locke, existed when one’s person or one’s property was “subject to the arbitrary and absolute will of another.” A slave had no “political rights because he has no property.” Freedom, in turn, stood for the right of an individual to decide how to use his property. A man could decide to separate himself from his property and his labor, but only if he consented to do so. The absence of material possessions represented the absence of liberty.20 This vision affected not just the decision on the part of Americans to free themselves from Britain’s dictates, but also the type of structure the newly freed “states” wanted to assume. Averse to relinquishing its right to decide its own future, each newly freed colony sought to protect its sovereignty. The relationship between property and liberty extended to suffrage. As noted earlier, property demonstrated that the individual had a stake in society, was competent, and was independent from others. But property or taxation was not the only condition that dictated who could and could not vote. Though some variances existed between the colonies, religion, gender, race, and ethnicity were also used as impediments to full political participation. Each new state, thus, sought to create a competitive oligarchy—one where competition was present but not intense, and participation was limited to a very small portion of the population. Second Transformation It was not long before Americans lost confidence in the weak constitutional structure they had created. Early on, failure to remunerate officers, and to grant them pensions that had been promised during the war, led several to contemplate mounting a coup against the civilian government. George Washington helped save the day. He called on his fellow officers to express the “utmost horror and detestation” toward the man “who wishes under specious pretenses to overturn the liberties of our Country.” It has been argued that his weighty words reduced the likelihood that the United States would have to endure for some two centuries the kind of behavior that would become a common practice throughout many Spanish American states.21 Reluctance on the part of Congress to remunerate officers was dictated in part by the national debt. To raise revenues, Congress decided to secure a 5 percent custom duty on imports. Its members agreed that the impost would be implemented for a period of 25 years, the revenues would be

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used solely to pay the debt, and states would select the collectors. Most states approved the agreement, but New York and Pennsylvania demanded significant changes. By 1778, Congress had decided not to charge the custom. To make matters worse, during this period a strip of land north of the Caribbean Sea, extending from the Atlantic Ocean toward the west, remained under Spanish control. The Spanish monarchy had not accepted cessation of that territory to the United States during the Peace Treaty of Paris and closed the lower part of the Mississippi River to American ships. Both parties engaged in negotiations, but it soon became evident that members of the Confederation would not be able to reach the consensus necessary to approve an agreement.22 Representatives of the northern coastal states feared that the opening of the southern part of the Mississippi would facilitate further expansion west, which they calculated would eventually affect negatively the interests of their merchants. The southern states, on the other hand, resisted closing the Mississippi, for they needed free access to the Mississippi in order to export their goods. Moreover, they saw the waterway as a steppingstone for the expansion west. Seven northern states declared their willingness to approve Spain’s proposed treaty, but since the articles of the Confederation required at least nine votes in favor, the treaty never reached Congress.23 As noted earlier, during the early days of the revolution, its central figures shared the conviction that most Americans were people who “valued frugality, despised luxury, hated corruption, and preferred moderation and balance to extremes of any sort.” They also believed that the gravest danger the people faced was the emergence of a tyrannical ruler. To avoid the creation of such a condition, they had recommended that government hold very limited powers. At that time, no “American revolutionary even imagined the possibility of creating a strong continental-sized national republic.”24 By the 1780s, opinions had changed. The desire for greater private gains had steadily become the norm, which made it difficult for a Congress without adequate powers to resolve the differences between the states and to govern effectively. Moreover, since independence, each of the state legislatures had increased the number of its members and the n ­ umber of those eligible to vote. The increases made it harder to promote a “unitary public interest distinguishable from the private and parochial interests of individuals.”25 Many political leaders became convinced that the people were becoming the new source of tyranny.26 By then, the nature of some of the political regimes in the new states had also changed. The debate between those who argued in favor of

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k­ eeping the franchise narrow and those who proposed that it be widened had gained momentum. Planters, merchants, and prosperous farmers, determined to retain their economic and social privileges, advocated keeping the franchise narrow.27 Their rationales assumed different forms. Some argued that the franchise was a privilege, not a right. Since a state’s central priority was to protect itself, it should be able to determine who could and could not vote. Extending the right to people who did not own property would undermine stability, because those without property did not have a will of their own and could be easily manipulated by a demagogue. Furthermore, there was the danger that if people without property were to vote, they would actually threaten the interests of property owners.28 The notion that voting was a natural right stood in direct opposition to the argument just articulated. However, though the idea had an antimonarchical thrust and the virtue of simplicity, it also engendered a problem. If voting was a natural right, did it mean that in addition to the white men without property, women, African Americans, children, and recently arrived immigrants should also be permitted to vote? Most advocates of the natural-right proposition did not favor including the aforementioned groups. Instead, they proposed that property qualifications be replaced by taxpaying requirements. Their justification was that since taxpayers, not just property owners, contributed to the government and were affected by its policies, they should also be granted the franchise. Taxing an individual without his consent, they argued, would be unfair and unjust. Moreover, it would be an invitation to disorder, anarchy, and tax evasion. Another group who was to be enfranchised were those who had served or were serving in the military. The question posed was simple: How could one deny the right to vote to those who had risked their lives in defense of independence?29 Responses varied from one state to another. Vermont opposed linking the right to vote to a man’s financial standing. Massachusetts stiffened the requirements. Rhode Island, Delaware, Connecticut, South Carolina, and Virginia kept most of the prerequisites that had been in place during the colonial period. The remaining states moderated the conditions to different degrees. “The overall result was a mixed bag of substantial changes, cosmetic alterations, and preservation of the status quo.”30 Mindful that they had to address a wide range of issues and that if not restructured, the Confederation could collapse, delegates of the different states agreed to meet in Philadelphia in May 1787. All 57 men were white

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property owners. Some were farmers, others were lawyers and merchants, and 19 were slave owners. From early on, though they recognized that they needed to increase the power and authority of the central government, they became divided into two groups and each group proposed its own plan. Under the Virginia Plan, the Congress would be composed of two cameras. Representation in one chamber would be proportional to each state’s population. The people of each state would voice fairly and equally their opinion by directly nominating and electing their representatives to the lower house. In order to attenuate the impact of public opinion, each state’s legislature would nominate potential representatives, who would then be elected to the upper house by members of the lower house. States with small populations feared that under this plan their interests and voices would be ignored by states with large populations. The New Jersey Plan advocated the creation of a unicameral Congress with equal state representation, irrespective of the size of each state’s population, thus limiting extensively the power of the states with large populations. After three days of deliberation, the committee proposed what came to be known as the “Connecticut Compromise” or “Great Compromise.” Both camps agreed that the upper house would be comprised of two representatives per state, regardless of the size of each state’s population. For every 40,000 inhabitants, each state would have one representative to the lower house. Whether slaves should be counted as inhabitants became a contentious suffrage issue during deliberations. Bondage was almost non-existent in the northeastern states but was widespread in the South, where nearly 90 percent of the slaves resided. Abolitionists wanted slavery to be made illegal; delegates from the South insisted that each slave be counted as three-­fifths of a person. The North acquiesced but demanded a ban on international slave trade and a government census every ten years to reflect changes in the size of the population. The South insisted that the ban be delayed for 20 years. The North agreed but demanded that the South accept taxation of slave trades in the international market. The South assented. How the president should be chosen also generated concern. Granting Congress responsibility for choosing the president was rejected almost immediately. It was feared that the Congress risked becoming divisive and corrupt if it assumed such a duty, and the procedure would upset the balance of power between the legislative and executive branches. Granting state legislatures the authority to select the president was also discarded.

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It was argued that such an arrangement would extend too much power to state legislatures by making the president indebted to them and would undercut the authority of the federal government. Election of the president by popular vote was abandoned on three accounts. First, the delegates feared that if no single candidate won a substantial popular majority, he would have difficulty governing the entire country. Second, granting the decision directly to the people nearly ensured that the election would be decided by the most populous states. And third, because of the size of the country and the absence of good transportation and good means of communication, people within a state would have very little information about candidates from outside the state and would tend to vote for someone within their own state or nearby region. A committee finally recommended the indirect election of the president through a College of Electors. Article II, Section 1 of the constitution stipulated that each state was allocated a number of electors, to be determined by each state’s number of senators, which in every case would be two, plus the number of representatives in the lower chamber. The number of electors could change depending on variations in the number of inhabitants within a state, which would be reassessed every ten years after the completion of a census. The way the electors were chosen was left to the individual state legislatures. This method satisfied large and small states and continued to allow each state to dictate who could and could not vote. The electors would then meet in their respective states and would vote by ballot for two persons, one of whom could not be an inhabitant of the state. The person who received a majority of the votes of all the appointed electors would be named president. If two or more were to get a majority or an equal number of all the appointed electors, the House of Representatives would choose by ballot the next president. If none had a majority, then the House of Representative would choose one from a list that included solely the five candidates with the highest number of votes. In this last scenario, however, only one representative of each state would participate in the election process. In each of the imaginable scenarios, the candidate with the second highest number of votes would be named vice-president. One critical issue remained unresolved—a national conception of voting rights. The constitution was promulgated in the name of “We, the people of the United States . . .” Members attending the convention, however, could not agree as to who the “We” were. Unable to reach an agreement, convention delegates concurred that each state would retain the right to decide who “the people” were and, thus, the right to decide

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who was a citizen and who could and could not express his opinion at the ballot box.31 In short, by the beginning of the 1790s, the United States had become a state, but its political regime was not democratic. Only white males could vote for the lower houses of both state and federal governments. In neither the election of senators nor the election of the president were those who voted granted equal voting rights. In both instances, inhabitants of the less populated states played a greater role.32 Each state remained a competitive oligarchy, and the states’ leaders imposed on the whole of the United States the same type of political regime. Third Transformation The federal republic designed in the late 1780s was far from perfect. Its imperfection spawned a major flare-up in 1861. Though historians are not of one mind as to the causes of the Civil War and the actual impact of different factors, they acknowledge that several played substantial roles. Territorial expansion, state rights, slavery, protectionism, and sectionalism are often analyzed as independent issues. Whatever the merits of each argument, it is more productive to try to understand the associations between the various factors. By the latter part of the 1780s, two political factions had arisen inside Congress. Alexander Hamilton led the Federalist group, and Thomas Jefferson and James Madison headed the Democratic-Republican faction. Jefferson explained what each group stood for in a letter. “Two political Sects have arisen within the U. S. the one believing that the executive is the branch of our government which the most needs support; the other that like the analogous branch in the English Government, it is already too strong for the republican parts of the Constitution; and therefore in equivocal cases they incline to the legislative powers: the former of these are called federalists, sometimes aristocrats or monocrats, and sometimes Tories after the corresponding sect in the English Government of exactly the same definition: the latter are still republicans, Whigs, Jacobins, ­anarchists, dis-organizers, etc. these terms are in familiar use with most persons.”33 Prior to 1790, few eligible white men exercised their right to vote. The political rivalry between groups with conflicting agendas generated a steady upsurge in the willingness of the inhabitants of the various states to participate in the suffrage. The interest, however, was not limited to

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e­ ligible voters. Members of the white male population who were not qualified to vote increasingly did so, disregarding the constitutional limitations, and local authorities typically did little to stop them. As a result, the “open disregard of suffrage rules, encouraged by political parties that flagrantly breached the law at elections time,” made it clear that the only way to have honest elections was to remove property restrictions.34 The drive to reduce voting restrictions started to gain momentum in 1818. After the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, British products— produced by low-paid workers and priced well below competitive rates— swamped the American market. Unable to compete, many American factories were forced out of business. At the same time, however, Continental Europe, with its agrarian output mangled by the wars, opened new markets for US crops such as cotton, wheat, corn, and tobacco. The increase in prices for agricultural goods, along with liberal terms for government public land sales, generated a speculative agrarian land boom in the southern and western United States. The inflationary bubble that grew from 1815 to 1818 hid the growing deflationary trends in world prices. The negative link between the frontier land boom and overseas markets for staple goods became evident when Europe recovered from its post-war harvest shortages and began producing bumper crops in 1817. US agricultural prices declined by half even though production continued to increase. In August 1818, with its credit overextended, The Second Bank of the United States (BUS), which had started operating in early 1817 as a fiscal agent of the US Treasury, ordered its branches to reject all state-­ chartered bank notes, with the exception of those used as revenue payments to the US Treasury. Two months later, the US Treasury demanded that BUS transfer $2 million to redeem bonds on the Louisiana Purchase. Unable to fulfill the demand, state banks in the West and the South began to call in their loans on the mortgaged lands they had financed. Cash-poor farmers and speculators found their land values dropping from 50 to 75 percent. Banks began foreclosing on the properties and transferring them to their creditor—BUS. In January 1819, the value of cotton dropped 25 percent in a single day. The news generated panic, which drove the country into a recession.35 Though the panic was over by 1823, many of those who had been affected by the crisis demanded major changes. Debtors asked relief from their debts and manufacturers called for increased protection from foreign imports, while Southerners countered that tariffs raised the costs of

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imported goods and reduced the flow of international trade. In the South and the West, the common reaction was to blame the panic on the tight-­ money policies of BUS. Regardless of the claim, the common demand was that state constitutions had to end restrictions on voting and office-­ holding. The drive had its intended effect. The 1828 presidential election was the first one in which non-property-holding white males were authorized to vote in most states. During that same period, African Americans experienced a very different fate. As already noted, the 1789 Constitution stipulated that states had complete autonomy regarding slavery within their own boundaries, and that the federal government could not prevent the domestic trade of slaves. At that time, eight states were slave states, while five were free states. By 1846, the territory encompassed by the United States had grown measurably. Louisiana, Arkansas, Florida, and Texas, as well as the southern parts of Mississippi and Alabama, had been conquered, purchased, or negotiated with a foreign country. Each one became part of the United States as a slave state. The number of free states, however, had also increased, to the point that the two sides were nearly equal in number. With the incorporation of new territories into the United States before and after the defeat of Mexico, the debate between representatives of the free states and the slave states intensified. Though the northern states had steadily industrialized, their manufacturing industry was still too small and inefficient to compete with Europe’s. Southern states, on the other hand, assisted by the low cost of manual labor provided by slaves, felt no urgency to mechanize to remain competitive.36 Unsurprisingly, the northern states demanded that Congress impose tariffs on foreign-manufactured products, while the southern entities insisted that trade remain unimpeded. The opposing views became more intense when the focus switched to the determination of who had the authority to dictate a citizen’s rights. Southern states argued that if a free white person had slaves in a slave state, he had the right to take them anywhere in the United States and retain his jurisdiction over them. Northern states disagreed. For them, accepting the argument would signify a willingness to abrogate their own right to outlaw slavery within their borders. Differences between both sides mounted. In 1820, Congress approved the Missouri Compromise, which declared that slavery would not be permitted in the former Louisiana Territory north of the 36°30′ parallel but would be allowed in the proposed state of Missouri. In addition, Maine

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would be admitted as a free state. The 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act, however, repealed the compromise and opened the door to widening slavery. The act affirmed the decision that the existence of slavery in a new territory was to be determined through popular vote by white male settlers. Anti-slavery elements in the northern states immediately criticized the law. In short, though multiple issues divided the southern and northern states, several were connected, and their linkage helped deepen the discord. Slavery was at the heart of the southern states’ economy. In South Carolina and Mississippi, slaves made up more than half of the population. In Alabama, Georgia, Florida, and Louisiana, they represented more than 40 percent of the population. In the remaining southern states, the percentage was not as high, but in each case, it ranged between 20 and 30 percent. Though northern states had slaves, their economy did not depend heavily on them. Moreover, people in northern states increasingly opposed slavery on moral grounds. The substantial change in the overall number of each state’s residents is related to the aforementioned distribution of population. In 1780, Virginia and Pennsylvania had the largest populations, followed by North Carolina and Maryland. Massachusetts ranked fifth, though in 1700 the size of its population had been nearly the same as Virginia’s. After Massachusetts came New  York, Connecticut, South Carolina, and New Jersey. By 1860, the distribution had changed markedly. The state of New  York had the largest population, followed by Pennsylvania; Ohio and Illinois had overtaken Virginia, and Massachusetts was catching up. To suggest that the economy of the northern states depended less on slavery than the economy of southern states does not mean that the former were more receptive than the latter to political participation by free African Americans. Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Delaware, Kentucky, and Maryland were the first states to disenfranchise free African Americans. After Ohio banned free African Americans from the polls in 1802, every new state that joined the Union, with the exception of Maine, did the same. During the next two decades, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, and New  York either banned or set special voting restrictions on African Americans. As has been noted, the “growing cultural belief in inherent racial differences ensured that African Americans, even when free, would increasingly be considered unworthy of citizenship, and so suffered disfranchisement as socioeconomic barriers to voting disappeared between 1790 and 1821.”37

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In short, by the late 1850s, the United States had undergone a number of critical changes. First, the size of its territory had increased significantly, and it was now composed of 33 states, 15 of which were slave states. Second, its population had gone over the 31 million mark, but nearly 13 percent remained enslaved. Third, political parties had become part of the political system. Fourth, every state, with the exception of South Carolina, had decided to choose its presidential electors by direct statewide popular vote and to adopt a winner-take-all system. Under this system, the presidential candidate who won the largest number of popular votes within a state also won all of that state’s electors. To avoid fragmenting support, political parties would propose only as many electors as there were electoral votes in the state. This decision led voters loyal to one political party to vote for that party’s list of proposed electors.38 Thus, though a series of measures had made it possible for political participation to increase noticeably, only white males benefited from the changes. Free African Americans were allowed to vote in a few states, but most of them were excluded from the political process. Women, African American slaves, and Native Americans remained disenfranchised. The 1860 presidential elections set the groundwork that would lead to the transformation of the United States’ political landscape. By the 1850s, the Whig Party, which was formed in opposition to the policies of President Andrew Jackson and the Democratic Party, capitulated to the sectionalizing effects of the slavery issue and stopped operating as a national party. During its existence, it had supported the supremacy of Congress over the presidency and had favored a program of modernization and economic protectionism. Meanwhile, though the Democratic Party had remained intact throughout that decade, slavery had weakened the bonds between the southern wing, which was the dominant faction, and the smaller northern contingent. The Republican Party was composed of former Whigs, a few ex-­ Democrats, and prior members of other parties, including some who had previously supported anti-slavery parties. The Republican Party took positions on a wide range of issues, but its defining one was its stand on slavery. It opposed the expansion of slavery and called upon Congress to act accordingly. As explained in its platform, “the new dogma that the Constitution, of its own force, carries slavery into any or all of the ­territories of the United States, is a dangerous political heresy, at variance with the explicit provisions of that instrument itself, with contemporaneous exposition, and with legislative and judicial precedent; is

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revolutionary in its tendency, and subversive of the peace and harmony of the country.”39 The Republican Party reaffirmed its commitment against the expansion of slavery in its eighth declaration. It stated that the normal condition “of all the territory of the United States is that of freedom: That, as our Republican fathers, when they had abolished slavery in all our national territory, ordained that ‘no persons should be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law,’ it becomes our duty, by legislation, whenever such legislation is necessary, to maintain this provision of the Constitution against all attempts to violate it; and we deny the authority of Congress, of a territorial legislature, or of any individuals, to give legal existence to slavery in any territory of the United States.”40 Most Republicans, however, were not abolitionists. They upheld the constitutional sanctity of slavery in the South. A significant minority, including Abraham Lincoln, was prepared to support an amendment that would guarantee the right of each existing slave state to decide whether to abolish slavery. In his inaugural speech, the president stated that he “had no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists.” He added, “I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.”41 Nothing the president and the Republicans stated changed the minds of Southerners. They refused to differentiate between the views advocated by the Republicans and by the abolitionists. The November election did not give Lincoln a resounding victory. He garnered 180 electoral votes out of 303 but received only 39.65 percent of the popular vote. In the southern states, only in Virginia was his name on the ballot, and there he received just slightly over one percent of the vote. Convinced that the newly elected president would eventually reject the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which had been reinforced by a Supreme Court ruling in March 6, 1860, 11 southern states chose almost immediately to secede, the last one in June 1861. By then, Confederate soldiers had already attacked Union soldiers stationed at Fort Sumner, South Carolina. In sum, the third transformation evolved steadily until 1861. During that period, the South pressed Washington to increase the United States’ territorial reach and demanded that it authorize the practice of slavery in the newly acquired territories. Originally, opposition to this demand came primarily from the North, but with limited effect, largely because Southern planters and Western farmers had joined forces. However, the Industrial

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Revolution and the flow of millions of immigrants to the Eastern cities enabled the North to develop faster than the South and to recruit support from several Western states. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the issue of slavery had become the leading divisive force. Southern leaders, convinced that the abolition of slavery would destroy their region’s economy, made it clear that if Abraham Lincoln were to be elected president, the states in their region would secede. It took the Union states four years to win the war. Most of the military colleges were in the South, and its people placed more emphasis on warlike skills than did Northerners. Southerners were defending their own homeland and controlled a territory much larger than the one dominated by Union states, thus making it harder for the latter to occupy, blockade, and invade it. However, a comparison of the manpower and material capabilities of both factions would lead one to conclude that the outcome was nearly predetermined. Twenty-two million people inhabited the North; only nine million lived in the South. The Union army outnumbered the Confederate forces by nearly two to one. At the start of the conflict, the industrial capacity of the Union was nine-tenths greater than that of the Confederacy; and the states that composed the Union were manufacturing 97 percent of the country’s firearms, 96 percent of its railroad locomotives, 94 percent of its cloth, 94 percent of its pig iron, and over 90 percent of its boots and shoes. The railroads of the Union states covered twice as much territory as those covered by the Confederate states. The superior naval strength of the Union states prevented attempts by the Confederacy to overcome its inferior material capacity by trading with Europe. Also, of great significance was Lincoln’s January 1, 1863, Emancipation Proclamation—a decree that freed slaves in rebellious states. Even though the Proclamation did not end slavery everywhere, it fundamentally transformed the character of the war. After the beginning of 1863, every time federal troops took over territory that had been part of the Confederation, they freed its slaves. In addition, the Proclamation stipulated that African American men would be permitted to serve in the Union Army or Navy. By the end of the war, some 200,000 African American men had served either as soldiers or sailors. Historian Richard Current summarized the situation well when he wrote, “in view of the disparity of resources, it would have taken a miracle . . . to enable the South to win.”42

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Fourth Transformation The culmination of the Civil War did not end the enmity between the two regions; it did, however, retain the union and set up the groundwork for the changes that would start taking place after 1877. The fourth transformation began during the Reconstruction Era. Analysts are not of one mind as to when Reconstruction started. Some attribute its beginning to 1863, others to 1865; nevertheless, they all concur that it ended in 1877. Here it is proposed that it started in 1863, before the end of the Civil War, when Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation and formally began the reconstruction process with the Ten Percent Plan. The plan called for the reintegration into the Union of any state of the Confederacy in which 10 percent of its population had taken a vote of allegiance to the United States and had sworn to respect the Emancipation. It also stipulated that everyone who abided by the proviso would be granted a full pardon, except governmental officials and high-­ ranking Confederate army officers. Radical Republicans, afraid that the Southern planter elite would regain their power and reinstitute slavery, opposed the measure. In January 1865, Congress, with Lincoln’s backing, approved the 13th Amendment. It was designed to abolish slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. In March, shortly before his assassination, Lincoln ordered the creation of The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands in order to provide economic, legal, and social assistance to African Americans and poor whites, and to help plantation owners rebuild their estates. However, the political scenario changed noticeably after Lincoln’s death. His successor, Andrew Johnson, and Congress clashed almost immediately over the Civil Rights Act, which was the first federal law that defined US citizenship and affirmed equal protection for all citizens. Though Johnson vetoed the act, Congress overrode it. The power of the Republicans increased further near the end of 1866, when voters gave the party a two-thirds majority in both chambers. By 1870, with Ulysses Grant as the new president, members of Congress had approved the 14th and 15th Amendments. Section One of the 14th Amendment stipulated that all “persons born or naturalized in the United States . . . are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside” and that no state had the right to “make or enforce any law” that abridged “the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.” Southern states contested

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the 14th Amendment, because in order to regain their right to be represented in Congress they would have to ratify it. The 15th Amendment dictated that neither the United States nor any state could deny a US citizen the right to vote on account of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” To attract broad support, the amendment did not include alternative measures that states could use to block voting, such as poll taxes and literacy tests. The measures approved by Congress instigated resentment among many white Southerners. Blacks constituted absolute majorities in Mississippi and South Carolina; were equally divided with whites in Louisiana; and represented more than 40 percent of the population in four of the remaining Confederate states. Determined to protect their lifestyle and interests, white supremacist paramilitary groups, allied with Southern Democrats, relied on violence and general intimidation to prevent blacks from exercising their political rights. During the second half of the 1870s, southern states began to pass laws designed to make it very difficult for blacks and poor whites to register to vote. The strictest legislation was the 1890 Mississippi Plan. Under its new constitution, Mississippi imposed property and lengthy residence requirements, poll taxes, literacy tests, and cumbersome registration procedures to disqualify African Americans from voting. Other southern states adopted similar measures, and by 1908 they had all approved new constitutions designed to achieve the same objective that Mississippi had attained. Reconstruction was, as noted by Ron Chernow, a doomed experiment in American life. “Once Reconstruction collapsed, it left southern blacks for eighty years at the mercy of Jim Crow segregation, lynching, poll taxes, literacy tests, and other tactics designed to segregate them from whites and deny them the vote.”43 As the United States continued its expansion, those who traversed the newly conquered lands encountered resistance from Native Americans. In 1830, the US Congress approved the Indian Removal Act, which authorized the government to carry out the large-scale resettlement of indigenous people, moving them from east of the Mississippi River to the western frontier. Starting after the end of the Civil War, the federal government had to decide what to do with the 300,000 Native Americans who lived in the Great Plains. Early in his presidency, Grant sought to protect Native Americans by appointing General Ely Parker, a Seneca, to be ­commissioner of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and asking Congress to form a ten-­man Board of Indian Commissioners. Grant’s attempt to

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provide protection for Native Americans conflicted with the development of millions of acres of federal public lands and with the private acquisition of land by pioneers and by railroad and mining companies. These expansionist measures required the actual removal of Native Americans from desirable territory. White settlers continued to push Native Americans off their land and relied on the Army to prevent retaliation. Despite Grant’s initial intention, his Peace Policy strategy to contain Native Americans on reservations involved aggressive military pursuits that led to horrific killings. Two years into his presidency, Grant signed the Indian Appropriations Act of 1871. The act ended the government’s treaty-making process and the practice of recognizing tribes as sovereign nations. It also signaled the official start of policies strategies designed to assimilate Native Americans. Grant’s Peace Policy sought to convince Native Americans to repudiate their nomadic past and mimic the ways of the white people by placing them on reservations, where they would “live in houses, have schoolhouses and churches, and be pursuing peaceful and self-sustaining avocations.”44 Ultimately, this policy led to a form of cultural genocide. Neither the Reconstruction Plan nor the Peace Policy fulfilled many of the goals intended by the victorious North. The first one dictated the conditions under which the rebel states would be admitted to the United States and provided the foundation that would ultimately enable African Americans to enjoy greater political rights, but the animosity between both regions remained intense. White Southerners remained resentful of the devastation inflicted on them by the Civil War and were angered by being compelled to accept a political, economic, and social environment that they had vehemently opposed throughout their entire existence. In short, the Civil War and the Reconstruction Era that followed did not engender a political system in which those who had been excluded from the political process were finally able to become free participants. Moreover, all that the Peace Policy and the drive to culturally assimilate Native Americans accomplished was to further isolate them and impede their rate of growth. In 1860, the only ethnic group who had fewer inhabitants in the United States than Native Americans were Asians, while the size of the Hispanic population was three times larger, of the black population 100 times larger, and of the white population over 600 times larger.45

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Fifth Transformation Despite the changes that had taken place since the declaration of independence, it is generally agreed that the major effort to build a stronger, central US government did not begin until 1877.46 As noted by Stephen Skowronek, prior to the Civil War, constitutional federalism had “inhibited the penetration of central power throughout the nation by ensuring the integrity of [the] states, each with its institutional organization, legal code, and law enforcement apparatus.”47 The challenge for the leaders of the United States in the post-Civil War era was to find a way to bring together the services provided by the national government with those offered by each of the states to a territory that was informally partitioned into three distinct economic regions: a rural society built on plantation slavery and cotton in the South, an industrial capital in the Northeast, and family farming in the Midwest.48 Scholars have advanced several responses. Only the two most relevant ones are considered here. According to Skowronek, the ability of the US system to function during the early years depended on the rules of behavior provided by the political parties and the courts. Local political organizations designed electoral alliances that removed the chaos that too often had dominated politics. Party organizations connected the national government to each locale. They set up a network between the many discrete units of government horizontally across the territory. They “brought a measure of cohesion to national politics and a measure of standardization to governmental forms and processes throughout the federal system.”49 By the end of the nineteenth century, however, the political parties had become one of the critical obstacles to the formulation of reasonable responses to the challenges faced by the United States. Instead of acting on behalf of the United States as a whole, the leaders of the parties used their power to serve their own self-interests and those of their supporters. As noted by Frederick Engels, in the United States in 1891, there were “two great gangs of political speculators [political parties], who alternatively take possession of the state power and exploit it by the most corrupt means and for the most corrupt ends.”50 Skowronek adds that as the power of the party machines increased, so did the power of the federal courts. Aware of the multiple and competing demands generated by the country’s participatory system, and of the ill-­ defined boundaries that existed between the private and public spheres, courts intervened as the only rational entity capable of dictating standards

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for state action and of delineating the rights of property owners. Their reach, however, was limited, for though they could observe and dictate what actions were and were not lawful, they could not supervise the rapid growth of the country’s economy.51 By the start of the twentieth century, populists, socialists, and corporate liberals had grown so dissatisfied that they made it clear they were no longer willing to tolerate the existence of a system guided by courts and party machines. They demanded a change in the foundation on which the American economy and polity were built. An emerging intelligentsia that was teaching and conducting research at reputable universities came to the forefront. It chastised the despotic role played by the political parties and the professional politicians who ran them and advocated the creation of administrative bureaucracies that would rely on rational approaches to problem-solving to guide the development of the economy.52 The drive to reform the system, though typically recognized by political leaders as necessary, repeatedly encountered barriers erected by those who had been benefiting from pre-existing political and institutional arrangements. The intense opposition coming from those who continued to profit from the existing system did not prevent change in the country’s administrative structure, but the change that ensued was limited and often disorganized. In an attempt to, at minimum, protect their limited power, and whenever possible increase it, members of the bureaucracies clamoring for change typically acquiesced to the demands of the power-holders. Nonetheless, administrative reformers steadily gained political power and managed to build coalitions among bureaucratic institutions. In time, however, as the various bureaucracies tried to address problems generated by the rapid industrialization of the American economy, the rivalry between them became acute, which in turn led to internal governmental confusion. As Skowronek explains, though the national administrative apparatus freed the United States from the clutches of party domination, direct court supervision, and localist orientations, it found itself engulfed by institutional politics. Saskia Sassen concurs with Skowronek.53 Lawmaking through the judiciary, she argues, played a large, positive role in the construction of the American state. Specifically, it downplayed the stress placed originally by the forefathers on states’ rights and authority, and it emphasized the prerogatives of the federal government and the need to strengthen the Union. She explains the change by noting that the legitimacy of the original

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decentralized polity was derived from law; in the new system, the national centralized state becomes the source of law. From the 1870s on, “federal constitutional law displaced common law as the pre-eminent law.”54 Sassen then asks: What convinced the United States to rely on laws to make the national state the core of the federal system? By the early twentieth century, economic rivalry in the world arena with and between the leading European states had intensified. The internationalization of capital was not a purely economic procedure. Instead, it was a process in which each state that wanted to enter the international competition had to strengthen its internal structure. The strengthening of the power of the state was needed not just to increase each state’s competitive capacity. International expansion also necessitated alliances and interstate coordination, neither of which could be brought about without active state participation. During the rapid expansion of industrialization, working classes in the major states, including the United States, strove to acquire social legislation that would address some of their concerns. Though they were successful, a new form of capitalism, referred to as imperialism by many, undercut the growing power of the labor union. Emphasis was now placed on the international greatness of the state. “The national idea,” writes Sassen, “becomes the driving force of politics. Class antagonisms disappear and are transcended in the service of the collectivity. The common action of the nation, united by a common goal of national greatness, replaces class struggle.”55 Nationalism became the norm, as did the conviction that as members of a “superior race,” the citizens of a state had the moral obligation to unite in order to transform the world. The arguments posited by Skowronek and Sassen capture the process of strengthening the national state and its rationale. Imperialism, built on a capitalist foundation, had become the motto of many European powers as they extended their dominance throughout Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. The United States chose to follow a similar path. With the question of cessation no longer dividing the country, with the southern states once again part of the federation, and with the Industrial Revolution gaining strength throughout parts of the United States, it became evident to some of its leading political, economic, and intellectual figures that in order to elevate its standing in a world arena and increase its economic capacity, many of the administrative functions executed by the separate states would have to be assumed by organizations within the national government. Hence, the creation of the national state began to take precedence over the protection of the individual states.

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The payoffs became evident soon. By the start of the twentieth century, no one in the world arena questioned the power of the United States. By then, the United States had already revealed its intention to access Asia’s economic riches by forcing Japan to open its ports to American ships, purchasing Alaska from Russia, pressuring Korea and China to accept an open trade policy, annexing Hawaii and parts of the Samoan islands, and becoming the Philippines’ overlord. In addition, the United States became the principal military and economic actor in the Caribbean Basin and Latin America. None of this could have been accomplished without the existence of a strong state bureaucratic system. Though its reach remained inferior to the bureaucracies of Europe’s leading actors, its presence did not go unnoticed. Woodrow Wilson’s decision to enter the First World War, and the rapid termination of the conflict shortly thereafter, informed the world that the United States was becoming a state with substantial organizational capabilities. Doubt as to the role the United States should play in the world arena remained in the minds of many Americans after the end of the First World War. Emboldened by his contribution to bringing the war to an end, Wilson traveled to Europe determined to persuade his allies to accept his vision of a League of Nations. He was convinced that a world inhabited by democracies committed to the open market would generate an unprecedented sense of international security. Aware that they could not outright reject his idea, Europe’s leaders accepted aspects of his proposal. Many in the United States did not. They questioned the rationale behind his attempt to transform an international system that for centuries had been afflicted by wars. The Fifth Transformation and the Slow Opening of the Political System By 1920, a different type of momentum had come to fruition within the United States—the granting of voting rights to women. Though most states continued to disenfranchise women, by 1914, Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, Idaho, Washington, California, Arizona, Kansas, Oregon, Montana, and Nevada had extended them the right to cast their votes. Two years later, Wyoming elected its first woman representative to Congress. Finally, on August 18, 1920, the United States ratified the 19th Amendment. It stated: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote

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shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex. Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.” Two questions are worth posing at this stage. Why had women been denied the right to vote? What led the US Congress to extend women the franchise? Under English Common Law, which had combined the legal traditions of the Romans and the Normans with the canon law of the Catholic Church and Anglo-Saxon traditions, married women were still considered to be their husbands’ responsibilities; thus, they had no legal existence. Husbands would control whatever property and income women brought into marriage, as well as whatever wages their wives earned outside the home. The common perception was that such an arrangement was God’s intent, as written in Genesis 3:16: “Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.” In short, “upon marriage, the husband and wife became one—him.”56 On the other hand, widows and unmarried adult women could own property, collect rents, manage shops, and have standing in court. English Common Law was exported to America. Blackstone’s Commentaries, which was studied by American lawyers, stated that by marriage, “the husband and wife are one person in law: that is, the very being of legal existence of the woman is suspended during marriage, or at least is incorporated and consolidated into that of the husband.”57 Seven states, however, had not inherited English Common Law. California, Idaho, Washington, Arizona, Louisiana, Nevada, and New Mexico—states that had been controlled by either Spain or France—adopted the community-­ property system developed in Continental Europe. Under such a system, everything the spouses owned or earned belonged to both. And yet, because the husband continued to be considered the head of the household, he possessed the right to manage and dispose of the property as he saw fit.58 Before the middle of the nineteenth century, it had become evident that there were conflicts between the legal tradition imported from England and the realities women faced in the United States. The challenges and opportunities women faced, however, were not the same across the United States. To capture the evolution of the process of extending women the suffrage, it is necessary to consider its different stages. In 1848, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, who had worked together against slavery, convened a two-day meeting of 300 women and men in Seneca Falls, NY. Their intent was to discuss the social, civil, and

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religious conditions and rights of women, and to call for justice for women in a society where they were systematically barred from the rights and privileges of citizens. Attendees adopted A Declaration of Sentiments. A couple of passages are worth noting59: We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights governments are instituted, deriving their powers from the consent of the governed.

After enumerating a series of oppressive acts initiated by “man” against “woman” throughout history, the declaration states: [I]n view of this entire disfranchisement of one-half of the people of this country, their social and religious degradation—in view of the unjust laws above mentioned, and because women do feel themselves aggrieved, oppressed, and fraudulently deprived of their most sacred right, we insist that they have immediate admission to all the rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens.

The country at that time was not ready to take the issue of women’s rights seriously; even the liberal media ridiculed the pronouncement extensively. The year 1869 proved to be highly significant. On February 26, four years after the end of the Civil War, the US Congress approved the soon-­ to-­ be-ratified 15th Amendment. The amendment did not mention women. However, a little over nine months later, Wyoming, with a population of 8000 men and 2000 women, extended women the right to vote. The construction of the transcontinental railroad had driven thousands of American men west to work on the railroad, but not enough women chose to move there. Though a number of factors influenced the decision to extend women the right to vote, possibly the two most significant ones were the desire to increase the overall size of the population in order to reach 60,000, at which time the territory could apply to become a state, and the need to bring a modicum of gender balance. By the start of the First World War, ten other states, all in the western part of the United States, had granted women the suffrage. And yet, during that period, most of the eastern and southern parts of the United States continued to deny women the right to vote.

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One of the leading obstacles to granting women the right to vote in New England and the northeastern United States was the cult of true womanhood. The cult premise assumed a prevailing role among white Protestants. It fostered the notion that the ideal woman was one who served as the center of the family—she ran the household, reared the children, and took care of the husband. The cult was defined by cardinal virtues. Piety kept the woman within the confines of the house and controlled her longings. Purity was a woman’s greatest treasure, to be protected until marriage. Submission and obedience to the male head of the household was God’s appointment. And domesticity enabled her to perform her role as a wife and to create a refuge for her husband and children.60 The image that was promoted during religious services, in religious texts, and in women’s magazines was that “true women” were delicate, soft, and weak.61 The extension of rights to African American men after the Civil War engendered a major division among women seeking the right to vote and between abolitionists and some women’s-rights activists. During consideration of the 14th Amendment, many female activists, led by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Stanton, opposed it, because they believed priority should be given to women. Abolitionists, led by Frederick Douglass, argued that recently liberated African American men should be extended the right to vote before women. White women, Douglass contended, were already indirectly empowered by their fathers, husbands, and brothers; and African American women would also be empowered once African American men were granted the vote. Consideration of the 15th Amendment also generated discord. This time the division was between women who refused to support it because it did not include the term sex, and women who championed it in exchange for future support of women’s suffrage by black men. The two groups remained at odds with one another until 1890, when they joined forces and formed the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). The decision did not produce immediate results. But by then the Industrial Revolution had been having a number of effects on the social structure of the United States. As the United States transitioned into a more developed industrial society, and as women began to have greater access to education and to factory and office jobs previously reserved for men, the cult of true womanhood started to lose its relevance and support. By the year before the start of the First World War, demonstrations and parades led by women demanding the right to vote had grown measurably. The First World War helped tilt the balance in favor of those who demanded that women be

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granted the right to vote. Because factories and businesses in general could not remain idle as men left to fight in the war, greater numbers of women were recruited to enter the workforce. Tired of President Woodrow Wilson’s failure to act, women intensified their demonstrations. Ten months after a referendum to enfranchise women was approved by a substantial margin in New York, which was the country’s most populous state, Wilson went before the Senate and called for the approval of the suffrage amendment. He stated: “We have made partners of the women in this war; shall we admit them only to a partnership of suffering and sacrifice and toil and not to a partnership of privilege and right?”62 After having rejected the 19th Amendment multiple times, the House passed it in May 1919, with 304 votes in favor and 89 against. Ninety-one percent of the representatives who said yes were Republicans, compared to 59 percent of Democrats. The Senate passed the Amendment in June 1919, with 56 senators approving and 25 opposing it. Once again, the distribution favored Republicans, with 82 percent of them supporting its passage and only 51 percent of Democrats concurring. By March 1919, 35 states had ratified the Amendment. Seven former members of the Confederate States of America—Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Virginia—opposed it. Tennessee was the former Confederate State that tilted the balance in favor of women’s suffrage. The 1920 presidential election became the first election in which women were able to vote in every state. It took the US Congress four more years to approve the Indian Citizenship Act, which accorded Native Americans the right to be a citizen of the United States. The act, however, did not automatically grant them the right to vote. Several states found ways to prevent them from formally expressing their choices. One state stipulated that if Native Americans lived on a reservation, they were not residents of the state. In another case, they were denied the right to vote if they did not pay taxes. In a third case, a state relied on the claim that Native Americans were incompetent, were wards of the state, and lacked the ability to read.63 During this period, Chinese Americans also faced discrimination. In 1882, the US Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which ended immigration from China and other Asian states. During the gold rush in the second half of the nineteenth century, such immigration had increased demonstrably and prevented those Asians already in the United States from becoming naturalized citizens. The act remained in effect until 1943.

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The Sixth Transformation As explained earlier, just after the end of the First World War and during the first years of the 1920s, the president, the Congress, and Americans in general questioned Wilson’s idea that the United States should deepen its involvement in the international arena. Greater international participation would require strengthening further the power and reach of the state. The 1929 stock market crash forced Americans to revisit their attitudes with regard to the role of the state. The event propelled the country into a severe economic downturn. Banks failed, the nation’s money supply contracted, and companies went bankrupt and began to fire their workers in large numbers. By the time Franklin Roosevelt assumed the presidency in 1933, at least one-quarter of American workers had lost their jobs. Over the next eight years, the government instituted a series of projects and programs designed to revive the US economy. The Emergency Banking Act reorganized the banks and closed the ones that were insolvent. The Tennessee Valley Authority Act authorized the federal government to build dams along the Tennessee River in order to control flooding and generate inexpensive hydroelectric power for the people in the region. Congress passed a bill that would pay some farmers to leave their fields unplanted in order to end agricultural surpluses and boost prices. The National Industrial Recovery Act guaranteed workers better working conditions and the right to unionize and bargain collectively for higher wages. The same act suspended some antitrust laws and established a federally funded Public Works Administration. Other major laws were the Glass-­ Steagall Banking Bill and the Home Owners’ Loan Act. Dissatisfied by the limited results of his measures, Roosevelt initiated a second series of federal programs in 1935. His government created the Works Progress Administration and the Social Security Act. The latter act was designed to guarantee pensions to millions of Americans, provide unemployment insurance, and assist dependent children and the disabled. Though many of the measures did not have the effect intended by the president, they enlarged demonstrably the role of the state in public affairs. The process of further solidifying and legitimizing the power of the state continued during the Second World War and the Cold War. In short, for the most part, the sixth transformation was energized by challenges emanating from the growing interconnection between the United States’ domestic environment and the global system. In the latter

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part of the nineteenth century, the United States’ economy was c­ ompeting in a world capitalist market in which each major power practiced imperialism as a means of strengthening its economy and projecting its prestige. The First World War could have exerted great pressure on the US federal government, but it did not. By its end, despite President Woodrow Wilson’s attempt to alter the role of the United States in the world arena, Americans and their representatives in Congress questioned his intent. The Great Depression crushed the hopes of millions throughout the United States and set the groundwork for the sixth transformation. Upon assuming the presidency, the Franklin Roosevelt administration enlarged drastically the role of the federal government. The attack on Pearl Harbor further alerted Americans that their safety and well-being depended on the presence of a government with the power and authority necessary to put together a massive military force. By the end of the war, for a brief time, some members of Congress demanded that Washington curtail its international involvement. This sentiment lost much of its appeal when the While House warned that if the United States reduced its international commitment, the Soviet Union would rapidly exploit the power vacuum and enlarge its power in Europe, and possibly in other regions of the world. The Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, and Washington’s decision to insert the United States into the Korean and Vietnam Wars consolidated the sentiment that it was imperative for the United States to have a state with the capacity to address multiple domestic and international challenges at the same time. The Sixth Transformation and the Expansion of Political Rights Along with the enlargement of the role of the state came the further opening of the political regime. As already explained, after the end of Reconstruction in 1877, southern states began to pass legislation designed to prevent blacks from mingling with whites in schools, public transports, parks, cemeteries, theaters, and restaurants. In 1890, the state of Louisiana passed the Separate Car Act. The law required that all railroads operating in the state provide equal but separate accommodations for whites and African Americans. Homer Plessy, a one-eighth African American, purchased a train ticket, sat in a car reserved for white people, refused to move when asked, was arrested, and charged with violating the Separate Car

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Act. In the Plessy v Ferguson case, the US District Court and the state Supreme Court rejected Plessy’s contention that the law was unconstitutional. The US Supreme Court concurred. It argued that the act did not re-establish slavery, which was prohibited by the 13th Amendment, or conflict with the 14th Amendment, which was designed to secure legal equality but not social equality. It would take another major war for blacks to receive the rights they had been demanding since the end of the Civil War. During the Second World War, large numbers of African Americans migrated from the rural South and West Virginia into Ohio to take part in the booming wartime economy. As the demand for employees increased, so did the black populations in Akron and other northeastern Ohio industrial cities. Racism and discrimination continued to dictate the policies of many companies. Instead of being given semiskilled or skilled jobs, African Americans were relegated to the more menial jobs. As the war efforts increased and it became obvious that every person was needed to perform skilled work, companies began to alter their practices. By the end of the war, 8 percent of Ohio’s skilled workforce was African American. The Second World War enabled African Americans to win greater political rights in another important way. Fewer than 4000 blacks were serving in the military in 1941. It was not uncommon for blacks to be passed over by the all-white draft boards. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NACCP) demanded that President Franklin Roosevelt order that African Americans be enlisted in proportion to their percentage. Though that goal was never achieved, by the war’s end more than 1.2 million African Americans were serving on the European and Pacific fronts. Their enlarged military presence did not eliminate discrimination. Initially, most African Americans were assigned to non-combat units, but by 1945, troop losses forced the military to place African Americans directly in harm’s way. The irony was not lost on African American servicemen. While they were fighting for “freedom and democracy” thousands of miles away from their homeland, they were still experiencing discrimination back home. Stephen Ambrose captured the hypocrisy of the United States’ behavior when he wrote: “The world’s greatest democracy fought the world’s greatest racists with a segregated army.”64 After the war ended, African Americans and white women who had been working in industries in the Northeast were pressured by company executives, unions, soldiers, and society in general to relinquish their

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­ artime jobs to the returning white soldiers. African Americans refused to w remain quiet and from then on increased the pressure on the US ­government to become a proactive promoter of greater political, economic, and social equality, regardless of race. Several major steps were taken in the early 1950s. The Topeka Chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People organized a class-action suit on behalf of thirteen African American families. At that time, the children in those families were forced to walk or ride buses more than a mile to attend segregated schools, though there were white schools near their homes. After the US District Court ruled against them, the plaintiffs, together with four similar NAACP-sponsored cases from three other states and Washington, DC, appealed to the Supreme Court. The court, in a unanimous decision known as the case of Brown v Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, ruled that the “separate but equal” doctrine did not have a place in public education, and that it deprived citizens of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the 14th Amendment. The move to improve the rights of blacks continued to intensify. In 1957, Congress authorized the Department of Justice to establish a civil rights section and the creation of a Commission of Civil Rights to investigate discriminatory conditions and seek remedies. The 1960 Civil Rights Act granted the federal government the authority to inspect local voter registration records and impose penalties on anyone who obstructed someone’s attempt to vote. The 1962 US Supreme Court decision in Bailey v. Patterson ruled that segregation in transportation facilities was unconstitutional. These changes had no great effects before John F. Kennedy became president. Initially, Kennedy did little. He finally chose to act after civil rights activists, led by Martin Luther King, Jr., Dorothy Height, Roy Wilkins, and John Lewis, intensified the pressure, and boycotts and protests that often turned violent began to erupt. In a speech to the nation in June 1963, the president stated65: We are confronted primarily with a moral issue…. It is as old as the scriptures and is as clear as the American Constitution . . . One hundred years of delay have passed since President Lincoln freed the slaves, yet their heirs . . . are not fully free. They are not yet freed from the bonds of injustice… this Nation . . . will not be fully free until all its citizens are free . . . Now the time has come for this Nation to fulfill its promise.

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The pressure on Washington to address the demands voiced by African Americans and their supporters was deepened by the August march on Washington, where Martin Luther King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech; by the killing of four young African American girls with a bomb at a Baptist church in Alabama in September; and by the murdering of three civil rights workers in Mississippi. Less than a week after Kennedy’s assassination, President Lyndon Johnson, in his first address to a joint session of Congress, asked for the passage of the civil rights bill as early as possible. Appeals to legislate new protections grew. With the presidential election over, civil rights organizations like the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee demanded that new legislation designed to safeguard the voting rights of minorities be enacted. Civil rights activities throughout Alabama sparked violent responses from state troopers and county posses that resulted in the deaths of two activists and the injuring of hundreds of demonstrators. Between July 1964 and August 1965, the US Congress enacted two civil rights acts despite intense opposition from senators and House members from the southern states. The first act prohibits discrimination in public accommodations, public facilities, public education, employment, and federally assisted programs. The second one prohibits the denial or restriction of the right to vote, and outlaws discriminatory voting practices throughout the United States. In Chap. 1, it was proposed that the boundary between a democratic and a non-democratic regime is delineated along the public contestation axis, which indicates whether free competition between at least two political parties takes place, and along the participation axis, which specifies the extent to which a state’s adult citizens can participate in the electoral process. Accordingly, a political regime is democratic if all adult citizens are empowered to participate in contested free elections between at least two political parties. It is non-democratic if political competition between at least two political parties is not permitted, or if the criteria of inclusion provided by the Strong Principle of Equality is not applied. It was also contended that for a regime to be democratic, its elected officials must not be prevented from assuming office; Congress or the Judiciary must not be dismissed; and the holder of the executive office must neither be toppled nor be forced to resign by a group of organizations insulated from the electoral process. In short, it took the people of the United States 182 years to create a democratic regime.66 It did not create the most democratic democracy in the world, but it was a democracy.

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Analysis State- and Regime-Creation Processes: From 1776 until 1865 As noted by Stein Rokkan, the first step in the state-creation process entails political, economic, and cultural unification at the elite level. During that early period, elites strike a series of bargains; establish a variety of cultural bonds; and build a “number of institutions for the extraction of resources for common defense, for the maintenance of internal order and the adjudication of disputes, for the protection of established rights and privileges and for the elementary infrastructure requirements of the economy and the polity.” He and others have also proposed that the level of religious, linguistic, and ethnic variance within a particular territory can either facilitate or obstruct the push to strike a series of bargains in the state-­ creation process. From the analysis postulated so far, it is possible to generate several interrelated arguments. The colonizers were led to strive for independence by a strong aversion to corruption, idle public officials, and arrogant governments, and by a refusal to accept Britain’s attempts to use any portion of the colonizers’ property or to levy taxes on them without their prior approval, either directly or through their representatives. As they fought to gain independence, widespread regional economic and administrative autonomy during the colonial period compelled them to create a confederacy composed of multiple states in which each one would preserve substantial self-rule. Not long after the war for independence had come to an end and the United States had been recognized in Paris as a sovereign state, US leaders concluded that their original framework could not address the emerging domestic and international challenges. Cognizant that each state would still have to retain substantial sovereignty, the leaders of the confederacy agreed to replace the original system with a federal one. Because they believed that women, non-white persons, non-Protestants, and white individuals who did not own property or did not pay taxes were unable to think rationally and temper their actions, and because they were committed to the limitation of political rivalries and factions, leaders of the new federal system chose to create a political structure that prevented those individuals from voting, prioritized the state over the individual voter, and devised a winner-take-all style of electoral system. After 1787, with steady economic growth (punctuated by periods of economic downturns), along with a continuous rise in the size of the

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­ opulation and the number of states, different states began to remove votp ing restrictions on members of the white male population. At the same time, during the first half of the nineteenth century, the United States underwent the development of two very different economies. One economy was based on plantation agriculture and was heavily dependent on slave labor, while the other, though it was just beginning to industrialize, relied on market labor provided chiefly by immigrants. Tension between the two groups grew steadily. Members of the slave-labor-dependent economy attempted to expand it into the new states before and after the Mexican-­American War, while members of the non-slave-labor-dependent economy opposed the growth of slave labor. These differences, along with the election of Abraham Lincoln as president of the United States, intensely aggravated the strain between the two economies and brought about the Civil War. The outcome of the war was nearly predetermined. After four years of fighting in which both sides lost hundreds of thousands of lives, the leaders of the Confederacy accepted that they could not overcome the vastly superior economic and military power of the Union. The Enlargement and Solidification of the Power of the State: From 1865 Until the Present The 1865 victory by the Union forces consolidated the power of the state. In addition, it empowered the US Congress to pass amendments abolishing slavery and involuntary servitude, declared that all persons born or naturalized in the United States were citizens, and prohibited any state from depriving a citizen of his right to vote because of his color, race, or previous condition of servitude. The amendments, and attempts by the federal government to enforce them, however, also gave rise to groups in several southern states committed to subverting the process. The ability of members of the black population to enjoy the fruits of their newly gained freedom was severely undercut for nearly nine decades by the actions of officials in southern states and extremist members of their white population. Despite the failure on the part of the federal government to protect the rights of blacks, the Industrial Revolution, invigorated by the inner logic of capitalism and imperialism, gained momentum within the United States. During this period, a number of the country’s leading analysts and political and economic leaders proposed that the continued growth of the economy depended greatly on whether it could become an effective

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competitor in the rapidly changing global system. They added that though the future performance of the US economy would not be contingent solely on the administrative power of the federal government, the presence of a stronger and more coherent set of administrative bodies would enhance demonstrably the United States’ fortunes. The Great Depression and eruption of the Second World War pressured political leaders to overcome their reluctance to further widen and strengthen the power of the central government. By the end of the Second World War, with only the Soviet Union standing as its principal rival, US leaders accepted, with initial reluctance, that its newly won status could be protected and preserved only by maintaining the power of the state at the federal level. The end of the Cold War did not bring about a reduction in the power of the state. In sum, a number of contradictory forces dictated the United States’ process of state creation. European immigrants sought a new future in North America. They aspired to live in an environment that was free of poverty, corruption, and religious oppression, that valued frugality and hard work, and that equated freedom with a person’s right to determine how he would use his own property. That same aspiration led them to free themselves from Britain’s rule, and to create a constitutional structure that recognized and protected each former colony’s sovereignty. The realization that too much state sovereignty was unproductive led leaders to establish a federal system that, while continuing to respect the sovereignty of each state, also extended additional authority to a central government, in which power and functions were distributed between three institutions. Eventually, each state’s commitment to its sovereignty reinforced the division generated by the development of two substantially different economies—one that relied heavily on servitude and one that did not.67 Compromise between the competing sets of interests and needs was sought but not found. A civil war ensued, and ultimately the regions with the superior economic and military power dictated the shape of the new state structure. The post-Civil War leaders, though not always in agreement, steadily transformed the national bureaucratic structure of the United States. They created a federal structure that made it possible for the United States to be an effective participant in multiple domestic and international political and economic scenarios. Without a state that had consolidated, legitimized, and strengthened its power, the second half of the twentieth century would not have been referred to as Pax-Americana.

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Culture, Changes in Attitudes, and the Emergence of a Democracy: From 1865 to the Present The passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments formally dictated the termination of slavery and involuntary servitude, that blacks born or naturalized in the United States were citizens, and that no male citizen of the United States could be denied the right to vote because of his race, color, or religion. As already noted, many states, particularly in the South, established measures designed to undercut the ability of blacks to exercise their rights. It would take nearly a century for blacks to be able to practice their political rights. Blacks were not the only ones insisting that they be accepted as political equals. Demands by women in the United States that they be granted the same set of rights as men had been evolving steadily throughout the nineteenth century and had gained tremendous momentum during the first 19 years of the twentieth century. By then, such rights had been granted by 11 other countries. Earlier it was argued that values, beliefs, and myths define a culture’s change through time, that culture constantly interacts with the material environment within which it exists, and that the two continuously affect one another. It was also proposed that within an existing culture, two competing views often struggle for dominance. One group typically advocates altering the culture, some more aggressively than others, while the counter-group strives to prevent its transformation. Europe’s Industrial Revolution and the increasing involvement of women in the workforce steadily altered the perception of the role women should play in the public sphere. Despite strong opposition from powerful political figures, the continual change in perception among a growing number of women and men weakened the dominant patriarchal culture. The First World War helped tilt the balance in favor of those who demanded that women be granted the right to vote. Because factories and businesses in general could not remain idle as men went to fight, greater numbers of women were recruited to enter the workforce. By the war’s end, demands that women be extended the right to vote had the intended effect. In sum, though advocates of greater gender equality did not win straightaway, they were destined to succeed eventually, largely because for many in certain parts of the United States, the patriarchal culture contradicted the essence of the country’s political and economic system. The economic market system increasingly demanded the expansion of the labor force, which could be resolved principally by increasing the number

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of women workers. The presence of liberty and equality in such a system started to undercut the rationale that had sustained the patriarchal culture. Weakening the racist culture that had defined much of the history of the United States proved to be markedly harder than moderating the patriarchal culture. The Civil War did not make it possible for all male African Americans, regardless of the state they resided in, to start casting their votes immediately. But gradually, the forces that helped women gain the vote served a similar purpose for blacks. It would take a second major world war, intense public demands, and extensive intervention by the US courts and government for blacks to be able to start practicing the political rights the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments had granted them. A question worth posing at this stage is: Which members of Congress voted in favor of or against the passage of the 1964 and 1965 Civil Rights Acts that outlawed many types of racial and sexual discriminations? The answer reveals two important developments. A comparison based solely on the voting distribution of each party would appear to indicate that support for the legislation was stronger in both the House and the Senate among Republicans (80 percent) than among Democrats (70 percent). Such a comparison, however, is misleading. The percentages change with an examination of representatives and senators in terms of whether the states they represented during the Civil War were part of the Union or part of the Confederacy. Ninety percent of Union representatives and 92 percent of Union senators voted in favor of the legislation, while only 8 percent of Confederacy representatives and 5 percent of Confederacy senators supported the act. If one were to account for both party affiliation and region, greater clarity is added. Ninety-five percent of Union House Democrats and 98 percent of Union senate Democrats voted yes. Among Republicans, the numbers go down, but not radically: 85 percent of Union House Republicans and 84 percent of Union Republican Senators also approved of the legislation. The critical variance emerges when the focus turns to members of the former Confederacy. Among House Democrats and Senate Democrats who represented former Confederacy states, only 9 and 5 percent, respectively, backed the act, while among Republicans representing former Confederacy states not a single member did. The above figures indicate that the divide between northern and southern lawmakers remained strong. The effects on attitudes brought by changing conditions and laws are difficult to measure. However, it may be possible to infer some useful conclusions by looking at the way attitudes changed through time with regard to electing a woman or a black person as president, and with regard to interracial marriages.

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In 1937 and 1945, only 33 percent of those polled noted that they would vote for a woman. Four years after the war had ended, the percentage had jumped to 48 percent, and to 55 percent in 1963. The percentage increased steadily until 1978, when it reached 78 percent. When Americans were asked whether they would elect an African American as president, their attitudes underwent greater changes. It started at a low 33 percent in 1958, but it steadily increased as new civil right acts were enacted, and it reached 59 percent in 1965. By 1978, the percentage of Americans who stated they would elect a black person as president reached 77 percent, which nearly equaled the percentage who claimed that they would vote for a qualified woman. Americans, however, had a much harder time accepting marriage between blacks and whites. In 1959, only 4 percent stated that they would accept marriage between the two. By 1968, after the enactments of several civil rights acts, the percentage had only increased to 20 percent. It would take 30 more years for the percentage to rise above the halfway mark.68 The increase in positive attitudes toward women and blacks indicates that as both groups became more involved in the public workforce and assumed greater responsibilities, attitudes toward their perceived competence improved. Of course, the patriarchal and racist cultures were not eradicated the moment the civil rights statutes were enacted, but their enactment left those who had vehemently opposed them with little choice but to adapt. In short, though those who had been the most negatively affected were the ones who initially demanded change, change was greatly facilitated by the intervention of the courts, the US Congress, and the president. Stated differently, it seems reasonable to contend that had the central bodies of the federal state not played strong roles, passages of amendments and civil rights acts would have been rejected or, at minimum, delayed.69 This conclusion adds credence to the contention that without a strong state, a stable democracy will not evolve. But it also brings to the fore the question: At what point does the strength of the state transform a democratic regime into an authoritarian one?

How Democratic Is the United States’ Democracy? The United States does not have the most democratic political system in the world. At the beginning of the analysis, it was stated that the architects of the United States Constitution did not seek to create a democratic political regime. The commitment to preventing the creation of a highly

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democratic democracy remains quite firm among today’s political leaders, and it is reflected in their determination to retain many of the original measures. Though the citizens of the United States are able to elect their president, their votes are not weighted equally. First, the Electoral College continues to dictate who is elected president, and on five different occasions—two in the last two decades—the declared winner did not win the popular vote. Second, the composition of the Senate is undemocratic. Small states get the same number of senators as large states. When the constitution was first adopted, the ratio between the largest and smallest states was about 12 to 1. Now, as in the case of California and Wyoming, the ratio is 68 to 1. Stated in starker terms, in the US Senate, the voices of the people of California is 68 times weaker than the voices of the people of Wyoming. The House of Representatives is supposed to act as the equalizer. In a sense it does. The number of voting seats in the House is currently set at 435, with each one representing approximately 711,000 people. Thus, California today has 53 representatives, while Wyoming has only one. The number increases as the size of the population increases. But such a “balanced” presence is undermined by other critical factors that have become too common in American politics. The percentage of House members who sought re-election since 1963 has oscillated between approximately 82 and 94 percent, and the percentage of those who were re-elected never dropped below 84 and sometimes reached into the high 90s.70 Historically the re-election rate for senators has been lower than for House members, but its percentage has also been quite high. Since 1982 the percentage of senators being re-elected dropped slightly below the 80 percent mark only in 1986, in 2000, and in 2010. It could be tempting to argue that the above high numbers indicate that the general public has been satisfied with the way Congress has performed its political functions. Data measuring Congressional approval rating trends, however, does not back such a conclusion. The average percentage approval since 1974 typically was in the 20s and 30s. During the years immediately after September 11, 2001, it climbed to the 50s and higher, but never above 84 percent. Since October 2005, with the exception of a few months, the average percentage has been between the mid-­ 20s and low 30s. The worst trend ensued between May 2011 and the end of 2014. During that period, the percentage never topped the high teens, and it dropped into the single digits in November 2013.71

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The numbers compel the analyst to ask: If Americans have been scorning Congress for so long, why do they keep re-electing so many of its members? There is no one single explanation. It has been suggested that gerrymandering—the practice of trying to gain a political advantage for a particular party or group by manipulating district boundaries to create partisan advantaged districts—plays a critical role. The common claim is that partisan redistricting is responsible for declining electoral competition. As argued by Norm Ornstein, “gerrymandering has helped create a huge number of districts that are fundamentally safe for one party.” The end result, he adds, is that legislators choose their voters instead of voters choosing their lawmakers.72 This argument has been challenged.73 In an analysis of the effects of the 2000 gerrymandering cycle, Seth Masket, Jonathan Winburn, and Gerald Wright contend that the manipulation of the boundaries of an electoral constituency has not weakened competition. The three analysts also note that in states that relied on non-partisan methods to redistrict, legislatures became more polarized, while states that employed partisan methods experienced, on average, slight de-­polarization. However, one could ask: If partisan redistricting does not reduce competition, then why have both parties applied it when the opportunity arose? Partisan gerrymandering might not have reduced competition, but the intent of its endorsers, from either party, has always been to achieve such an end. It is agreed that a democracy becomes less viable if voters are disinclined to participate. In the United States, primary elections are the most important ones, for it is at that moment that voters have the biggest choice of candidates. The Bipartisan Policy Center established that between 1972 and 2016, no more than 30.6 percent of age-eligible citizens cast their votes in statewide primaries for president, governor, or senator. In 2012, the number reached its lowest mark at 17.3 percent. The numbers oscillated substantially between Republicans and Democrats from one election period to another. The party of the incumbent president generally determined the fluctuation. If the president was a Republican and was running for re-election, turnout among Republicans was substantially lower than among Democrats, and vice-versa.74 Ignorance and general lack of interest seem to best explain the low level of participation. The percentage of people who know the names of their two senators is below the 30 percent mark. Moreover, “barely a third of the citizenry can recall the name of their representatives, and even fewer can remember anything he or she has done for the district. Only one in ten people can remember how their representatives voted.”75 As most voters

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know little about their political leaders, in all likelihood they will know much less about their leaders’ political rivals in the primaries; hence they see little reason to participate. During mid-term elections—that is, when voters are electing House Representatives, and senators who have completed their sixyear term, but voters are not choosing a president—voter participation in the United States is abysmal. When compared with other developed states where voting is not mandatory, the United States ranks last. In Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, the percentage is twice as large as in the United States. The percentage in the United States improves substantially during presidential elections, but it is still lower than in the aforementioned countries. In France, where presidential elections are held every five years and voters elect their next president directly, voter turnout in the 2012 election was 80.35 percent, while in the United States it was 54.87 percent. Voter turnout in the 2016 presidential election in the United States was 59.7 percent, while in the 2017 French presidential election it was 65.4 percent. It is no coincidence that in developed countries where voting is not mandatory the number of registered voters casting their votes is typically higher than in the United States. For the most part, those countries have adopted proportional representation as their electoral system. Though there are different types of proportional representation in electoral systems, they are all designed to help represent the “wishes” of the voters at the ballot box much better than a “winner-takes-all” system. Stated differently, because fewer votes are “wasted,” greater participation typically results, and minority parties have a much greater chance of being represented in parliament. Voters, moreover, are provided with a greater choice of candidates who will be attentive to the needs of their constituents. As Henry Milner has noted, “a proportional system of elections promotes a politically knowledgeable population, and thus informed political participation.”76 If representation in the US House of Representatives and Senate were to be weighed according to gender, race, or ethnicity, the numbers reflect a very poor distribution. There are more women than men in the United States, but in 2019 only 23.4 percent of the representatives in the House were women. Among developed countries, only in Japan was the percentage of women serving as representatives lower than in the United States. In Sweden, women held 43.6 percent of the seats, while in Norway the percentage was above 39.77 African Americans fare somewhat better than women in the US House of Representatives but not in the Senate. With 13.2 percent of the US population identified as African American, their

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number in the House stands at 10 percent. In the Senate, the percentage drops to 0.132 percent. Hispanic American representation in the US Congress has been increasing, but it remains woefully low. With 17 percent of the US population being made up of individuals of Hispanic/ Latino descent, the percentage in the US House stands at a very low 6.66 percent, while in the Senate it drops to 3 percent. For some time, it has been argued that the United States is not a democracy but an oligarchy. In a multivariate analysis conducted by Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page that included the reviews of answers to 1779 survey questions asked between 1981 and 2002 on public policy issues, the authors found that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have much greater influence on the development of US government policies than do average citizens and mass-based interest groups.78 The authors broke the responses down by income level and established how often certain income levels and organized interest groups saw their policy preferences enacted. They concluded that a proposed policy change that had low support among members of the economic elite (one out of five in favor) was adopted only about 18 percent of the time, while a proposed change that had high support (four out of five in favor) was adopted about 45 percent of the time. They also established that when a majority of citizens disagreed with economic elites and/or with organized interests, the former lost. Their conclusion is straightforward. Though large business organizations and a small number of affluent Americans do not always get what they want, their influence over the policymaking process is much greater than that of the average citizen.79 A condition that is related to the last point has caused concern among certain political leaders, analysts, and the public in general: the excessive influence of money in politics. This concern can be traced to the start of the twentieth century. At different points in the century, Congress took steps to constrain the impact of money in federal elections. Groups and individuals have repeatedly challenged such measures. Their most recent contention has been that they violate the 1st, 5th, or 15th Amendments. A summary of the struggle between the two sides should explain the direction the latest measures have taken. In 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt called for legislation designed to prohibit corporate contributions for political purposes. Two years later, the US Congress passed the Tillman Act, which banned corporate contributions. Subsequent congresses approved the Federal Corrupt Act, the Hatch Act, and in 1947, the Taft-Hartley Act. The various acts were designed to

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demand disclosure in order to limit the influence of individual groups and wealthy individuals on federal elections, regulate spending in campaigns for federal office, and discourage misapplications of campaign finances. The drive to limit the influence of money in the electoral process was resumed in 1972, when Congress enacted Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA). Two years later, Congress amended FECA and established the Federal Election Committee (FEC). In the amendment, Congress set limits on contributions by individuals, political parties, and political action committees (PACs). The FEC was created to enforce the laws, enable disclosure, and administer the public funding program. Different individuals and organizations challenged the last set of measures. Senator James L. Buckley, a Republican from New York, along with the American Civil Liberties Union, the American Conservative Union, the Libertarian Party, the Peace and Freedom Party, and former presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy, a liberal democrat from Minnesota, filed a lawsuit with the US District Court for the District of Columbia. Though the plaintiffs lost initially, their appeal eventually reached the Supreme Court, where they argued that the legislation violated the 1st and 5th Amendments, that is, the right to freedom of expression and due process. In Buckley v. Valeo, the Supreme Court struck down limits on spending in campaigns but kept the proviso that regulated the size of contributions to campaigns. According to Heather K. Gerken, by “lifting the cap on expenditures while leaving in place the cap on contributions, the Supreme Court created a world in which politicians’ appetite for money would be limitless but their ability to get it would not.”80 The court battle between the two camps continued. In 1990, the Supreme Court concluded in the Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce case that the Michigan Campaign Finance Act that prohibited corporations from using treasury money to support or oppose candidates in elections did not violate the 1st and 14th Amendments. In 2002, Congress approved the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, which amended the Federal Campaign Act of 1971. It prohibited national political party ­committees from raising or spending funds not subject to federal limits, and barred profit and non-profit corporations and unions from broadcasting ads within 30 days of a primary or caucus, or 60 days of a general election. Other proposals and challenges were submitted through the first decade of the twenty-first century, but the most significant rulings came in 2010 and 2014. In a case filed by Citizens United, the Supreme Court reversed the ruling by the US District Court for the District of Columbia that proscribed

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the group from advertising and showing a film critical of Hillary Clinton 30 days before the 2008 Democratic primaries. The Supreme Court ruled in 2010 that corporations and labor unions “may spend their own money to support or oppose political candidates through independent communications like television advertisements.” The decision, however, did not “alter prohibitions on corporate contributions to candidates, and it did not address whether the government could regulate contributions to groups that make independent expenditures.”81 Four years later, the Supreme Court took a major step designed to undercut restrictions on independent spending. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the Court plurality. He stated: “The right to participate in democracy through political contributions is protected by the First Amendment, but that right is not absolute. Our cases have held that Congress may regulate campaign contributions to protect against corruption or the appearance of corruption.” He added that Congress may target only “quid pro quo” corruption. “Spending large sums of money in connection with elections, but not in connection with an effort to control the exercise of an officeholder’s official duties,” he explained, “does not give rise to quid pro quo corruption. Nor does the possibility that an individual who spends large sums may garner ‘influence over or access to’ elected officials or political parties.” Based on this argument, Roberts concluded that the aggregate limits on contributions “intrude without justification on a citizen’s ability to exercise ‘the most fundamental First Amendment activities.’” Though the Court’s decision removed the overall cap on individual contributions, it did not affect the existing base limits on individual contributions to federal candidate campaigns, PACs, or party committees.82 Interpretations with regard to the possible consequences generated by the Supreme Court’s rulings vary, but the one advanced by Gerken gets to the core of the problem. As she points out, corporations had found multiple loopholes to spending long before the Citizens United suit sought to reverse the ruling; besides, the share of corporate spending has not changed measurably. The overruling of the Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce case in 2014 mattered because it reduced the reasons Congress could regulate. Specifically, “it substantially narrowed the definition of corruption, which is regularly invoked whenever Congress wants to pass reforms.” Before Citizens United got involved, “ingratiation and access” entailed corruption, which was easy to identify; with the new ruling, it is markedly harder.83

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Conclusion In 2026, the United States will celebrate its 250th anniversary. For the first 100 years of its existence, it struggled to solidify and legitimize the power of the state. During that period, with the exception of eliminating voting restrictions for its white male population, its various states did little to create a political regime that adhered to one of democracy’s most basic tenets—the right to vote. After the end of the Civil War, the state of the United States steadily consolidated and legitimized its power and adopted laws designed to enable male African Americans to participate in electing political leaders. In many states, however, such laws were offset by a series of conditions that dictated who could and could not vote. The enactment of the 19th Amendment in 1920 proved to be a major step toward the formation of a democratic regime, but nearly half a century elapsed before gender, race, and ethnicity would no longer be used as means to limit voting rights. Different sets of electoral rules continue to limit the extent to which the average citizens of the United States can affect its political, social, and economic future course. Despite the repeated claims by American politicians that the United States has created “the greatest democracy on earth,” the quality of its democracy has been experiencing a downward trend, and today it is viewed not as a democracy but as a “flawed democracy.” In 2018, it ranked 25th in the world, behind nearly every developed Western European country, as well as New Zealand, Canada, and Australia. Of no less importance is the fact that for the first time since Spanish American states gained independence from Spain, Uruguay, Costa Rica, and Chile rank higher than the United States.84 Before the close of this chapter, it is sensible to pause and ask: Is it reasonable to argue that the United States does not fare particularly well when compared to other developed countries? The above comparisons do not account for the size of each state’s population, or for its cultural, ­ethnic, and racial composition. Such factors seem to matter. It is well known that the larger the size of a country’s population and the greater its ethnic, cultural, and racial diversity, the harder it is to create a stable democracy that addresses in a relatively equal manner the interests of its citizens. Australia, Germany, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and the United Kingdom rank higher in the democracy index than the United States, but each one is inhabited by fewer people and is substantially more homogeneous than the United States. But if the factors just identified justify the low ranking of the United States, how does one

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explain Canada? Canada ranks higher in the democratic and diversity indices than the United States; hence its political system should not be more “democratic” than that of the United States. However, Canada’s high diversity index is inflated. Though its people are from different national backgrounds, the vast majority is white and of European ancestry, with English and French being the two dominant national groups. Aboriginal peoples in Canada comprise only 4.3 percent of the population, and though new Asian immigrants have arrived in the past decades, their numbers remain very small. Gauging the general explanatory value of a state’s population and its degree of homogeneity on the state-creation and democratization processes must wait until the analyses of the distinct experiences of Peru, Chile, and Argentina are completed.

Notes 1. Sean Gabb, Smoking, Class and the Legitimation of Power (London: The Hampden Press, 2011), 66–7. 2. See Keith Egloff and Deborah Woodward, First People: The Early Indians of Virginia (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 1992); and Karenne Wood, The Virginia Indian Heritage Trail (Charlottesville, VA: Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, 2007). 3. See Rebecca Goetz, The Baptism of Early Virginia: How Christianity Created Race (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012), 57; and Daniel K. Richter, Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009), 75. 4. Quoted in Michael Leroy Oberg, Native America: A History (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 17. 5. William Cronon, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England (New York: Hill and Wang, 1983), 42. 6. Alan Taylor, American Colonies: The Settling of North America (New York: Penguin, 2001), 170. 7. Quoted in Oberg, Native America: A History, 44. 8. Quoted in Ibid., 17, 18, 34, and 52. 9. Taylor, American Colonies: 160. 10. See Taylor, American Colonies, 135; and Michael Leroy Oberg, Dominion and Civility: English Imperialism and Native America 1585–1685 (New York: Cornell University Press, 2004), 76. 11. James T. Lemon, “Colonial America in the Eighteenth Century.” See Table 6.2: Comparison of White and Black Population by Region, 1700 and 1785, 126. http://www.asdk12.org/staff/bivins_rick/HOMEWORK/230028_ ColonialLife.pdf

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12. Ibid. 13. Ibid. 14. Robert Middlekauff, The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763– 1789 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 30–1. 15. Ibid., 32, 35, 36, 51 (quote), and 52. 16. Quoted in Alex Roberto Hybel, The Power of Ideology – From the Roman Empire to Al-Qaeda (London: Routledge, 2010), 68. 17. Quoted in Ibid., 70. 18. Quoted in Middlekauff, The Glorious Cause, 324–5. 19. See “Articles (2 and 3) of Confederation, Agreed to by Congress 15 November 1777.” http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/education/articlesofconfederation.html 20. Middlekauff, The Glorious Cause, 122–3. 21. Ibid., 604–05. 22. Ibid., 603–06. 23. Ibid., 607–09. 24. Gordon S. Wood, Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic 1789– 1815 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 7. 25. Ibid., 17. 26. Middlekauff, The Glorious Cause, 622–55. 27. Alexander Keyssar, The Right to Vote. The Contested History of Democracy in the United States (Philadelphia, PA: Basic Books, 2000), 7. 28. Ibid., 9. 29. Ibid., 11 and 12. 30. Ibid., 16. 31. Ibid., 20. 32. Donald Ratcliff, “The Right to Vote and the Rise of Democracy, 1787– 1828,” Journal of the Early Republic, 33 (Summer 2013), 232–3. 33. Thomas Jefferson, “A Letter of Jefferson on the Political Parties, 1798,” American Historical Review, Vol. 3, No. 3 (April 1898): 488–9. 34. Ibid., 243. 35. See Sean Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2008), 206–07; Harry Ammon, James Monroe: The Quest for National Identity (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1971), 466; and George Dangerfield, The Awakening of American Nationalism (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), 178 36. Steven E.  Woodworth, American Civil War. (Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1996), 145, 151, 505, 512, 554, 557, 684. 37. Ratcliffe, The Right to Vote, 247. 38. William C. Kimberling, “The Manner of Choosing Electors.” http://uselectionatlas.org/INFORMATION/INFORMATION/electcollege_ choosing.php

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39. “Republican Party Platform of 1860,” in Political Party Platforms http:// www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=29620 40. Ibid. 41. “First Inaugural Address of Abraham Lincoln,” (March 4, 1861), http:// avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/lincoln1.asp 42. Quoted in James M. McPherson, Drawn with the Sword: Reflections on the American Civil War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 116. 43. Ron Chernow, Grant. (New York: Penguin Press, 2017), 857–8. 44. Ibid., 658–9. 45. Author’s calculations. 46. See Saskia Sassen, Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 122–3. 47. Stephen Skowronek, Building a New American State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 21–2. 48. Sassen, Territory, Authority, Rights, 122. 49. Skowronek, Building a New American State, 25. 50. Quoted in Ibid., 40. 51. Ibid., 41–2. 52. Ibid. 53. Sassen, Territory, Authority, Rights, 123. 54. Ibid., 130. 55. Ibid., 139. 56. Claudia Zaher, “When a Woman’s Marital Status Determined her Legal Status: A Research Guide on the Common Law Doctrine of Coverture.” www.aallnet.org/mm/Publications/llj/LIJ-Archives/Vol-94/pub_llj_ v94n03/2002-28.pdf 57. William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), Book 1, Chapter 15. 58. Jo Freeman, “The Revolution for Women in Law and Public Policy,” in Jo Freeman, ed., Women: A Feminist Perspective, Fifth Edition (Mountain View, CA: Mayfield, 1995), 368. 59. Elizabeth C. Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Matilda J. Gage, and Ida Harper, History of Woman Suffrage, Vol. 1 (Rochester, NY: Susan B. Anthony and Charles Mann Press, 1887), 70. 60. Barbara Welter, “The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820–1860,” American Quarterly, Vol. 18, No. 2, 1966, 152. 61. Linda Brannon, Gender: Psychological Perspectives (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2005), 154–5. 62. Quoted in “Woodrow Wilson and the Women’s Suffrage Movement: A Reflection,” Woodrow Wilson Center, (June 4, 2013). http://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/woodrow-wilson-and-the-womens-suffrage-movement-reflection

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63. Daniel McCool, Susan M. Olson, and Jennifer L. Robinson, Native Vote (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 19. 64. Stephen E. Ambrose, Citizen Soldiers: The U.S. Army from The Normandy Beaches, To the Bulge, To the Surrender of Germany (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997). 65. Quoted in Robert Dallek, An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917–1963 (Boston: Little Brown, 2003), 604–06. 66. The reference point used here is not 1776, when the United States declared its interdependence, but 1783 when it was recognized as an independent state by The Treaty of Paris. 67. As noted earlier, there were more than two economies, but the two just identified were the ones that generated the greatest tension. 68. Frank Newport, “In U.S., 87% Approve of Black, White Marriage, vs. 4% in 1958.” www.gallup.com/poll/16397-approve-blacks-whites.aspx; and Frank Newport, “Americans Today Much More Accepting of a Woman, Black, Catholic, or Jew as President.” www.gallup.com/poll/3979/americans-today-much-more-accepting-woman-black-catholic.aspx 69. It not being suggested that presently men and women are treated equally, and that blacks have achieved parity with white in the workforce. It is important, however, to recognize that positive changes have ensued. The two groups who have not experienced major improvements in the workforce since the 1980s are African Americans and Hispanics. Their earning capacity remains markedly lower than that of whites. On the other hand, Asian men earn 117 percent as much as white men. See Eileen Patten, “Racial, gender wage gaps persist in U.S. despite some progress.” www. pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/07/01/racial-gender-wage-gaps-persist-in-u-s-despite-some-progress/ 70. See Charts 2-K and 2-L in “Reelection Rates of Incumbents in the House,” (December 7, 2006), http://www.thirty-thousand.org/documents/ QHA-08.pdf 71. “Congress and the Public,” http://www.gallup.com/poll/1600/congress-public.aspx 72. Norm Ornstein, “The Pernicious Effects of Gerrymandering,” National Journal, (December 4, 2014). http://www.nationaljournal.com/washington-inside-out/the-pernicious-effects-of-gerrymandering-20141203 73. See Seth E.  Masket, Jonathan Winburn and Gerald C.  Wright, “The Gerrymanderers Are Coming! Legislative Redistricting Won’t Affect Competition or Polarization Much, No Matter Who Does It.” American Political Science Association, Vol. 45, Issue 1 (January 2012), 39–43. 74. See “National Primary Turnout Hits New Record Low,” (October 10, 2012), http://bipartisanpolicy.org/library/national-primary-turnouthits-new-record-low/

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75. Quoted in Philip Kotler, Democracy in Decline (London: SAGE Publications, 2016), 41. 76. Henry Milner, “Does Proportional Representation Boost Turnout? A Political Knowledge-based Explanation.” Presented at the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, Toronto, Canada (September 6, 2009). 77. U.N.  Women in Politics: 2017 http://www.unwomen.org/-/media/ headquarters/attachments/sections/library/publications/2017/femmesenpolitique_2017_english_web.pdf?la 78. Martin Gilens and Benjamin I.  Page, “Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens,” in Perspectives on Politics, Vol. 12, Issue 3, (September 2014): 564–81. See also “Study: US is an oligarchy, not a democracy?” BBC News, (April 17, 2014). http:// www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746 79. See Gilens and Page, “Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens,” 564–81. 80. See Heather K. Gerken’s lecture, “Campaign Finance, Dark Money, and Shadow Parties.” http://law.marquette.edu/assets/marquette-lawyers/ pdf/marquette-lawyer/2014-summer/2014-summer-p10.pdf 81. Adam Liptak, “Courts Take on Campaign Finance Decision,” in The New  York Times, (March 26, 2010). http://www.nytimes. com/2010/03/27/us/politics/27campaign.html 82. “McCutcheson, et  al. v. FEC” (Case Summary), Federal Election Commission http://www.fec.gov/law/litigation/McCutcheon.shtml 83. See Gerken, “Campaign Finance, . . .” 84. “Democracy Index, 2018,” The Economist Intelligence Unit. Web. February 24, 2019.

Bibliography Ambrose, Stephen E. 1997. Citizen Soldiers: The U.S. Army from the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge, To the Surrender of Germany. New  York: Simon & Schuster. Print. Ammon, Harry. 1971. James Monroe: The Quest for National Identity. New York: McGraw-Hill. Print. Articles (2 and 3) of Confederation, Agreed to by Congress 15 November 1777. 2019. Articles of Confederation. University of Minnesota- Human Rights Library. Web. 24 Jan. 2019. Blackstone, William. 1979. Commentaries on the Laws of England. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Print. Brannon, Linda. 2005. Gender: Psychological Perspectives. Boston: Allyn and Bacon. Print. Chernow, Ron. 2017. Grant. New York: Penguin. Print.

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Congress and the Public. Gallup.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 Jan. 2019. Cronon, William. 1983. Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England. New York: Hill and Wang. Print. Dallek, Robert. 2003. An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917–1963. Boston: Little Brown. Print. Dangerfield, George. 1965. The Awakening of American Nationalism. New York: Harper & Row. Print. Democracy Index 2018. 2019. The Economist – The Economist Intelligence Unit. Web. 24 Feb. 2019. Egloff, Keith, and Deborah Woodward. 1992. First People: The Early Indians of Virginia. Charlottesville: University of Virginia. Print. Freeman, Jo. 1995. The Revolution for Women in Law and Public Policy. In Women: A Feminist Perspective. 5th ed. Mountain View: Mayfield. Print. Gabb, Sean. 2011. Smoking, Class and the Legitimation of Power: Reflections on the War against Tobacco and the Rise of the New Puritanism. London: Hampden. Print. Gerken, Heather K. 2014. Campaign Finance, Dark Money, and Shadow Parties. Marquette Law Review. Web. 24 Jan. 2019. Gilens, Martin, and Benjamin I. Page. 2014. Web. 24 Jan. 2019. Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens. Perspectives on Politics 12 (3): 564. Goetz, Rebecca Anne. 2012. The Baptism of Early Virginia: How Christianity Created Race. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Print. Hybel, Alex Roberto. 2010. The Power of Ideology – From the Roman Empire to Al-Qaeda. London: Routledge. Print. Jefferson, Thomas. 1898. A Letter of Jefferson on the Political Parties, 1798. The American Historical Review. Web. 24 Jan. 2019. Keyssar, Alexander. 2000. The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States. Philadelphia: Basic Books. Print. Kimberling, William C. 2008. The Manner of Choosing Electors. The Electoral College – Manner of Choosing. David Leip’s Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections. Web. 24 Jan. 2019. Kotler, Philip. 2016. Democracy in Decline. London: SAGE Publications. Print. Lemon, James T. 2001. Colonial America in the 18th Century. In North America the Historical Geography of a Changing Continent, ed. Thomas F. McIlwraith and Edward K. Muller. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Print. Liptak, Adam. 2010. Courts Take on Campaign Finance Decision. The New York Times, March 26. Web. 24 Jan. 2019. Masket, Seth E., Jonathan Winburn, and Gerald C.  Wright. 2012. The Gerrymanderers Are Coming! Legislative Redistricting Won’t Affect Competition or Polarization Much, No Matter Who Does It. American Political Science Association 45: 1. Web. 24 Jan. 2019.

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U.N. Women in Politics 2017 Map. U.N. Women. Web. 24 Jan. 2019. Wilentz, Sean. 2008. The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln. New York: W.W. Norton. Print. Wood, Karenne. 2007. The Virginia Indian Heritage Trail. Charlottesville: Virginia Foundation for the Humanities. Print. Wood, Gordon S. 2009. Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789–1815. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Print. Woodrow Wilson and the Women’s Suffrage Movement: A Reflection. 2013. Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, June. Web. 24 Jan. 2019. Woodworth, Steven E. 1996. American Civil War. Connecticut: Greenwood. Print. Zaher, Claudia. 2002. When a Woman’s Marital Status Determined Her Legal Status: A Research Guide on the Common Law Doctrine of Coverture. Law Library Journal 94 (3): 459–486. Law Library Journal, 2002. Web. 24 Jan. 2019.

CHAPTER 4

Processes of State Creation and Democratization in Peru, Chile, and Argentina

Introduction The colonization of the states presently known as Peru, Chile, and Argentina were initiated at approximately the same time during the first half of the 1500s. However, the transformations they experienced differed substantially. The leaders of Chile were the most effective ones at creating a legitimate state and relatively stable democracy, followed by those of Argentina and then Peru. The disparities prompt these questions: Why were Peru’s leaders less effective at creating the state and eventually establishing a democratic regime than Argentina’s, and in turn, why were Peru’s and Argentina’s leaders less effective than Chile’s? This chapter first discusses the histories of Peru’s, Chile’s, and Argentina’s state creation and political regime formation separately. Their experiences are then compared in Chap. 5, where an exploratory theoretical argument designed to identify the causes behind the similarities and variances is posited in the form of hypotheses.

Peru The Colonial Period At the top of the political structure imposed by the Spaniards on their colonies, stood the viceroy, who served as the king’s representative in the colony (or, as has been stated, the “King’s alter ego”).1 The viceroy was © The Author(s) 2020 A. R. Hybel, The Making of Flawed Democracies in the Americas, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21178-3_4

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more than a civilian and political leader—he was also the “vice-patron of the Catholic Church.”2 In addition, the Spanish monarchs and the Catholic Church established a contractual relationship whereby the two would be integrated and Catholicism would become the official religion. The church took extraordinary measures to protect its monopoly. It prohibited the immigration of individuals who practiced a different religion, and it established the Inquisition to punish religious heretics. The monarchs, in turn, granted the clergy fueros—special privileges—just as they did for members of the military.3 Though the powers of the viceroy within the colonies were not unlimited, he faced very few restrictions. There was a quasi-legislative body responsible for addressing grievances against the viceroy, but it did not exist as a fully independent institution. The system the Spaniards created did not have legislative institutions comparable to the ones the British created in their American colonies.4 Moreover, because the Spanish crown allowed very little trade interaction between the colonies and other countries, and because there was a monopolistic relationship between Spain and the colonies, the latter were not able to develop their domestic economies. Thus, throughout the entire colonial period, the state, in the form of the authority of the Spanish monarch and his appointed viceroy in one of the viceroyalties, was always the leading entity. During that period, the idea of equating private property with freedom was a concept that did not take root in Spanish America. The state was the dispenser of rights, and the power to challenge its dictates was almost non-existent. In his description of the political structure the Spaniards established in New Spain, Carlos Fuentes notes that the Spanish monarchs and the Catholic Church replaced the vertical power structure originally created by the Aztecs with the equally vertical power structure of the Spanish Hapsburgs.5 The absence of independent powers, however, did not signify that orders and rules were always executed. On the contrary, the tendency “to observe but not obey” became a very common practice.6 As summarized by J.H. Elliot, the oligarchies of the Indies achieved “a kind of autonomy within the wider framework of a centralized government run from Madrid.” The system fell far short of the aspirations of the monarch, but it “also left the Indies heavily dependent on the Spanish crown.”7 In sum, a few principles defined the relationship between the Crown and its American viceroyalties. First, the viceroyalties belonged exclusively to the Crown, not to Spain. The Crown possessed full sovereignty over them and had complete rights over all their offices and properties. Second,

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the Crown’s just right over the viceroyalties was a consequence of its obligation to evangelize the Native Americans, as dictated by Pope Alexander VI’s bull.8 To facilitate evangelization, the Crown and the Church established the clerical estate, a fully designed ecclesiastical organization with the same status as the clergy of metropolitan Spain.9 They also agreed on the subordination of the Church to the Crown except on matters of dogma and the maintenance of religious discipline.10 Third, in order to mobilize Native American labor systematically and legally, the Crown authorized the creation of encomiendas. With the encomienda, the Crown granted a person or corporation the right to collect stipulated dues and services from the inhabitants of towns, villages, and other populated places in a particular region for a specified period.11 Peru’s terrain has three regions, divided longitudinally. The coastal region has three discrete areas—the north, the center, and the south. Each area has rich soil that is continuously being moved to the coastal plains by rivers descending from the Andes. The Andean expanse is split into three mountainous forms—the Occidental, the Central, and the Oriental. The mountains traverse some 1500 miles, and run from the northwestern part adjoining Ecuador, to the southeastern section bordering Chile. Most of Peru’s mineral wealth is found along a 200–300-mile range adjoining the Andes. Its most valuable minerals are gold, silver, copper, lead, zinc, iron, quicksilver, wolfram, and nickel. The Amazonian soil, which occupies three-fifths of Peru, slopes eastward from the western Andes and merges with the heavily forested tropical lowlands of the Amazon Basin.12 Long before the Spaniards arrived in Peru in 1532, most of its native population resided in rural areas along the irrigated coastal river valleys, with indigenous clans inhabiting the fertile basins in the highlands. El Niño floods, along with droughts, forced the residents of the coastal regions to migrate. Upon their arrival in Peru, the Spaniards encountered the Incas, who had built the largest empire and dynasty of pre-Columbian America. The empire extended some 3000 miles, from the northern region of present-day Chile to present-day Ecuador. Cuzco was its capital. From it, a system of communication spread over nearly 25,000 miles and connected some 7–12 million people. Quechua was the empire’s official language. To sustain themselves, the Incas built irrigation, storage, and distribution facilities. The conquest of the Incan Empire was a protracted affair. In 1532, with only 62 horsemen and 106 foot soldiers, Francisco Pizarro captured and killed the Incan emperor, Atahualpa, and defeated his forces. However,

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a few members of the royal family managed to leave Cuzco and established a smaller Inca state in northeast of Cuzco. For the next 40 years, the Spaniards launched a series of attacks on the newly created Inca state. In 1572 they captured and killed Túpac Amaru, who had become emperor the year before.13 The Spaniards restructured the existing Inca environment. First, to retain a close connection with their homeland, the invaders built ports along Peru’s coastline. Second, to extract Peru’s mineral wealth, they established mining centers. In 1545 they founded Potosi to mine the extensive deposits of silver. Less than 30 years later, they created the city of Huancavelica. The ground had large quantities of mercury, which was needed to extract silver from the mines in Potosi. Third, of the 7–12 million people who lived in the Inca Empire when the Spaniards first set foot in Peru, some 80 percent had perished due to malnutrition or to diseases introduced by the Europeans by the end of the third decade of the seventeenth century. As the indigenous population became smaller, the Spanish crown established encomiendas. Each encomendero was given the authority to rule over a group of indigenous people from a community and to use them to work in the mines. In exchange, the encomendero was expected to protect them, teach them Spanish, and educate them in the Christian faith.14 And fourth, the foreign influx was followed by the birth of a hierarchical political system stratified principally along ethnic lines.15 The extraction of silver and mercury in Potosi in Upper Peru16 required economies of scale and vertical integration.17 In 1542, the Spanish crown attempted to end the enslavement of the indigenous people, except in very special cases. Faced with a shortage of cheap labor, Peru’s conquistadors established a system called mita. Under this arrangement, which had been originated by the Incas, the Spaniards compelled the leaders of each village to provide an assigned number of workers, who would serve on rotation.18 The new system did not end servitude or slavery. To provide sustenance for the mining areas of Potosi and Huancavelica, other colonizers engaged in livestock ranching and agriculture in three distinct areas. The main one was in the fertile region of Arequipa, near the border with Chile and not far from the Pacific coast. The second agricultural expanse was located along Peru’s coastal zone, where the Spaniards cultivated sugar, tobacco, and cacao. In the third region, around Ica and Pisco, some 150 miles south of Lima, they produced wine. In these regions the Spaniards relied heavily on forced labor.19 The coastal workers, however, were mostly of African origin.20 These distinct economic ­arrangements

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encouraged the establishment of separately organized, independent regions.21 By the second half of the sixteenth century, the Spanish crown had established in Lima an audiencia—a court designed to administer royal justice—and the Catholic Church had installed its major representative. The decision transformed Lima into the center of power and wealth of the Viceroyalty of Peru. To the west of Lima, the Spaniards built the port of Callao, which soon became the center through which all trade between Europe and South America took place. Aware that its colonies were not being governed efficiently, that they lacked appropriate protection from intervention by other foreign powers, and that their economies were underdeveloped, the Spanish crown restructured them. In May 1717, it created the Viceroyalty of New Granada, which assumed control over modern Ecuador, Colombia, and Venezuela. It added Panama in 1739, and some 40 years later formed the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata, which encompassed Upper Peru and the areas of present-day Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay. Chile was allowed to remain separate, as an autonomous captaincy general. At about the same time, King Charles III decreed that Spanish American viceroyalties would be allowed to trade directly with one another and with most ports in Spain. These measures, along with the substantial decline in the production of precious metals, diminished the power and importance of the Viceroyalty of Peru and its capital, Lima. As if the aforementioned setbacks were not severe enough, two distinct and unrelated events further undermined the power of the Peruvian viceroyalty. On October 28, 1746, an earthquake that ranged in magnitude from 8.6 to 8.8, with its epicenter located some 56 miles north-northwest of Lima, destroyed the capital. The tsunami that followed flooded Callao, killed most of its 5000–6000 inhabitants, and wrecked all the ships anchored in its harbor. The devastation brought by the rupturing of the earth took Peruvians by surprise; the upsurge in discontent from the indigenous populations did not. Although after the conquest the Spanish crown had steadily sought to implement a series of legislative measures designed to prevent the colonists from exploiting the indigenous population, their success was limited. The colonists, and their indigenous allies, the curacas (members of the Inca provincial nobility who acted as administrators or rulers over different indigenous groups), found ways to sidestep existing laws. Initially, indigenous leaders relied on the Spanish legal system to try to reverse

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those actions. The absence of positive results, however, compelled them to rebel. The pace of the uprising steadily increased until 1780, when José Gabriel Condorcanqui, a wealthy curaca and mestizo descendant of Incan ancestors, imprisoned and executed a local Spanish administrator. His defiance did not last long. He was captured in 1781, brought to trial, and executed. His brother tried to keep the rebellion alive but experienced the same fate a year later.22 The Initial State-Creation and Political Regime–Formation Processes in Peru Ferdinand VII’s forced abdication of the Spanish throne in 1808 generated a predicament among Peru’s creole elites. Although they had not been entirely satisfied with the political, economic, and social status the monarchy had imposed on them, they feared that the attainment of independence would place them at par with their own large indigenous population.23 Their concern was justified. As already noted, Peru’s indigenous population had revolted several decades before the Spanish king had found himself without a throne.24 Thus, as the momentum for independence gained strength throughout Spanish America, Peru’s creoles sought to persuade Spain not to grant Peru independence but to “make concessions within the colonial framework” that would, at minimum, protect their existing status.25 Fearful that the struggle for independence in adjoining regions might spread to their own homeland, Lima’s rulers dispatched a military force to crush a campaign brewing in Chile. The first armed intervention failed, but not the second one. Eventually, however, Peru’s creole leaders were overwhelmed by the superior forces of independence that descended on their colony from the north and the south. The post-independence phase proved to be traumatic to every Spanish American colony. Peru was no exception. By the end of the colonial period, Peru’s mining economy had lost most of its productive capacity,26 as had many of its bigger haciendas. What is more, because independence had been imposed from the outside against the wishes of Lima’s elites, Peru lacked a core group of civilian leaders who could lead it during the transition. The military officers who had fought during the war of independence filled the political vacuum, though not in an organized fashion.27 Without an authoritative civilian leadership in Lima, independence freed Peru’s elites to unleash their enmity against one another.

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During the nineteenth century, Peru promulgated eight constitutions. As in other former Spanish colonies, its leaders could not agree on whether they should adopt a federalist or a unitary constitution. The first constitution, enacted in November 1823, reflected the aversion to designing a unitary constitution. The formal document extended Peruvians the right to revolt against unjust governments; made the Congress the most powerful political institution, with the executive acting merely as the executor of the legislative will; and granted the departments and provinces a broad range of political guarantees.28 The legal instrument was not adopted immediately. On November 14, the Peruvian Congress, having just named Bolivar the republic’s supreme military and political leader, announced that any article of the constitution that was incompatible with his authority would be suspended.29 This proclamation did not mirror a last-minute willingness on the part of the Congress to give up its own political power. Instead, it reflected the awareness that Bolivar, because he had just defeated the Spanish armies and had emancipated Peru, had become the republic’s most important political figure. Bolivar’s honeymoon with the Peruvian Congress was short-lived. In 1826, Upper Peru, which changed its appellation to Bolivia, adopted a constitution that provided for a lifetime president, responsible to no other authority, and empowered to name his own successor.30 Peru embraced a similar constitution. Bolivar, encouraged by these two events, but afraid that the various regions he had helped liberate would engage in costly wars provoked by border disputes, proposed the formation of a confederation made up of Peru, Bolivia, and Gran Colombia (Ecuador, Colombia, and Venezuela). Such a political organization, he reasoned, would lessen significantly the likelihood of conflict between the recently freed entities. The Peruvian Congress rejected Bolivar’s proposal. It was not prepared to accept the independence of Bolivia, which had been governed by Buenos Aires between 1776 and 1810 but had been ruled from Lima prior to that period. Bolivar left the region in late 1826 to deal with Gran Colombia’s internal problems. His absence afforded the Peruvian Congress the opportunity to reinstate, albeit with modifications, the earlier constitution. Two years after Bolivar had left the region, the Congress adopted a new statute. The new document prohibited Peru from becoming part of a confederation that could undermine its independence. It also limited the presidential term to four years.31

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For much of the rest of the century, the struggle for power in Peru became a zero-sum game that repeatedly hindered its leaders’ capacity to consolidate the power of the state. Nearly every major regional leader, upon having won a political battle, sought to lessen the ability of those who had lost to regain their competitiveness. Constitutions became inconsequential. But in this turbulent environment, the potential for expanding international trade helped ameliorate some differences. From 1821 to 1852, Peru’s elites were divided into protectionists and liberals.32 The elites of Lima and of the northern coastal region advocated a sheltered Pacific trade with Chile in order to protect themselves from European and North American traders and the dislocation caused by the wars of independence.33 The southern elites, who dominated the coastal provinces of Arequipa and Moquega and the sierra hinterlands, never developed an “intense corporatist familiarity with the colonial state.” They became strong supporters of free trade,34 advocated the creation of close ties with the Atlantic regimes and the British, and promoted the revival of the Bolivian markets.35 By the 1840s, the commercial conflict that had kept the two regions apart had been attenuated.36 The impetus for lessening the conflict came from changes in Peru’s economy and the international economic system. Although those in the south had advocated for years the formation of a liberal economic system, the marketable surplus had been small. Moreover, prior to 1845, Peru remained dependent on the exportation of silver coin for foreign revenue. In 1840, silver coin accounted for 82 percent of Peru’s exports.37 But in that year, Peru was pushed into the mainstream of international commerce by two new interrelated conditions. In 1826, goods from Britain took 102 days to reach the Peruvian port of Callao. After 1840, when steamships began to navigate the eastern waters of the Pacific, the same trip was reduced to 45 days.38 At the same time, guano, which could be found on Peru’s coastal islands and had been traditionally used as a fertilizer by Peru’s indigenous population, became a commodity in high demand. The age of advanced farming in England and the beginnings of agricultural chemistry in Germany helped turn guano into Peru’s most important export. Its production increased from 7000 tons in 1830 to about 400,000 in 1860. Just as guano was being intensely sought by the British, the economic elites of northern Peru were starting to export cotton and sugar. British merchants, who by then had become Peru’s principal foreign commercial stakeholder, wasted little time in rendering their services. British ­merchants

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saw the change as an opportunity to serve as economic intermediaries between the regions. In a short period, free trade became the pillar on which Peru’s elite would attempt to erect the Peruvian state.39 Scholars disagree on how well Peru’s political leaders used the revenue drawn from the sale of guano in the international market to create the Peruvian state. Paul Gootenberg maintained that the “consolidation of the state was brought about by the transmutation of silver into guano, and of guano into power.”40 He emphasized that Lima’s statist control over the export, monopoly, and consignment of guano enabled its leaders to stamp out the radical nationalist caudillos, co-opt the south, halt the anti-­foreign campaign that had been so strong during the years prior, and begin negotiations on foreign claims, loans, and trade policies with other countries. Once Lima’s monopoly over guano was secured, concluded Gootenberg, it ensured “a quite literal monopoly of violence, put to good work.”41 Magnus Morner was less upbeat in his assessment. He noted that guano wealth “was on the whole a development opportunity missed.”42 The Peruvian state collected about 60 percent of the income made from the export of guano. Initially, the state strengthened its authority; imposed order by means of a sizable civil administration, as well as a standing army; promoted public education; built the first railroad system in South America; abolished slavery; and canceled the levy to which Peru’s indigenous population had been subjected. By the 1860s, however, though Peru’s coastal plutocracy dominated the economy, it did not dominate the political sphere. The gravity of the state’s malady was finally exposed by the War of the Pacific, when the deep rift within the ruling class, as well as conflicts between the various classes and ethnic groups, prevented Peru from erecting a solid front to battle Chile.43 Heraclio Bonilla concurred with Morner. Bonilla noted that the production of guano enabled Peru to access the capital necessary to rebuild its economy, diversify production, and develop a more stable rate of growth. Ultimately, however, the overall effect proved to be negative.44 Morner’s and Bonilla’s conclusions capture Peru’s reality significantly better than Gootenberg’s argument. According to Julio Cotler, Peru failed because after independence it was unable to develop an integrated economic elite. During the colonial period, Peru was divided regionally. Each region had its own internal hierarchy and existed as a semi-­ autonomous entity. But unlike some other colonies, Peru had in its capital an aristocracy bent on preserving its ties with Spain, bettering the privileges it had enjoyed during the colonial period, and shielding its stratified

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economy.45 Afraid that independence and the ideology that accompanied it would put them at par with those who had long been kept at the bottom of the social and economic ladder, Lima’s elites chose to side with the losing power. Spain’s defeat marked the end of Lima’s elite, which in turn helped create a power vacuum that freed the remaining regional elites to engage in a major political struggle led by the military officers who had fought on the side of the forces of independence. The intensity of the struggle diminished shortly after guano became Peru’s principal export commodity. The exploitation of guano’s international economic value enabled Lima’s General Ramón Castilla to build a military powerful enough to quench the power of the caudillos of the various regions.46 Military power alone, however, cannot build a state. Because in 1840 Peru had neither enough capital nor the entrepreneurial elite necessary to operate the guano industry, the Castilla regime signed foreign entrepreneurs as consignment contractors. The contracts generated positive results. Between 1840 and 1880 the Peruvian government collected about 60 percent of the income from guano, while 5–10 percent went to Peruvian consignees.47 The government used its share to augment the power of the military and Lima’s civilian bureaucracy. Moreover, it relieved Peruvians of almost all taxes, and canceled the levy imposed on the indigenous population.48 In turn, the soldiers, bureaucrats, and pensioners who depended on the government’s guano proceeds used part of their income to improve their style of living, while the small class of Lima’s capitalists directed the greatest part of theirs to the consumption of foreign luxuries. These behaviors left very little for savings and investments.49 Of equal significance was the response from the institutions and individuals who in earlier years had extended substantial loans to the government. By 1848 the interest accumulated on the loans had reached more than 2.5 million pounds. The surge of guano production motivated foreigners to demand that Peru renew the service of its debts. In an accord reached in 1849, the government agreed to begin repayment of the consolidated debt in 1856.50 This agreement encouraged Peruvian creditors who had never been paid by the government for previous loans, requisitions, and services, to demand that Congress extend preferential treatment to its “native sons.”51 In 1850, Congress declared eligible for conversion all domestic claims against the government arising since 1820, but did not seek to ensure equitable access to the guano business. The decision led to fraudulent actions by the next president and his immediate

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associates,52 and the establishment of a new, small “coastal elite.”53 The government was overthrown in 1855. Two years later its replacement agreed to service its domestic debt.54 The new decision restricted the revenue available to consolidate the power of the state. To offset the shortfall, the regime offered foreign creditors earnings to be derived from future exports as loan collaterals.55 The availability of large amounts of revenue did not lead to an increase in reinvestments in the decayed mines and haciendas and to a rise in employment. Instead, it led to the further concentration of wealth and to the additional appropriation of land held by indigenous communities. To make things worse, just as the production of guano began to decline, the government was forced to increase the revenues derived from its sale to augment the military’s power in order to contain social unrest. Between 1854 and 1862, more than 50 percent of the revenues elicited from the sale of guano were lost as a result of internal conflicts.56 In the midst of these tribulations, the Congress formulated a new constitution. The constitution stipulated that while the president and his cabinet members were responsible for designing national policy, the Congress had the authority to remove or censure cabinet members. Moreover, it restricted the executive’s power during times of national emergency and vested on itself control over military promotions. A series of revolts against the central government followed immediately. These actions forced the president to demand the enactment of a constitution that once again tilted the power in favor of his office. In 1860, the Peruvian Congress approved the request.57 Peru’s troubles, however, were too deeply rooted in its social and economic structure to be assuaged by any constitution. One president after another failed to solve Peru’s economic problems and engender political stability. Near the end of the 1860s, Peru witnessed the birth of its first political party—the Civilista Party. The party, made up primarily of members of the newly emerging capitalist class, advocated dependence on an “oligarchy of talent” to address Peru’s political, economic, and social ills scientifically. The party’s creator and leader, Manuel Pardo, argued that the wealth produced by guano, nitrates, and copper had undermined the Peruvian character and “delayed the day when the population would seriously go to work to develop a sound, self-sustaining, diversified economy.”58 He was elected president in 1872. Pardo’s ascension to power did not alter the course of Peru’s history. Seven years later, Peru was engulfed in a war that robbed its inhabitants of access to another major source of foreign revenue: nitrate.59

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Since the early 1830s Peru had been extracting, processing, and exporting nitrate, which could be used as a fertilizer or to make explosives. The industry remained untaxed from 1840 to 1868. When revenues from guano started to decline, the government imposed a minor duty on the export of nitrate. A heavier one in 1873 followed the earlier duty, and in 1875 the Peruvian Congress decided to alleviate the persistent budget deficits by nationalizing the entire nitrate industry. The action did not spur the desired effect. For several years, British and Chilean companies had operated the nitrate industry in Bolivia’s coastal desert. To keep the price of nitrate high, Peru had to convince the Bolivian government to impose its own export tax. Bolivia agreed. However, the Chilean government, which possessed treaty rights that guaranteed unimpeded access for its nationals in the Bolivian desert, demanded that the tax be rescinded. The Bolivian government refused and war followed. Chile, which emerged victorious in 1883, forced Bolivia to surrender its region bordering the Pacific Ocean and Peru to relinquish control over its nitrate lands in the south.60 The War of the Pacific compelled Lima’s elite to accept that it had squandered its country’s resources.61 As the war with Chile began to wane, Peru found itself once again torn by internal divisions. Without a powerful Lima elite at the helm, the regional caudillos battled for control. In December 1885, General Andrés Cáceras marched into the capital and seized power. His leadership introduced a modicum of political and economic stability. Aware that he lacked the means to overpower the regional caudillos, Cáceras accepted their autonomy. On the economic front, he warned that unless Peru settled its foreign debts, it would not have access to the new loans it needed to rebuild its export economy. In 1890, Peru and a group of London bondholders who had formed the Peruvian Corporation four years earlier to deal with Peru’s debt signed the “Grace Contract.” In return for the cancellation of Peru’s foreign debt, the Cáceras government granted the Peruvian Corporation control over Peru’s railroads for 66 years. It also agreed to deliver up to three million tons of guano per year, pay 33 annual payments of 80,000 pounds, and confer access to two million acres of the Perene jungle.62 With the production of cotton oil, copper, and sugar increasing at unprecedented rates, Peru multiplied its exports by eight times between 1898 and 1918. Peru’s core elite families were the main beneficiaries of those developments.63 Moreover, by then the United States, which for years had wanted to replace Britain as Peru’s primary foreign economic associate, had finally

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achieved its objective.64 Peru’s leaders used their wealth to consolidate their control over the state. Their action, however, did not consolidate or legitimize the power of the state. Peru’s Arduous Journey Toward Democracy Peru, in its path to democracy, had to overcome 24 coups d’état. During that same period, Peru had 94 presidents65 and 12 constitutions, the most recent one in 1993.66 Peru’s first constitution, decreed in 1823, sought to promote the image of a culturally homogeneous society led by creoles, with Spanish as the official language and Catholicism as the sanctioned religion. The next charter, drawn in 1834, limited voters to male taxpayers. The one adopted five years later added that only men who could read and write would be eligible to vote. The next one, adopted in 1856, extended the right to vote to all men who could read and write, were foremen or owners of any real estate or paid taxes, and retired soldiers and marines. That constitution also dictated that the state would provide public primary education, and explicitly prohibited the practice of any religion besides Catholicism. The 1933 constitution granted the right to vote to men and women who were over 18 years of age and could read and write. The removal of the literacy restriction in 1979 finally enabled indigenous people to voice their political preferences. Because many indigenous people lacked documentation and the voting centers were often far away from their communities, their level of participation continued to remain low for quite some time.67 Substantial losses sometimes prompt leaders of a deeply divided state to search for a different course. The War of the Pacific humiliated and discredited Peru’s politicians and weakened further the economy.68 Though the war ended in 1883, turmoil persisted for the next 15 years. Ten different leaders governed the country during that period. In 1895, Nicolás de Piérola, who had formed the Democratic Party, joined forces with the Civilista Party and assumed the presidency. From 1895 until 1912, Peru’s government underwent substantial restructuring. Piérola and his successors increased the professionalism of the civilian and military bureaucracies and relied on vigorous export-oriented growth to implement extensive fiscal reforms. During that period Peru’s oligarchy, which was composed of some 30 families who had made their wealth mainly from exports and were the Civilista Party’s leading figures, became the country’s dominant

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political force. Their time in power Peru is often referred to as the “Aristocratic Republic.”69 The Civilista Party did not always present a common front. One of its leaders, Augusto Bernardo Leguía, sought the presidency in 1919. Concerned that the government in power, which was also led by a member of the Civilista Party, would not accept his electoral victory, he mounted a coup and dissolved the Peruvian Congress. Shortly thereafter, a new Congress elected him the country’s constitutional president. Two of Leguía’s first steps as president were to enable himself to run for re-election multiple times and to form a new political party—the Reformist Democratic Party. During his tenure in office he established close ties with the United States, received large loans from its leading banks, and doubled governmental revenues, which he used to finance water, road, and other large public works. His government implemented the eight-hour workday, imposed minimum wages, and authorized the formation of an Indian Affairs bureau to address the needs of peasant communities. Not everyone gained from his policies. Owners of haciendas on Peru’s coast and of silver and copper mines in the highlands, along with members of Leguía’s extended family, saw their wealth increase measurably. Traditional landowners, small landholders, and peasant communities, on the other hand, witnessed a decrease in their standing. Moreover, journalists and labor leaders who dared to challenge Leguía’s authoritarian leadership style were periodically imprisoned.70 Discontent with Peru’s political leadership intensified during the 1920s. During the First World War, Peru’s export markets were temporarily cut off. Recession followed. The re-establishment of international trade revived demands for Peru’s primary products, which in turn provoked inflation and an increase in the cost of living. Peru’s working class, whose size had increased noticeably since the start of the century, was the hardest hit. As workers and students took to the streets to voice their discontent, two new non-status quo political parties entered the political arena. Radical ideologies, which had been gaining momentum throughout Latin America since the second half of the nineteenth century, attained greater prominence at the end of the First World War. The views espoused by the leaders of the Mexican and Russian Revolution captured the interests and imaginations of workers, intellectuals, writers, artists, and students worldwide. Peruvians were no exception. In Peru, their voices were joined by indigenous groups who demanded that their communities be protected from the disruptions generated by the opening of new interna-

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tional markets. An ensuing alliance helped develop a new generation of radical reformers. Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre, who had been exiled by the Leguía government in 1923, founded APRA—Alianza Popular Revoucionaria Americana—in Mexico City a year later. The overall objective of the alliance was to create a united Latin American front committed to nationalizing foreign-owned companies and ending the exploitation of the indigenous populations. Workers, students, intellectuals, and middle-­ class liberals were APRA’s principal backers. José Carlos Mariátegui, a journalist from Lima, led APRA in Peru until 1928, when he left it to create the Socialist Party. Peru’s economy deteriorated rapidly following the 1929 Wall Street stock market crash. Shortly after, Lieutenant Colonel Luis Miguel Sánchez Cerro mounted a coup against the Leguía government and became the country’s provisional president. Sánchez Cerro failed to alleviate the political, economic, and social tension, and stepped down in March 1931. The transitional junta that replaced him restructured Peru’s economic and financial systems substantially and organized the country’s first “open” elections. Haya de la Torre, who by then had returned from exile, became the presidential candidate for APRA, while Sánchez Cerro stood as the presidential aspirant for the Unión Revolucionaria. Both parties sought to draw support from urban workers and the middle class, but it was Sánchez Cerro who emerged victorious in October 1931. Haya de la Torre and APRA did not accept defeat and tried to unseat the winner with a series of rebellions and plots. In response, the Sánchez Cerro government bombed the northern city of Trujillo, killing several APRA militants. In retaliation, an APRA member assassinated the president.71 The Peruvian Congress named as the new president General Oscar Benavides, who ruled until 1939. He annulled the 1936 elections for fear that an APRA-backed candidate would become the country’s new president, and persecuted APRA members. In preparation for the 1939 elections, he successfully ensured that his candidate, Manuel Prado, would emerge victorious.72 The Second World War helped Peru regain some of its lost economic vigor. The 1945 elections led many to believe that Peru would finally build a solid democratic structure. The belief was shattered three years later. Though in 1945 APRA was not authorized to nominate a presidential candidate, it was permitted to join forces with the National Democratic Front, led by José Luis Bustamante. They won, and APRA gained a ­majority in Congress. With Bustamante at the helm, the new government

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imposed major tariffs on imports to protect emerging domestic industries, introduced import and exchange controls, started numerous public works, and increased wages and benefits. The alliance broke down when APRA demanded that the government implement additional radical policies. A mutiny incited by APRA members in the lower ranks of the navy in October 1948 was repressed. The uprising compelled the government to ban APRA. Still displeased with the measures adopted by Bustamante, the military, with strong support from Peru’s leading families, toppled his government.73 General Manuel Odría, who had led the coup against Bustamante, intensified the persecution of APRA and, with support from the United States, introduced a series of laissez faire economic policies. After his election in 1950, Odría strove to gain the support of the poor and curtail civil liberties. But, as in the past, it was not long before Peru’s oligarchs started to challenge his policies. Manuel Prado, who had served as president from 1939 until 1945, was elected for another term in 1956. Despite strong objections from Peru’s oligarchs, one of the first steps Prado took was to legalize APRA. The effect of his decision became evident in the 1962 presidential elections, when Haya de la Torre defeated by a very small margin Fernando Belaúnde, the presidential candidate for the Popular Action party (AP). Haya de La Torre’s 32.9 percent support was just below the one-third margin required to become president, thus extending to the Peruvian Congress the right to make the final decision. Haya de la Torre, Belaúnde, and Odría, who was the third presidential candidate, debated and negotiated for five weeks, at which time the Peruvian military intervened once again. The decision by the military to intervene must be placed in an international context. By 1962, the fear of a “second Cuba” had intensified measurably. John F.  Kennedy and his administration repeatedly emphasized that the most effective way to prevent a second Cuba was by fostering economic and social development via democratic means. Prior to the coup, the Kennedy administration had warned that Washington would sever diplomatic ties and suspend all types of financial aid if the military violated Peru’s constitutional rights. Kennedy’s government carried out its threat shortly after the coup, and the action had its intended effect. The Peruvian military announced that constitutional rights would be restored and new elections would be held in 1963. This time, Belaúnde garnered over 39 percent of the popular vote, but APRA gained control of the largest number of seats in both the House of Representatives and the Senate.

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A major international issue confronted Belaúnde the moment he assumed the presidency. The International Petroleum Company (IPC), a subsidiary of the Standard Oil Company (New Jersey), had been a bone of contention in Peruvian politics for decades. In 1922, Lima granted Standard Oil a special tax status for 50 years, as well as ownership of subsoil mineral deposits in the areas explored and developed by the company. The first measure reduced the company’s tax burden significantly. The second had greater political implications, for throughout much of Latin America subsoil mineral deposits were owned by the nation and guarded by the state. By the late 1950s and early 1960s, the tension between IPC and the Peruvian government had increased noticeably. In his presidential inaugural speech, Belaúnde promised to solve the IPC issue. Negotiations between the Peruvian government, IPC, and the United States remained in limbo until the middle of 1968, when Belaúnde asked the Peruvian Congress to grant him the authority to set up new taxes to finance the unbalanced budget and curb inflation. It was about this time that IPC agreed to surrender its mineral rights and production facilities in return for a debt quitclaim and new refining, marketing and exploration concessions. In August, the Peruvian government and IPC signed an agreement. Peru’s military leaders rejected it, and in October troops arrested Belaúnde and named General Juan Velasco Alvarado as the country’s new president.74 A couple of factors dictated the military’s decision to topple the Belaúnde government. At the top of the list was the belief by several members of the military that the government had not been aggressive enough in its negotiations with IPC. They were also guided by the general assumption that major industrial and agrarian reforms had to be implemented to address Peru’s social and economic ills and to undermine the power of the guerrilla movements, which had started to emerge in Peru during the first half of the 1960s. Six days after assuming power, the Velasco government expropriated several fields owned by IPC. Thereafter it nationalized the fishing industry and several banks and mining firms, expelled the US military mission in Peru, and promulgated an agrarian reform law that became one of Latin America’s most radical ones.75 As explained by Cynthia McClintock, the “Velasco government’s highest priorities were to eclipse the power of the Peruvian oligarchy and of the U.S. government.”76 By 1975, however, with the economy faltering, divisions within the military had emerged, and in September General Francisco Morales Bermudez, a political m ­ oderate,

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mounted a coup against Velasco. Attempts by the new military government to address the country’s economic problems were unsuccessful. Weary of being ruled by authoritarian regimes unable to attend to their economic needs, on July 19, 1977, Peruvians organized a general strike that shut down almost the entire country. Aware that they could no longer continue to govern, the military leaders announced that an assembly responsible for writing a new constitution would be elected in 1978, and that general elections would be held in 1980. APRA, along with four leftist parties that had united under the name United Left (IU), won 64 percent of the vote to the Constituency Assembly. Their control over the Assembly enabled them to elect Haya de la Torre as its president, and to create a constitution that granted the leftist parties the right to participate in the political process and authorized the illiterates to vote. Belaúnde, the same individual who had been deposed by the military in 1968, returned to the presidency in 1980 with a strong plurality. Although Belaúnde’s election elevated Peru’s democratic standing, it did not ameliorate the country’s economic, social and economic problems. The challenges left over from the previous military government continued and were worsened by a weather phenomenon. In 1982–1983, El Niño caused extensive flooding in some parts of the country, acute droughts in others, and destroyed schools of ocean fish that were one of the country’s major resources. Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso) further undermined Belaúnde’s presidency. Abimael Guzmán, a former university professor, formed Shining Path in the late 1960s. Guided by an ideology that combined Marxism, Leninism, and Maoism, Guzmán and his followers advocated the revolutionary transformation of Peru’s political system. They called for the establishment in Peru of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which they claimed would generate a cultural revolution and would spark a world revolution and the globalization of communism. After gaining control of student councils in several universities, the leaders of Shining Path decided in March 1980 to start an armed struggle. Throughout the 1980, the Shining Path enlarged its political presence by gaining control of territory and support from peasants in the impoverished Andean highlands. It has been estimated that during that period some 70,000 people were killed or disappeared.77 During his early years as president, Belaúnde did little to offset the attacks launched by the Shining Path, but he then authorized the military to adopt repressive measures. His economic and military measures did not

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generate positive results, and by the time the new cycle of elections came along, Belaúnde had lost the respect of most Peruvians. APRA won the 1985 elections handily; its members took over the presidency, the Chamber of Deputies, and the Senate. With Alan Garcia as president, Peruvians had very high expectations. His ability to address Peru’s political, social and economic ills, however, did not match his charisma. He continued the expansionist policies of his predecessor and announced that his government would allocate no more than 10 percent of its export earnings to service Peru’s debt. The impact of his decisions became quite evident by the end of 1987, when the country’s reserves had run out. By the time his presidency had reached its end, Peru’s accumulated inflation for the past five years was more than 2 million percent, and its real per capita GDP was estimated to be less than it was in 1960.78 Mario Vargas Llosa, one of Latin America’s most reputable novelists, and Alberto Fujimori, the son of a Japanese immigrant, dominated the 1990 presidential election. Fujimori defeated Vargas Llosa in the second round. By relying on stipulations of the 1979 Constitution that granted the executive substantial unilateral power over economic policies, Fujimori implemented a program similar to the one he had disparaged during his presidential campaign. He cut off tariffs, initiated privatization, agreed to service the country’s debt, and eased foreign investment laws. His radical measures were not well received. In 1992, backed by military and intelligence officers who believed that only an authoritarian regime would be able to defeat Shining Path, Fujimori suspended the 1979 Constitution, adjourned the Congress, and disassembled the judiciary. His decision was praised by vast numbers of Peruvians but opposed by many international groups. After extensive negotiations with the Organization of American States, Fujimori agreed to hold elections in November for a new constituency assembly. By then Fujimori’s political fortunes had improved measurably. In September 1992, a police antiterrorist group captured Guzmán. Shortly afterward, some 1000 suspected Shining Path members experienced a similar fate. Of no less significance, Fujimori’s drive to reinvigorate Peru’s economy benefited him greatly politically.79 The Fujimori administration put to an end import substitution, became a full participant in the world trading and financial system, eliminated domestic price controls, initiated a social emergency program to reduce the negative effects of economic adjustments on the poor, and devoted greater state funds to rural investments. Impressed by the reforms enacted by Fujimori, the IMF g ­ uaranteed

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the extension of loans to Peru. The reforms brought inflation down and attracted foreign investments. By 1994 Peru’s economy was growing faster than any other economy in the world.80 These developments enabled Fujimori to win re-election in 1995 by a landslide. It was not long before Fujimori experienced a reversal of fortune. A major slowdown in the economy, exacerbated by the 1998 Asian financial crisis and the return of El Niño, reduced his popular support to 30 percent by the last quarter of that same year. Nevertheless, though the 1993 constitution limited Fujimori’s presidency to two terms, he announced he would stand for re-election. He claimed that the restriction did not apply to him because it had been enacted while he was already in office. Peru’s electoral bodies concurred. Fujimori won with 51.1 percent of the votes, but more than 31 percent wrote in their ballots: “No to fraud.” Opposition to Fujimori intensified in September 2000, when a television station broadcasted footage of Vladimiro Montesinos, a close ally of the president and the de facto leader of the National Intelligence Service (SIN), bribing an opposition congressman to defect to the president’s party prior to the 2000 elections. During a visit to Tokyo in November, Fujimori submitted his resignation. The Peruvian Congress rejected it, accused him of being morally incapacitated, and removed him from office. Since 2001, Peruvians have been electing their presidents and representatives at scheduled intervals. Corruption continues to afflict Peru. As summarized by Freedom House: “Checks on campaign financing are particularly weak at the local level, where drug traffickers’ influence is perceived to have grown in recent years.”81 Ethnic cleavages remain a thorn in Peru’s political system. In 2009, Peru’s ethnic and cultural minorities launched a series of demonstrations condemning a trade agreement Lima had reached with Washington. The accord granted private companies access to the Amazon for the development of its resources. Indigenous groups opposed it. They contended that the treaty would threaten the safety of their natural resources and would enable foreign companies to exploit them. As the demonstrations intensified, the Garcia government ordered the military to help the police disband the protesters. On June 5 and 6, the two sides clashed, leading to the deaths of 10 protesters and 23 police officers. Fewer than two weeks later, the Peruvian Congress repealed the accord challenged by the indigenous groups, who then lifted their blockade.82 Nevertheless, discrimination “against the indigenous population remains pervasive, and the government’s calls to step up exploitation of natural

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resources have raised indigenous groups’ concerns about the environmental effects of mining, logging, and hydrocarbons exploration.”83 Despite its multiple failings, Peru has come a long way. Between 1980 and 2013, life expectancy increased from 60.1 years to 74.8, expected years of schooling went up from 10.9 to 13.1, and its standing in the overall Human Development Value Index jumped from 0.595 to 0.737. Though Peru still ranks below Chile, Uruguay, Argentina, and Costa Rica in the Human Development Value Index, its improvements have been significant.84 Analysis of Peru’s State-Creation and Democratization Processes Peru’s diverse regional and natural wealth, and its colonizers’ imposition of a rigid political and religious hierarchy and heavy dependence on exploitive labor extracted from the territories’ original inhabitants, generated two lasting, reinforcing, negative effects. First, access to great riches throughout a fairly large territory with a rugged topography induced Peru’s economic elites to protect their power and authority within the regions they controlled after the attainment of independence. As a result, they opposed attempts to build a unified state system. Second, the economic elites’ heavy dependence on serfdom or slavery prompted the growth of regionally based ethnic cleavages that were overlapped by class and religious cleavages.85 The cleavages would eventually become sharper than in almost any other Spanish American colonies.86 For parts of the nineteenth century, Peru’s economy depended greatly on its capacity to export large quantities of guano and nitrate to Europe and the United States, and on the readiness on the part of British banks to accept Peru’s pledge to use guano revenues to service its foreign debt. Peru’s heavy dependence on the international market and financial institutions generated major domestic disagreements on how to offset such dependency. Such disagreements, along with the War of the Pacific, severely undermined the capacity of Peru’s various elites to consolidate the power of the state. Economic growth in Peru during the twentieth century led to the dawn of new economic classes and to the formation of new political parties, some of which advocated radical political and economic changes, which in turn threatened the interests of the political and military leaders who had dominated the country’s political system. Determined to protect their interests, the established political and military leaders initially prevented

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the newcomers from participating in the electoral process. The struggle between the old and new forces created substantial political uncertainty, which often compelled the military to intervene to stabilize the political arena. Unable to address the needs of those who viewed the radical parties as their true advocates, the defenders of the status quo were ultimately forced to open the political system. The broadening of the political spectrum did not generate positive results immediately. Troubled by the continued inability of the civilian governments to address Peru’s social and economic ills and determined to prevent an emerging guerrilla movement from gaining political support and adopting radical policies, the military toppled the government in 1968 and assumed control. The action did not produce better results. Unable to revive the economy and to offset the growing threat generated by the Shining Path, and under intense domestic and international pressure to open Peru’s political system, the military once again stepped down in the late 1970s. The second experiment with democracy, however, brought about a critical change. Throughout Peru’s colonial and post-colonial history, the prevailing view among rulers had been that the indigenous people were “unfit for citizenship.” The social reconstruction of an idea seldom evolves rapidly, particularly when change could negatively affect the interests of those who had benefited from its existence for a very long time. It is not surprising, therefore, that it took Peru until 1979 to extend to its large Amerindian population the authority to exercise a political right that should have been theirs all along. Despite the aforementioned positive development, a redesigned democratic system did not engender better economic results. Burdened by an economic crisis of major proportions, Alberto Fujimori, who had been elected president in 1990, mounted a coup two years later with the backing of the military. Unencumbered by constitutional restrictions, the president initiated a series of neoliberal reforms that helped revive the country’s economy and authorized the military to use extraordinary means to bring down Shining Path. His decision paid off. After the capture of Guzmán and several leaders and the military defeat of several organizations established by Shining Paths, the group splintered, and its guerrilla activities diminished measurably. Ironically, Fujimori’s newly gained constitutional freedom proved to be his own undoing. A major downturn in Peru’s economy in 1998, and accusations of corruption and human rights abuses, ultimately compelled the Peruvian Congress to remove him from office.

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Since 2001, every Peruvian president has assumed office through the electoral process and has completed his term in office. Of no less significance, since the literacy condition was eliminated, two members of Peru’s indigenous population have been elected president. Alejandro Toledo, the son of impoverished indigenous peasants of Quechua heritage, assumed the presidency in 2001. Ten years later, Ollanta Humala, also of Quechua descent, became Peru’s 94th president. However, as will be argued later in this chapter, these developments do not indicate that all Peruvians view the state as a legitimate entity or support its democratic system.

Chile The Colonial Period Spain’s early colonizers were lured to the region now known as Chile by the belief that it would generate great wealth with limited effort, as Peru had. Their expectations were soon proven wrong. Upon their arrival in 1535, the Spaniards encountered a region and population very different from Peru’s. The indigenous inhabitants, known as Mapuche or Araucano by the Spaniards, were semi-nomadic. The largest Mapuche group occupied the region near the center of Chile. Within that area the Mapuches migrated extensively, depending on the season and their economic activity.87 Before the arrival of the Spaniards, an Incan army of some 50,000 soldiers had marched south with the intent of enlarging the empire. In their initial drive in the latter part of the fifteenth century, the invaders encountered limited resistance from the indigenous groups living in Chile’s northern region. The challenge they faced south of present-day Santiago was markedly greater. The Mapuche made it clear that they had no intention of acquiescing. They stood their ground some 200 miles south of Santiago, and after an intense three-day fight in which thousands of warriors on both sides were killed, with neither side gaining the upper hand, the Incas ended their expansion south.88 The Spaniards, just like the earlier invaders, failed to overpower the Mapuche. Finding little of value in Chile’s northern desert, the European trespassers continued their move south and established Santiago in 1541. After crossing the River Bio-Bío into Mapuche territory, they attempted to use members of the indigenous population to work in the gold mines. The Mapuche refused and launched limited attacks against the Spaniards

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until near the end of 1598, when they intensified the assaults. In the span of five years they destroyed or forced the abandonment of several cities south of River Bio-Bío. The Spaniards responded in 1608 with the announcement that any Mapuche imprisoned during war would be declared a slave.89 The Mapuche remained resolute. In 1641, the two sides signed the Treaty of Quillín, whereby each party recognized the River Bio-Bío as the permanent boundary between the two. The pact also stipulated that the Mapuche had no obligation to provide labor to individual Spaniards nor to pay tribute to the Spanish king, as required of other indigenous groups. Some 30 years after the last Mapuche attack, the Spanish crown recognized that attempts on the part of the colonizers to impose their will on Chile’s indigenous people simply intensified their willingness to resist. Because of the Mapuche’s fierce resistance, and because the considerable growth of Chile’s lower classes was increasing the availability of low-cost labor, the Spanish Crown abolished slavery in the region in 1683.90 With Chile’s limited potential for quick riches in the northern section, and with the presence of an indigenous population in the south determined to protect its sovereignty, the Spaniards were forced to live and concentrate their efforts in the central valley around Santiago.91 This change of fortune affected Chile’s political development in two ways. During the colonial period, labor conditions in agriculture throughout Latin America varied, depending upon the crop.92 In Peru, sugar and cocoa producers relied on slave labor. Chile’s central valley, with its Mediterranean-type climate and rainfall that gradually increases toward the south, is ideal for stock ranching and wheat cultivation.93 Its wheat producers, because they assumed that the process of seed selection, irrigation, and crop rotation was too complex for slaves to handle, relied on labor provided by tenant farmers. Through time, Chile’s land proprietors developed bonds with tenant farmers. Their collaboration helped create a working environment substantially less oppressive than the ones found in places where sugar or cocoa was cultivated.94 Miscegenation also became a contributing factor. During the early decades, most of the Spanish immigrants were men who developed formal and informal relationships with women from the indigenous population who had not retreated south. Their intermingling created a mestizo populace dominated by a very small class made up of Spaniards and criollos.95 Confinement to Chile’s central valley fashioned a second important ­ condition that affected state creation—elite collaboration. Elite

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c­ollaboration began to develop shortly after Chile’s central region was settled. The area’s leaders recognized that their well-being was contingent on their ability to create a force capable of protecting them from the Mapuche and that in order to survive they would have to learn to work together. Their military partnership was transformed into an economic association when a major earthquake struck Peru in 1687. The earthquake disrupted Peru’s wheat production capabilities. Chile’s wheat producers96 jointly became Peru’s new major wheat supplier.97 The Initial State-Creation and Political Regime–Formation Processes Ferdinand VII’s abdication of the Spanish throne to Napoleon of France in 1808 triggered both hope and fear among members of Chile’s elite. One group advocated continued loyalty to Spain; a second one, which had been demanding that the Spanish monarch render Chile greater economic and political power, broke into two factions. One faction favored attaining complete independence from Spain; the second one advocated greater economic and political freedom but opposed independence. After extensive internal debate, the two factions in the second group reached a compromise. They agreed to remain loyal to the monarch but stipulated that during Ferdinand VII’s absence, a National Junta would rule Chile, instead of the Council of Regency that was serving as a surrogate in Spain for the absent king and royal government.98 The Junta’s original goal was to apportion positions of leadership among Chile’s criollos, promote open trade, and stimulate the country’s overall welfare. Although many Junta members expected Chile to remain loyal to the Spanish king, its creation marked the first step toward complete independence. It was not long before those who had advocated local autonomy began to demand complete sovereignty. Many of them, motivated by the liberal ideologies emerging in Europe and the United States, questioned the idea of forming a powerful central government, and advocated the establishment of a republic. Others maintained that independence from Spain could be gained only if liberal concerns and personal differences were placed on hold. As noted earlier, events in Chile and Argentina generated fears among members of Peru’s anti-independence elites. To protect Lima from the revolutionary movement, its leaders sent a military contingency in late 1812 to suppress the radicals in Chile. The military operation did not

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s­ucceed. By the middle of 1818, Chile’s two pro-independence factions, with the assistance of the Argentine army, had gained control of Chile’s central valley. The southern part of the country would remain in the hands of the royalists until the 1826, but by then the rest of Chile and all of Peru had been liberated. The war did not alter significantly Chile’s political spectrum. Liberals sought to diminish the power of the Church, replace Catholic education with secular teaching, abolish titles of nobility, and reduce the size of vast agricultural estates by outlawing the mayorazgo principle, which stipulated that the oldest son would be sole inheritor of his father’s estate. Conservatives, many of whom had opposed the drive for independence, called for the creation of a political system that would retain some of the structures built during the colonial period, protect the role of the Church, preserve mayorazgo, and grant the authority to rule to only a small number of qualified individuals. Certain that Chile’s “reality” demanded that they not adopt liberal tenets, conservative leaders, with the backing of the Catholic Church, gained the support of several important military officers and defeated the liberal faction on the battlefield in April 1830. The event set the stage for the creation of Chile’s constitution three years later. The core tenets of the 1833 legal pact emphasized the observance of laws and the extension of extraordinary powers to a central government. The two principles were connected. It was argued that observance of laws was “the very foundation of the social order,”99 which in a new state could be maintained only if there was a “strong, centralizing Government, whose members [were] genuine examples of virtue and patriotism.”100 It was also noted that with a strong central government capable of maintaining social order, Chile would be able to create a business climate attractive to its own economic elite and to foreign capital.101 The new constitution was designed to protect the hegemonic position of the executive in several ways. First, to guard the supremacy of the president over the legislators, it limited the service of the Congress to three months a year and accorded the former the power to veto any law.102 Second, to curtail potential divisions between the regions, it granted the executive the legal authority to appoint the intendant, that is the leader of each provincial government.103 It further enhanced the executive’s control over the regions by granting it the power to declare a state of siege in any part of the country while the Congress was in recess.104 Third, to minimize opposition, it limited participation by granting the executive the authority

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to distribute certificates qualifying citizens to vote and by ruling that voters had to be at least 25 years old, be able to read and write, and possess a certain amount of property or enjoy certain income.105 Similar rules applied to citizens interested in running for office. Fourth, to instill continuity and further restrict opposition, it conferred the right to seek re-­ election to members of both houses as often as they wanted and to the president for one additional five-year term.106 And fifth, to help generate a communality of values throughout the population, it declared Catholicism the state’s official religion and prohibited the private or public practice of any other faith. Diego Portales, who played a pivotal role in the drafting of the 1833 Chilean constitution, succinctly summarized the views of the conservatives in a letter to a friend. He wrote: Democracy, which is so loudly proclaimed by the deluded is an absurdity in our countries, flooded as they are with vices and with their citizens lacking all sense of civic virtue, the prerequisite to establishing a real Republic … The Republican system is the one that we must adopt, but do you know how I interpret it for our countries? A strong central government whose representatives will be men of true virtue and patriotism, and who thus can direct the citizens along the path of order and progress.107

Although domestic differences persisted, decisions by neighboring states enabled Chile’s conservatives to strengthen their hand. In 1836, Peru and Bolivia formed a confederation. Chile viewed the act as a direct threat to its territorial security and trade prospects. With Argentina’s support, Chile moved to break up the confederation. In early 1839, the Chilean military won a major battle outside Lima. In August of that same year, Peru’s new president brought the confederation to an end. By then, the leader of the Chilean military campaign, General Manuel Bulnes, had returned to Santiago a hero. Bulnes assumed the presidency in 1841 and was re-elected five years later. With the backing of the business elite, he sharply reduced the size of the army. As a counterweight to the army, he created a civilian-based National Guard, staffed principally by upper-class officers.108 Bulnes’ presidency came at a time when Chile’s economy was undergoing a major change. By the middle of the nineteenth century, Chile’s domestic economy reached beyond its central valley. Although agricultural production remained one of the country’s principal sources of revenue, the discovery in the 1830s of silver mines in Chile’s northern section led

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to rapid demographic, infrastructural, and economic expansion. These changes engendered the rise of new economic elites and the concentration of wageworkers in isolated production centers who began to demand greater power for their own regions. Of great concern to the new northern leaders was that although their provinces had started to produce a large portion of the nation’s exports, they continued to receive marginal budgetary allocations from Santiago.109 The political and economic demands by the northern leaders increased after the 1857–1858 economic recession instigated widespread unemployment and bankruptcies. The wageworkers, though conscious that their interests differed significantly from those of the mining entrepreneurs, took to the streets with them in 1859 to force the central government to recognize the vital role played by some of the northern provinces. In due course, the new northern elites tempered their demands.110 The competing groups came to accept that their economic needs would be best served if they worked together to incorporate their country into the world economy by importing manufactured products and stimulating the production of commodities typical of less developed economies.111 However, regional differences still translated into political divisions. The Slow Emergence of Chile’s Democratic Regime Jose Joaquin Perez’s presidential term, which lasted from 1861 to 1871, marks the beginning of a more balanced rivalry between the executive and the legislative branches. By then, Chile’s ruling elite had split into the National Party, the Conservative Party, and the Liberals, and had witnessed the birth of a party not connected with the establishment. Pedro Leon Gallo, a wealthy northern miner who had played an important role in the 1859 revolt, and the brothers Manuel Antonio and Guillermo Matta, helped create the Radical Party. Together they advocated constitutional reforms, state supervision over education, administrative decentralization, and freedom of suffrage.112 During this period, the Chilean Congress enacted a constitutional amendment prohibiting the election of the same person for president for two consecutive terms and augmented the power of special groups within the legislative branch.113 Just as Chile’s political power was being diffused, its people began to experience the ill effects of a major economic depression. The combination of these two factors could have undermined markedly the government’s ability to maintain stability, but Chile was saved, briefly, by its war

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against Peru and Bolivia, commonly referred to as the War of the Pacific. Although none of the three countries wanted to fight a major war, Chile was able to rely on its past economic success and political stability to mount an aggressive and effective offense. By 1883, Chile had forced Peru to cede its furthermost southern province of Taracapa and to agree to a ten-year administration by Chile of the provinces of Tacna and Arica. By the following year, Bolivia had relinquished control of Antofagasta to Chile.114 Victory altered Chile’s economic and political landscapes. The control of new territory enabled Chile to increase the production of nitrate exponentially. This increase stimulated agriculture and livestock production in the other regions, expanded coastal shipping, and provided the government access to new tax revenues.115 Customs duties, which as a percentage of government revenues had declined to as low as 40 percent during the decade prior to the war, climbed to over 70 percent after it had ended.116 The central government used the newly acquired wealth to initiate massive-­ works projects and to expand the educational system. “With increased expenditures came new public jobs, and new opportunities for the national government to distribute patronage positions to its supporters.“ However, this increase in the involvement of the executive branch revitalized the debate that had been going on since the middle of the nineteenth century: How should political power be distributed between the executive and the legislative branches? As public resources expanded, “the role and perceived importance of the State grew immediately both in relationship to the economy and in regard to social and political opportunities within Chilean society. Personal and party feuds over spoils of the new wealth, job opportunities, and government contracts made nitrate prosperity almost as much a political liability as an asset for the incumbent administration.”117 After nearly 60 years of almost complete political dominance, Chile’s executive branch was forced by a revitalized economic environment to relinquish a significant amount of its power to the legislative branch. The diffusion of power meant that the center of gravity of the Chilean political system shifted from the center to the various regions, forced the partial liberalization of the electoral process, and led to the creation of political parties with extensive local bases.118 The change did not signify that Chile had finally become democratic. It meant, instead, that although competition for power had increased significantly, the number of those who were

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actually permitted to compete had not. The new system had become a competitive oligarchy. Chilean elites of different ideological colors initially sought to gain the backing of unlike groups without necessarily addressing their needs. In time, the strategy backfired. As the various elites became more dependent on the support of specific interest groups, such groups began to challenge the assumption that their support could be retained with little in return. By the early 1890s, the middle class had acquired some measure of consciousness of its condition and became the center of agitation. Members of the working class gave the middle class electoral support and began to supply the “necessary violence and strong-arm methods [that] the order-­ loving middle class could not have been expected to provide.”119 The competition between the Chilean Congress and the president came to a head in 1890, when President José Manuel Balmaceda opposed Congress’ demands that ministers serve with its approval. The president also rejected requests that local governments and leaders be granted more autonomy and given control over the electoral process. When Congress censured the president and his cabinet, he chose to govern on his own and adopted the national budget by decree. Congress refused to acquiesce, and with support from the Chilean navy it tried to overthrow Balmaceda. A civil war ensued when the army sided with the president. In August, the president committed suicide after recognizing that he had lost the struggle.120 The diffusion of power was accompanied by a steady increase in the number of voters. According to the 1833 Constitution, to qualify to vote, the individual had to be a citizen, at least 21 years of age and married—or if single, at least 25 years of age, literate, and have some real estate, invested capital, or an income. The property or income requirement was removed in 1874, but not the proviso that the voter be literate. The change led to a threefold expansion of the number of registered voters.121 The age prerequisite was lowered to 21 in 1884. That year, in order to exclude women, who in 1876 had registered to vote, the electoral law also stated explicitly that the term citizens applied only to men.122 As the Congress became stronger, its members did not attempt to use their newly gained power to effect social change. Instead, they became absorbed in “political machinations and petty rivalries” designed solely for the promotion of their own personal political interests and those of the well-established elite classes. Moreover, the elites did not promote voter participation. Because they feared mass movements, they encouraged apa-

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thy and indifference among potential voters. According to James Petras, the elites “regarded the general populace as an ignorant mass incapable of electing representatives capable of guiding state policy.” In 1915, only 5 percent of the population had registered to vote, and of them only 20 percent voted. This meant that of a population of 3.5 million people, only about 75,000 decided who their leaders would be.123 Chileans witnessed the beginning of a new political era when Arturo Alessandri, backed by a coalition composed of parties that claimed to represent the interests of Chile’s small merchants and middle class, was elected president in 1920. Shortly after being sworn in, Alessandri moved to curtail the power of Congress, proposed that the president be elected by direct vote, encouraged the separation of church and state, and advocated administrative decentralization. The Congress, which was controlled by Conservatives, rejected the president’s recommendations. By then, the Chilean Communist Party had come into being. A group of officers in the Chilean army, displeased with their low salaries, launched a major protest on September 3, 1924. Two days later, a military committee demanded that Alessandri dismiss three of his ministers, enact a new labor code, approve an income tax law, and increase military salaries. The legislative branch complied. Aware that he had lost control over his own government, Alessandri resigned. A military junta took over the government but was soon replaced by a different military faction. In March 1925, the new group reinstated Alessandri as president. He called for the drafting of a new constitution, which was approved that same year. The new constitution stipulated the separation of state and church, provided for the election of the president by direct vote, increased the president’s term to six years, granted the president authority and control over finances, and stripped Congress of the right to remove cabinet members by means of censure. In addition, it outlined a system of proportional representation, separated the dates of congressional and presidential elections, and granted Congress the power to select a president if no candidate received a majority of the popular vote.124 The new constitution formally returned to the presidency many of the powers that it had possessed prior to the changes brought about by the 1891 civil war. As explained by Kimberly Stanton, the transformations that followed took place in several phases. The first two have already been discussed. The third phase began immediately after the approval of the constitution and ended in May 1927, when the Chilean military pressured a new president, Emilio Figueroa, to step down.125 His defense minister,

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Colonel Carlos Ibañez, took over but resigned in 1931, unable to limit the ill effects engendered by the Great Depression. The following year Alessandri was elected president once again; this time he completed his term. During his administration he implemented the changes in executive–legislative relations that had been stipulated by the 1925 constitution. In the next phase, which lasted until the late 1930s, Chile’s political leaders relied on formal democratic institutions to address social and economic problems.126 The recently established system of proportional representation had produced a multiparty system that focused almost entirely on social issues. This division became evident in the 1932 presidential elections, when five candidates entered the race—two representing the right, two the left, and one the center.127 It was a system that had yet to become a “real” polyarchy, but it could no longer be characterized as a competitive oligarchy.128 It temporarily became a polyarchy in January 1949, when women were extended the right to vote in presidential elections. Variance in the level of support garnered by those in the center, the right, and the left fluctuated from one election to another, with no single group able to receive the backing of more than 50 percent of the voters.129 The inability of any one single political party to control the political arena compelled them to form coalitions during presidential elections. Most of the coalitions would break apart not long after the elections. Their breakups did not signify that they repeatedly failed to compromise in order to design policies. As has been noted, over the years, “working agreements among political rivals led to implementing far-reaching policies, including state-sponsored industrialization; comprehensive national health, welfare, and educations systems; agrarian reform; and copper nationalization.”130 The breakup of Chile’s democratic process in 1973 cannot be understood without consideration of the tensions stimulated by the clashes between the country’s changing domestic political and economic landscapes, and by developments in the Americas. Between 1932 and 1973, Chile’s party system was “not only determining the political recruitment process for important national posts, but also structuring contests in such diverse institutions as government agencies, and even local high schools.” It was a highly competitive and highly polarized party system.131 In a highly polarized party system, with the right and the left commanding substantial percentages of the electorate, the political system tends to be dominated by a centrifugal drive, that is, by a drive that further divides society. The principal characteristic of a centrifugal political system is that it obstructs the development of a stable center. The center exists, but it is

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the result of the negative meeting of fragments emanating from both the left and the right poles. These fragments, upon converging at the center, are seldom able to remain as a coalition for a prolonged period.132 The constant crumbling of coalitions thwarts the development of consensus at the decision-making level and therefore makes it very difficult to structure common public policies.133 During the aforementioned period, only two candidates representing the opposite poles became president in Chile. Conservative Jorge Alessandri, son of former president Arturo Alessandri, was elected in 1958, and Salvador Allende, the leader of the Leftist coalition, was chosen in 1970. Both candidates won largely because members of the fragments within each pole refused to compromise, and the parties at the center assumed they could win on their own.134 Chile’s political system coped with Alessandri’s rightist presidency, but not with Allende’s leftist government. The difference has been attributed to Alessandri’s success at forming a centrist coalition after coming to power, and to Allende’s failure to persuade the center to join his government.135 Hence the question: Why did the latter fail where the former succeeded? The willingness by political competitors to become part of a governmental coalition and make it work is a function of the degree to which their interests concur with those responsible for the formation of the coalition, the depth of their support for the objectives identified by the party seeking to create the coalition, and the availability of viable alternative coalitions. A powerful international actor can affect those three conditions in a positive or negative manner. The effect of the international environment on an entity’s ability to create a state and consolidate its power is determined principally by whether there exists a concurrence of interests between the elites of those states that dominate the international system and the elites of the entity striving to become a state. A similar argument can be postulated about the relationship between the international system and the ability of a centrifugal political system to cope with a pole-dominated government. Specifically, it can be contended that a government dominated by a pole that is perceived as a major threat to the interests of the regional international hegemon is less likely to succeed at forging a stable coalition than one that is not perceived as a menace. The international hegemon often has the means to persuade those who are being courted to either enter or not enter a coalition. The contrast in domestic and international responses to the Alessandri and Allende regimes gives credence to the two arguments just postulated.

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Alessandri assumed the presidency in 1958 determined to partially replace the existing strategy of state-led industrialization with one that placed greater stress on private enterprise. This aim meant that the state would have to help expand the resources available for investment for industrial growth while maintaining the appearance that no major social group would be expected to absorb the costs for such an expansion. The way out of this contradiction was through inflationary expansion of government borrowing. His policy was not widely supported either at home or abroad. Chile’s left and center opposed the idea of reducing governmental intervention in the economy. Certain fragments of the center concluded, however, that it would be in their interests to enter into a coalition with Alessandri. More importantly, he eventually found an important ally in the international arena. The Chilean president came to power at about the same time the world was learning that Cuba would be ruled by a government determined to distance itself from the United States and to ensure that its dare would be endorsed by the international system’s second-most powerful actor at that time—the Soviet Union. Fidel Castro’s rise to power in Cuba forced Washington to propose policies designed to ameliorate the rationale for revolutionary movements, which had been gaining momentum for some time throughout Latin America.136 On March 13, 1961, President John F.  Kennedy announced the Alliance for Progress program and pledged some $20,000,000  in aid for development. He also challenged Latin American states to initiate major agrarian reforms.137 Alessandri did not welcome Kennedy’s proposal. The Chilean president, still a firm believer in private enterprise and limited government interference in the economy, contended that “increased participation in the profits of the copper industry would do far more for the country than land reforms, tax reforms, and other distribution measures sponsored by the Alliance.”138 Alessandri’s strategy did not generate the intended results. With the Chilean economy stagnating, the political right losing its veto power in Congress, and Washington recommending that Chile restructure its economic policies, Alessandri caved in and agreed to alter Chile’s hacienda system. In short, although the Alessandri government did not share Washington’s conviction that policies designed to foster greater economic equality were the proper remedy for Latin America’s ills, and though Chile’s political center and Washington did not welcome the policies advocated by the Alessandri government, all three sides accepted that they needed one another. The Alessandri government understood that it could

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not afford to alienate the political center if it wanted to govern, nor to estrange Washington if it ever hoped to benefit from the Alliance’s foreign-­ aid program. In turn, the center and Washington accepted Alessandri, because they felt that it was better to have him lead Chile than somebody like Allende.139 During the 1960s, Chile’s political environment underwent substantial change. The number of registered voters increased from 1.5 million people in 1958 to more than 3.5 million in 1970. Union membership also increased. In a six-year span, membership in blue-collar unions increased by 38 percent, in white-collar unions by 90 percent, and in peasant unions from less than 2000 people to more than 114,000 people.140 The increases elicited concern in the United States. Washington feared that if it did not assist Chile’s centrist parties and limit the popularity of leftist parties, the country would become a second Cuba. When Eduardo Frei emerged as the leading candidate for the centrist parties for the 1964 elections, Washington decided to help him win. US covert support for Frei’s Christian Democrats began in April 1962. The Kennedy administration decided to make a series of secret payments on “a non-attributable basis,” to the Frei campaign. The intent of the plan was to prevent the presidential candidate and his party officials from knowing who was providing the funds. The CIA spent $2.6 million underwriting Frei’s campaign, and an additional $3 million to scare voters away from Allende.141 With the backing of a coalition of center-right parties, Frei assumed the presidency in 1964. His basic economic goal was to restructure Chile’s economy. He intended to implement major land reforms and to Chilenize the big copper mines, which were owned by companies from the United States, via the acquisition of 51 percent of their shares. In addition, he increased expenditures on social projects oriented mainly toward middleand low-income groups and provided guidelines for wage readjustments.142 By 1970, the coalition between the center and the right had disintegrated. Troubled by Frei’s reformist policies, the right refused to continue its association with the center party. Moreover, the US government, after being criticized extensively by Chileans for its involvement in the 1964 elections, decided to curtail its association with the center-right parties in the 1970 elections. In the meantime, the leftist parties had gained substantial new support. These parallel developments made it possible for Salvador Allende and his Popular Union coalition to receive 36.2 percent of the popular vote. Because Allende obtained only a narrow plurality, the

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Chilean Congress, as dictated by the constitution, was forced to choose Chile’s next president. On October 20, a month after the election and while the Chilean senate was still deliberating, the commander in chief of the Chilean Army, General René Schneider, was assassinated. Due to his long-standing reputation as a strong advocate of the “constitutionalist doctrine,” which stipulated that the exclusive role of the army was to protect the country’s sovereignty and not to become entangled in politics, the army stopped its opposition to Allende. Four days after Schneider’s murder, the Chilean Congress chose Allende as the country’s new president, despite major attempts on the part of the Nixon administration to persuade it not to take such a step. As many analysts have noted, Washington feared that the establishment of a socialist regime in Chile via the democratic process would have a domino effect throughout Latin America.143 The Breakdown of Chile’s Democratic Regime From the moment he assumed power, Allende sought to transform Chile’s economy. His program had three major components. First, the state would control the economic system’s major elements. Second, it would redistribute income in order to transfer surplus from capital to labor. And third, it would complete the agrarian reforms initiated by the previous administration.144 Allende’s government immediately moved to nationalize the copper companies and the coal and steel industries. It also took control of over 60 percent of the private banks and many private businesses, expropriated large landholdings, and froze prices and raised wages. Chile’s political center concluded that its immediate political interests would not be served by working with the Allende administration. The Christian Democrats “were intimidated by the political threat from both the Right and from many of their own followers and were obsessed with the notion of presenting a hardline posture to the very end.”145 It did not take long for the negative effects of some of Allende’s measures to become evident. By 1973, the country’s economy was in trouble. It encountered huge budget deficits, inflation, the near absence of foreign investments and credits, and depressed export earnings caused by low world copper prices. All in all, Chile’s gross national product had declined nearly 5 percent by 1973. The Nixon administration’s actions to undermine Chile’s economy helped bring about that outcome.146 As already noted, to rule, leaders in a centrifugal political system must design a centrist coalition. Their chance is noticeably undermined when

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one of the poles gains control of the executive branch. Regime stability is likely to be further thwarted if the leader of the pole in power promotes an ideology or set of policies that poses a direct challenge to elements wedded to the domestic social and economic status quo, and to the authority and power of the international region’s hegemon. The leader of the rightist pole, Alessandri, survived because he managed to attain the support of the center and of Washington after he became president. Allende was a different matter. Not only did he join forces with ideologues from the extreme left, that is, with political leaders who demanded that he accelerate the economic process to force a confrontation with the opposition, but he also faced a center determined to protect narrow personal stakes and to constantly present a hardline posture.147 The domestic condition was exacerbated by the presence of an international actor bent on ensuring that Chile would not be ruled for long by a leftist government. During the first eight months of 1973, Chile endured anti-government demonstrations. The March Congressional elections, contrary to expectations, strengthened the government’s position by reducing the opposition both in the senate and in the lower house. Thereafter, the willingness on the part of the military to tolerate the existence of Allende diminished rapidly. The president’s attempt to forestall the military’s involvement came to naught with the resignation of the commander in chief of the army and defense minister General Carlos Pratt, who was also a strong supporter of constitutional democracy. On September 11, the military, with General Augusto Pinochet as its new commander, mounted a coup. By the day’s end, Allende had committed suicide and the military had taken over the government.148 Earlier it was remarked that to create a state, civilian leaders must on occasion rely on the support of a powerful military. But how does a powerful military affect a state’s chances of becoming democratic? A political system cannot become a polyarchy unless the military and police ­organizations are controlled by civilians who are subject to the democratic process.149 In a democracy, control of the military by civilian leaders is deemed to be critical.150 A theory of democratization, however, must go beyond contending that control of the military by the state’s civilian leaders is necessary for the development of a democracy. It must also delineate the circumstances under which such control is likely to be procured or lost. According to Samuel Huntington, the “stability of any given polity depends upon the relationship between the level of political participation and the level of political institutionalization … As political participation

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increases, the complexity, autonomy, adaptability, and coherence of the society’s political institutions must also increase if political stability is to be maintained.”151 In the absence of political institutions capable of mediating, refining and moderating political actions the military will assume such role.152 As already noted, Chile’s civilian political leaders relied extensively on the military during their earlier attempts to create the state. But by the early 1840s, with the Chilean state fairly well established, its civilian leaders began to reduce the power of the military. This relationship remained unaltered until nearly the end of the nineteenth century. The War of the Pacific helped Chile become one of South America’s richest and most powerful republics. With new provinces that contained great deposits of nitrate, copper, and other minerals, Chile increased not only its economic wealth but also its need to develop a military capable of protecting its newly acquired international status. Thus, shortly after the war, President Balmaceda invited a Prussian captain, Emil Korner, to create a program designed to professionalize the Chilean army. In a short time, other Spanish American countries began to use similar programs to structure their own military forces.153 The restructuring of Chile’s military did not pose an immediate threat to the existing political system. But in time, it did. Civilian political leaders can prevent the military from usurping political power if the organization is led by officers who recognize that it is their duty to obey civilian leaders and stay out of the political realm.154 Whether such an arrangement can be reached between the civilian political elite and the military leaders depends extensively on the degree of development of a country’s political institutions. The military organization created in Chile during the second half of the 1880s was designed to function as an effective defender of the state. Its members, however, who were now being drawn primarily from Chile’s middle class, soon began to believe that they were better equipped than the politicians to address many of Chile’s political, economic and social ills. This attitude became quite popular during the “parliamentary years,” when the Congress, after gaining substantial power, brought into Chilean politics a level of political turmoil and uncertainty not previously experienced. Chile’s new “professional” soldiers found the new political environment unacceptable and decided to change it in the 1920s. Some of their major objectives were to replace the “parliamentary republic” with a strengthened presidency, expand the bureaucracy, revise the budgetary

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system, purge the civil service, and reduce the role of the parties and the power of the Communist-controlled labor federations. When Colonel Carlos Ibañez assumed power in 1927, he relied on tyrannical means to maintain order as he attempted to bring about social reforms. His government, however, was not equipped to deal with the economic depression of the 1930s. As conditions grew worse, Chileans forced him to resign in July 1931. Ibañez’s resignation did not persuade the military to retire from politics. It intervened in June 1932 to overthrow the conservative government of Juan Esteban Montero, who had been elected president shortly after Ibañez’s departure, and again in September to topple the socialist government of Carlos Davila.155 The military then refrained from using its force overtly to alter the course of Chile’s domestic political affairs for nearly 40 years. But when it did intervene in 1973, it remained in power for some 16 years. Why the wavering?156 The return to the barracks by the armed forces in 1932, followed by their extended absence, produced a false sense of security among civilian political leaders. Defined by a political system in which power had become a function of their own ability to respond to the competing demands from the masses and growing belief that the military would not defy its evolving tradition of non-intervention, Chile’s civilian political leaders began to engage in a zero-sum game. When this game is played in a political system that has yet to develop deep institutional roots, it is not uncommon for the military to see itself as the only organization of restoring and maintaining political stability. It is only after the military re-enters the political arena and remains at the helm for an extended period that a state’s civilian political leaders begin to understand that political participation without political socialization promotes political instability, which in turn encourages military intervention. The return to power of the civilian political leaders is finally made feasible by their ability to convince the military and the voters that they will not reinstate the zero-sum game, and by the failure on the part of the military to gain legitimacy as an alternative authority. The Pinochet regime stopped Chile’s experiment with democracy by suspending the constitution, dissolving Congress, declaring political parties illegal, setting strict limits on what the media could report, and imprisoning and torturing those members who had been associated with, or were believed to have been associated with, the Allende regime. With guidance provided by economists from the University of Chicago, the new regime launched a program designed to reduce the role of the state in the economy, allow the laws of supply and demand to guide the economy,

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reduce barriers to imports, and cut inflation. In Pinochet’s words, the goal of his government was to make Chile “not a nation of proletariats, but a nation of entrepreneurs.”157 Initially, Chile’ economic experiment was successful. Its GDP grew by 8 percent in both 1977 and 1979. The rich and members of the middle class who had felt victimized by the Allende regime supported Pinochet’s economic reforms. The United States provided Chile economic and military assistance.158 The world economic crisis of 1982, however, burst Chile’s bubble. In 1982 Chile’s GDP growth was negative by 14.1 percent, bankruptcies tripled, and the price of copper fell from $0.99 to $0.67 per pound, Chile’s private financial system took huge losses, and by 1983 effective unemployment had reached 30 percent.159 Pinochet’s authoritarian control depended greatly on his government’s capacity to sustain economic growth. The economic crisis helped rejuvenate the opposition. Spearheaded by the Christian Democratic Party, members of the opposition started to collect signatures to officially register their parties. Moreover, with the Cold War moving to its final phase, Washington, which earlier had backed Pinochet’s authoritarian regime, began to pressure him to open Chile’s political system.160 Convinced that most Chileans wanted him to rule for another eight years, Pinochet agreed to hold a plebiscite. Fourteen political parties put their differences aside and formed an alliance for the single purpose of persuading Chileans to vote against Pinochet. Chileans were presented two options. A “Yes” vote meant that Pinochet would remain in power until 1997; a “No” vote meant that he would step down within a year’s time, three months after the holding of presidential and parliamentary elections. Pinochet lost. The next year, Patricio Aylwin, the leader of the Christian Democrats, was elected president. Mindful of Chile’s traumatic experience following the overthrow of the Allende regime, Chileans denied the extreme left a congressional seat. During Aylwin’s four-year tenure as leader of Chile, Pinochet and the military managed to preserve substantial power. When Pinochet retired in 1998, he became a senator for life in accordance with the 1980 Constitution he had helped draft. Subsequent elected civilian governments were able to steadily diminish the power of the military and reinstitute Chile’s basic democratic tenets. Since the re-establishment of democracy in Chile, control of the presidency has oscillated between leaders representing the center-­right and the left. By the end of the 1990s, Pinochet’s personal and political standing had taken a turn to the worse. In October 1998, he was

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arrested in London for human rights violations. Though a Chilean judge found Pinochet to be medically unfit to stand trial, he placed him on house arrest. Pinochet died in 2006. By then, 300 criminal charges for human rights violations and tax evasion and embezzlement had been filed against him. Analysis of Chile’s State-Creation and Democratization Processes The conditions that influenced Chile’s development during the colonial period were its semiarid and scorched regions north of Santiago, the very narrow distance from the Pacific Ocean to the Cordillera de los Andes, the presence south of the river Bio-Bio of indigenous people determined to retain their independence, the absence of great mineral wealth, and the existence of a valley in the Santiago region that was well-suited for growing wheat and raising livestock. The above conditions compelled the colonizers and their descendants to build a powerful army to protect themselves from sieges to their settlements. They also encouraged landowners and laborers to cooperate with one another to develop the region’s economy and to create a society that was not greatly encumbered by deep ethnic cleavages. After gaining independence, two competing groups emerged in Chile. Liberals group stressed that individual liberty and absolute equality before the law could not be reconciled with the creation of a state led by an autocratic executive power and backed by a state-sponsored Catholic Church.161 Conservatives, troubled by the country’s domestic political instability and weak economic conditions, advocated the establishment of a powerful executive branch that would enforce laws, generate linkages with the world economy, impose Catholicism as the state’s sole dogma, and create an effective state. The conservatives, the military, and the Catholic Church formed an alliance powerful enough to defeat the liberals and assume control of the state in the early 1830s. The highly centralized state structure engendered by the 1833 constitution helped generate political and economic stability, strengthen the power and legitimacy of the state and of the civilian rule, and weaken the political power of the military. According to Marcus Kurtz, where “labor relations are free and elites cooperate to form an exclusory oligarchy, a trajectory of institutional development can be initiated.”162 Chile’s state creation supports his contention. Because silver and copper were not critical sources of wealth until the 1840s and 1850s, and nitrate did not become a major economic asset

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until after 1883, the original designers of the state, most of whom resided in the Santiago area and depended on the production and export of wheat, had comparatively few economic reasons to not cooperate with one another. They were amenable to the formation of a unitary state under the leadership of a powerful executive. They created an oligarchic republic, a “political system in which all major components of the upper class had effective political representation.”163 The discoveries of silver and copper led to the migration of a large number of people to the northern region in search for labor and investment opportunities. Soon, new interest groups emerged in the northern regions. The Santiago and northern elites agreed that it was in their mutual interest to preserve an economic system that advocated international trade.164 Such expansion, however, had a set of contradictory effects. The expansion of the economy enabled Chile’s leaders to improve the country’s transportation and communication systems. This improvement further strengthened Chile’s state power and legitimacy.165 Victory of Chile over Bolivia and Peru in the War of the Pacific led to the enlargement of Chile’s territory, which strengthened and diversified the country’s economy, increased political participation, and generated a new power distribution between the executive branch and the legislative body. The power competition between the Chilean president and the Congress that resulted in the 1891 civil war did not signify a rejection of the state but a challenge to the excessive power of the executive. As the wealth of the state increased, spread throughout the northern part of the country, and gave rise to new interest groups, the power of the center began to diminish. Greater political participation often leads to an increase in the number of political parties, which can heighten political competition between the political parties and the executive and the legislative branches. Failure on the part of the Congress and the president to resolve their differences in the 1920s compelled the Chilean military to intervene and take over the government. Military leaders typically lack the competence to address non-military issues. Failure on the part of the military to resolve the country’s grave economic ills caused by the 1929 stock market crash, and to prevent the depression that followed, forced it to restore constitutional rule in 1932. During the next 40 years Chile underwent two substantial political transformations that resulted in the development of a system dominated by centrifugal forces. First, the number of voters increased substantially. In

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1946, some 479,000 people voted; six years later, when women were authorized to vote, the numbers doubled. By 1970, the year in which Salvador Allende won the presidency, the number had reached 2,954,799. Second, economic growth, income maldistribution, and the Great Depression helped give rise to new political forces that moved Chile’s political range to the left. Determined to contain the increasing power of the Socialist Party, the Conservatives and the Liberals put aside their differences about the role of the Church and combined their forces. The Radicals, in turn, replaced the Liberals as the party in the center, while the Communist Party and the Socialist Party continued to represent the left. The coalition between the center-left and the right dissolved before the 1970 elections. Displeased with many of the reforms initiated by Frei, who had been elected in 1964, Liberals and Conservatives established the National Party and sponsored Jorge Alessandri as their presidential candidate. The Christian Democrats occupied the center with Radomiro Tomic Romero as their candidate, while the left presented Salvador Allende as the head of the Popular Unity party. The decision by the center and the right to compete independently enabled Salvador Allende to win the popular vote, though not by the margin he needed to assume the presidency without the consent of the Chilean Congress. Chile’s nearly 40-year tradition of uninterrupted elections helped convince the military leaders and Congress that they had to name Salvador Allende president, despite intense opposition from Washington. A government dominated by a pole that is perceived as a major threat to the interests of the regional international hegemon is less likely to succeed at forging a stable coalition than one that is not viewed as a threat. Allende’s election, the decision on the part of his political coalition to advocate competing political and economic measures, the formation of an anti-Allende bloc by the right, and Washington’s decision to destabilize Chile’s economy activated its centrifugal forces. The 1973 March elections that enlarged the presence of Allende’s supporters in Congress encouraged the winners to accelerate the transformation of Chile’s political and economic system and helped convince those on the right, including high-ranking military officers, that they had to topple the Allende government militarily. Politically unhindered both domestically and internationally, Pinochet moved aggressively in two parallel directions. On the political front he eliminated members of the radical left, enacted a new constitution that gave him greater powers, banned labor strikes, and censored the press. On

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the economic front he sought to reduce inflation, and to privatize and liberalize Chile’s economy. The likelihood that a military dictatorship will retain control of the government in a state that has experimented with democracy for an extended period depends on whether it can offset international pressure to open the political system, can fully control domestic dissension, and can address domestic competing economic interests. Pinochet miscalculated. Convinced that Chileans would want him to remain in power, he authorized the holding of a plebiscite in 1988. Nearly 56 percent voted that Pinochet step down as president and that new elections be held. The intense discord that dominated Chile’s political environment during the 1960s and during Allende’s three-year rule, the excessive measures used by the military to topple the Allende government, and the oppression spawned by Pinochet’s 17-year autocratic regime compelled Chileans to recognize that immoderate behavior can bring democracy down. This awareness persuaded Chile’s leaders to implement moderate changes and to accept that for some time they would have to allow the military and many of its members to retain undemocratic authority and privileges. Since 1979, Chileans have steadily strengthened their country’s democratic roots.

Argentina The Colonial Period In the early 1500s, Juan Díaz de Solís entered the vast estuary that separates present-day Argentina and Uruguay. At the time of his arrival, different indigenous groups, who lived independently of one another, inhabited the territory. Their numbers were not substantial, and their wealth was small compared to the riches of the Inca and Aztec civilizations.166 They either engaged in agriculture that supplemented their hunter-gathering diets or were nomads who subsisted entirely on hunting and gathering. Most of Argentina’s indigenous inhabitants lived in three distinct regions. The Diaguitas dwelt in the northwestern part. They were agriculturists, but also herded llamas and alpacas as sources of protein, and of wool for making clothing. They possessed little mineral wealth and did not create the type of caste structure and social differentiation established by the Inca Empire.167 East of the lands inhabited by the Diaguitas resided the Guaranis. They occupied the semitropical forests of present-day

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Paraguay, southern Brazil, and northeastern Argentina. Their life patterns differed from those of their Andean counterparts. Extended families lived together but were divided politically. Each group inhabited a specific territory, and within each group its members fished, hunted, and farmed. Fighting among themselves was common. South of the region populated by the Guaranis and the Diaguitas lived many nomadic hunter-gatherer groups. Contrasted with the agricultural people of the northeast and northwest, the nomadic hunter-gatherers traveled in separate bands, were not controlled by strong political leaders, and fought one another constantly for control over hunting areas.168 Shortly after his arrival at the Río de la Plata in 1516, Solís, accompanied by a small group of men, sailed up the river to where the Paraná and Uruguay Rivers meet. Solis’ party came under attack, and he and several of his men were killed. The remaining members of the crew returned to Spain. Some 20 years later, a new Spanish expedition attempted to re-­ enter the region. The hostility its members encountered from the indigenous population eventually led the invading forces to move their base up the River Paraná, to present-day Asuncion in Paraguay. In the 1560s, settlers from Santiago crossed the Cordillera de los Andes and occupied Mendoza in western Argentina, while colonists from Upper Peru (Bolivia) moved into the northern part of Argentina. During this period, the Spanish monarchy concluded that though it would maintain control over the mostly unoccupied region, it would invest little effort in developing it. Two factors contributed to the decision. First, the prospects of finding vast silver deposits in the area were small. Second, most of the nomadic natives who dwelled in the region refused to work in servitude for the Spaniards by fighting them or not interacting with them.169 For the next two centuries, the new inhabitants of the Argentinian territory created a distinct lifestyle. Although they were still ruled by the Viceroyalty of Peru, their daily activities were barely monitored. Despite the absence of extensive controls, Spain limited how much the new colonizers could trade with the outside world. The Spanish monarchy dictated that all commerce routes between Buenos Aires and Spain had to pass through Lima instead of sailing directly from the southern Atlantic port city. Lima’s monopolistic control and Buenos Aires’ location at the end of a route to Spain made it prohibitively expensive for the porteños to import and export goods from and to Europe.170 To sidestep the regulation, the porteños took to contraband. In time, illegal trading gave Buenos Aires its beginning “as an entrepôt, the foundation of its later political and economic primacy.”171

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These two developments had their own set of effects. Self-sufficiency freed the leaders of the Argentine regions from having to become interdependent and forged an individualistic spirit. The landscape of the Pampas was also a factor in affording the inhabitants of its various regions the opportunity to develop independently of one another. They learned to survive without having to acquire deep roots in just one area. The gaucho, who became the symbol of the Pampas, did not mature into a cooperative being. “His definition of nationality or nationhood meant himself above all others.”172 In 1776, Spain created the Viceroyalty of La Plata based on the assumptions that the action would encourage further economic growth in the region, limit contraband, attract foreign investment, and obstruct Brazil’s attempts to expand its empire. The new viceroyalty, with its headquarters in Buenos Aires, included most of what is today Argentina, Upper Peru (Bolivia), Paraguay, and Uruguay, but was, in a sense, composed of three separate entities. One entity encompassed Upper Peru and Tucuman (Cordoba, Salta, La Rioja, Jujuy, Santiago del Estero, and Catamarca). These provinces interacted primarily with Peru. The provinces of Cuyo (Mendoza, San Juan, and San Luis) interacted mainly with Chile. The littoral provinces, dominated by Buenos Aires and Uruguay, each with its own port, had their eyes directed toward Europe. Each region had its own historic tradition, culture pattern, and political institution, and the great distances between centers of population accentuated these differences.173 From the moment the Spanish monarch granted Buenos Aires a higher status over the other cities throughout the new viceroyalty, a major power struggle ensued among them. Buenos Aires, with the authority to collect customs and control levies, sought to dictate the financial affairs of the provinces. The leaders of the provinces, in turn, took measures designed to prevent Buenos Aires’ attempts to encroach on their local autonomy.174 Argentina’s State-Creation and Political Regime–Formation Processes The monopoly imposed by Spain on Buenos Aires’ elites provided the basis for the revolt that resulted in the creation of the assembly of May 22, 1810, which led to the first declaration of independence three days later.175 The act did not bring the leaders of Buenos Aires and the various provinces together. Instead, it freed them to express a multitude of ideas with regard to how the state should be structured and the type of political sys-

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tem they should create.176 The rivalry was soon solidified into two basic groups. Morenistas, who owed their name to a porteño by the name of Mariano Moreno, favored the establishment of a strong centralist government controlled by Buenos Aires. He and his supporters, most of whom were also porteños, with a few residing in the province of Buenos Aires, created the Unitary Party. They believed that provincial leaders were “a vulgar lot bereft of knowledge and experience in even the most common public matters,” who had been “removed too suddenly from their ranchos and hick towns” and were capable only of addressing domestic and municipal issues.177 Saavedristas, a group originally led by Cornelio Saavedra, who became the first president of La Primera Junta, favored the creation of a federalist system that granted substantial autonomy to the regions. The rivalry between the two groups had an economic foundation. During the colonial period, the city and the province of Buenos Aires had become exporters of pastoral products and importers of manufactured products. The interior could not rely on exports to generate revenue because of higher transportation costs. Besides, its products were not as attractive to the residents of Buenos Aires as those imported from Europe.178 Thus, as already noted, from early on, the provinces sought to ensure that Buenos Aires would not succeed in forcing upon them a consolidated national government. Their effort, however, was tempered by the realization that Buenos Aires was the only entity with the financial resources necessary to organize the defense of the territory. To solidify and legitimize their power, the leaders of the most important towns tried to gain control over large sections of surrounding territories via the creation of new provinces, with each one being given the name of the town that brought them together. From 1817 to 1820, the Cabildos of the towns of Santa Fe, Santiago del Estero, San Luis, San Juan, Catamarca, and Rioja created provinces with the same appellations.179 The struggle between Buenos Aires and the provinces was reflected in the type of constitution each side advocated. In 1813, the porteños proposed the establishment of a supreme director housed in Buenos Aires as the executive authority. A decree issued the following year modified the original document and enlarged the powers of the national executive. The constitution adopted in 1817 energized the rivalry. It advocated the formation of a centralized government that granted Congress the authority to elect the national executive who would have the authority to appoint the governors of the provinces.180 Supporters of a federalist system that

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extended autonomy to the provinces opposed the new constitution, and shortly after it was promulgated, militias of the provinces of Entre Rios and Santa Fe marched against the troops of the national government and defeated them. The provincial leaders dissolved Congress and annulled the constitution. The leaders of the provinces were not the only ones who opposed the city-port’s drive to create a government with Buenos Aires at the center. Early on, Buenos Aires invited the various governorships that comprised the viceroyalty to form a confederation. Paraguay and Upper Peru’s leaders refused. Mindful of the impact the rejection could have on its attempt to create a state and become its center, Buenos Aires mounted a series of military expeditions to both locations between 1811 and 1815. The operations failed, and Buenos Aires was not able to force Upper Peru and Paraguay to become part of the United Provinces of the Rio de La Plata. During the early years after independence, the battle between the federalist and unitary factions was temporarily tempered by Brazil’s declaration of independence from Portugal in 1822 and the incorporation of the Río de la Plata’s east bank (Uruguay) into the Brazilian empire. Afraid that Brazil might seek to incorporate additional territory, Buenos Aires invited the leaders of the provinces to draft a permanent constitution.181 Deliberations began in Buenos Aires near the end of 1824. As tension between Brazil and the united provinces intensified, the representatives of the provinces continued their deliberations. They agreed to appoint temporarily the governor of the Province of Buenos Aires as the head of the country until the position was formally created. In addition, the assembly approved a treaty of friendship with Great Britain, ended the commerce of slaves, accepted the declaration of independence of the provinces of Upper Peru, started the legal organization of the Armed Forces of the Argentine Republic, approved the establishment of a national bank, and changed the number of people represented by each representative from 15,000 to 7500. After a year of extensive debate, most members of the assembly agreed to name a permanent leader. On February 6, 1826, and elected Bernardino Rivadavia as the new head of the confederation. Rivadavia saw the war with Brazil as the perfect opportunity to raise an army that he could eventually use to impose the constitution on the provinces.182 The war did not evolve as Rivadavia had planned. Although Brazil lacked a major land force, its navy managed to blockade Buenos Aires. The action destabilized Buenos Aires’s economy. Cattlemen and British merchants, both of whom

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were impacted by the sharp drop in exports and imports, demanded Rivadavia resignation. He resigned in July 1827, and hostilities with Brazil ended the following year, after the two sides had agreed to abandon their claims to the east bank.183 The Río de la Plata’s returning armies divided themselves once again into two factions, with each claiming to be the rightful successor to the deposed government. Neither bloc emerged victorious, but Juan Manuel de Rosas, who for some time had been augmenting his political power within the province of Buenos Aires, surfaced as the dominant caudillo.184 During this period, Britain had helped intensify Argentina’s internal division. British merchants had started descending on Buenos Aires as early as 1809.185 Their original intent was to find markets for the surplus goods that threatened to slow down the growth of their homeland’s economy.186 In a short time, the British took over the entrepreneurial function previously exercised by Buenos Aires’ merchants, forcing the latter to move to the provinces and invest in land, cattle, and saladeros.187 The move by the porteños to the interior was aided by two distinct but interrelated developments. In 1816, they agreed to improve rural security, expand the southern frontier, and attract new settlers to empty lands.188 In a relatively short period, the livestock-export economy became a major source of foreign revenue. Between 1822 and 1851, the value of Buenos Aires’ exports rose from about 700,000 to 2,000,000 British pounds a year, with hides becoming the principal commodity. Imports, although significantly greater than exports in the early stages, did not rise as rapidly. By 1850 the trade deficit was narrowed to approximately 100,000 British pounds.189 Of no less significance were the steps taken by Juan Manuel de Rosas. The expansion by ranchers to the southern and western territories compelled the indigenous inhabitants to counter with force. The resulting conflict provoked an aggressive governmental response. During his 1829–1832 service as governor of Buenos Aires, Rosas granted lands in the south to war veterans and ranchers. After he had stepped down as governor, the new government asked Rosas to lead an army to pacify the indigenous groups who lived in the sought-after territory. Rosas’ campaign subjugated the indigenous members of the entire region and created the opportunity for further territorial expansion.190 In March 1835, Buenos Aires’ House of Representatives re-elected Rosas as governor and granted him near-dictatorial power. Rosas assumed his new role convinced that he was the only caudillo with the power to obstruct the return of anarchy to the provinces. To an extent he did. The

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province of Buenos Aires’ economic success between 1830 and 1852 strengthened its position among the other provinces and gave Rosas access to the type of revenue he needed to amass the military force necessary to dominate the political arena. Backed by a well-organized militia and financed by the estancieros and the commercial interests from the Province of Buenos Aires, Rosas tried to unite Argentina. Although he identified himself as a federalist, he ruled as a centralist and tried to make Buenos Aires the center of power. As he once noted: “[A]lthough I am a Federalist by conviction I would undertake to be a Unitarian if the vote of the peoples were for Unity.”191 Although the province of Buenos Aires had a House of Representatives made up of 44 deputies, its members were entirely dependent on the power of the governor. Rosas’ regime relied on force and on propaganda to control both the legislative and judiciary branches. It was a system of “total government” under which the “majority of the people obeyed, some with enthusiasm, others from inertia, many out of fear.” But the Rosas government did not impose tyranny arbitrarily—it “responded to conditions inherent in Argentine society, where men lived for too long without a common power to keep them all in awe. Rosas superseded a state of nature, when life was a war of every man against every man, and when people and their leaders lived in continual fear and danger of violent death.”192 To say that Rosas controlled the province of Buenos Aires completely is not to say that he ruled Argentina. The thirteen provinces were grouped in a Confederation of United Provinces of the Río de la Plata. Each province governed itself. But the leaders of each province also understood that they had to delegate certain functions to Buenos Aires, such as matters related to defense, foreign policy, and legal jurisdiction. Rosas slowly but steadily gained control of the interior. His success, however, was limited to provinces whose economic interests were not linked to powerful foreign actors. Provinces that could rely on the support of foreign powers demanded trading rights for the river ports of Paraná and Uruguay, a share in customs revenue, and local autonomy. Those were the provinces that became Rosas’ “Achilles’s heel.”193 The fall of Rosas came in early February 1852. Good export prices had kept landowners and salt beef producers satisfied, and enabled Rosas to pay for the large army that he needed to subordinate the provinces. But the economy of hides and salt beef could not generate growth, and by the middle of the nineteenth century Rosas was no longer as powerful as he

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had been in earlier years. He lost support in Buenos Aires, where sheep farming began to gain momentum, and also in the littoral. The provinces grew tired of Buenos Aires’ control of customs, monopoly of federal revenues, and prohibition of free commerce. With Brazil’s backing, they finally agreed to unite militarily to remove him from power.194 After defeating Rosas, General Justo José de Urquiza invited the governors of the provinces to discuss the creation of a new constitution. All the provinces, except Salta, Jujuy, and Cordoba, sent representatives. The governors agreed on a set of principles that would guide their discussions during their next meeting near the end of 1852. However, as soon as the terms of the preliminary agreement were made public, the representatives of the province of Buenos Aires announced they would not abide by them. Of great concern to Buenos Aires’ leaders were the articles that placed the land and naval forces of the provinces under Urquiza’s authority. He was also to be granted the legal right to suppress domestic violence in any of the provinces. Averse to losing control over its armed forces, Buenos Aires broke from the confederation in September and declared itself an independent state. The representatives of the remaining provinces met in Santa Fe near the end of 1852 and signed the new constitution in May 1853. Urquiza proclaimed the document the supreme law of the land on May 25. The act had limited value, because the province of Buenos Aires, the most powerful Argentine entity, had not joined. It would take the adoption of several changes to the constitution, and a victory by the province of Buenos Aires’ militia over the federal government’s forces in 1861, to bring the rebel province back into Argentina. By then, no province had the capacity to question Buenos Aires’ superior status. Shortly thereafter the country’s capital was moved back to Buenos Aires. After the defeat of the federalist forces in 1861, the leaders of the provinces agreed that to generate rapid economic growth and keep the country united, Argentina would have to be guided by an executive with substantial authority. In accordance with the interests of the provinces, the constitution extended to each the right to adopt its own constitution. But at the same time, it postulated that each provincial constitution had to be “in harmony with the principles, declarations, and guarantees of the national constitution.”195 It further consolidated the power of the center by noting that “the federal government shall have the right to intervene in the territory of the provinces in order to guarantee the republican form of government or to repel foreign invasions.”196

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At the core of the federal government was the president, whose power was upheld by two platforms. The president had the power to appoint his cabinet without the consent of the senate. This freedom gave the president “a dominant position in the Argentine political system” and made it possible for him to resist attempted “encroachments of the legislative authority upon executive prerogative.”197 Also, of great value to the president was the electoral process. Argentina adopted plurality elections with single-member districts. These conditions normally facilitate the formation of a two-party system. The establishment of a pluralist constitution, however, does not always lead voters to rely on political parties as channels of expression. “Constitutional pluralism—the division of power and the checks-and- balances doctrine—long preceded party pluralism and was constructed without, and against parties.”198 The early emphasis in Argentina was on how to divide the power of the institutions assigned to rule and how to ensure that no single institution would become too powerful. Political parties were unnecessary, for though pluralistic constitutions acknowledged the role of the “people” as voters, during the early periods’ politics typically entailed competition between a small number of people who took a strong position on every issue and formed transitory alliances and groupings.199 Political parties became valuable democratic instruments much later, when the people insisted on the right to express their demands and be represented. The inauguration of Argentina’s new constitution did not help generate greater political participation. The average citizen continued to barely participate in the political process, and when he did, to identify himself by his dependent relationship to somebody above him in the economic strata.200 This structure helped the president dominate the governmental machinery. Moreover, although provincial governors controlled their own legislatures and were influential in the selection of their provincial representatives to the federal level, they were all politically indebted to the president, because he had the legal authority to remove them from office.201 This type of political arrangement, along with the absence of secret balloting, made it difficult for members of the opposition to mount a successful, non-violent challenge. Almost invariably, until 1912, the faction in power would name its candidates and have them elected. Under such circumstances, the only alternative left to the opposition was to resort to violence. And they did, in 1874, 1890, and 1893, but with very limited success.202 Between 1862 and 1890, Argentinians lived under a “hegemonic” system in which the group in power permitted competition, but not on an

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equal basis, and was unwilling to tolerate a rotation in power.203 Such a political system, however, helped the state strengthen its power and connect the Argentine economy with the world market. Political stability made feasible the organization of joint-stock enterprises and encouraged the flow of capital from Britain. The new capital was used to build the railways necessary to bring agricultural exports from the hinterlands and deliver imported goods, and to help develop factories, banks, and public utilities.204 Other important developments ensued. After the fall of Rosas until 1879, indigenous groups continued to raid the regions from which they had been displaced. They targeted isolated frontier ranches on the Pampas and took cattle and horses by the thousands. By the late 1870s, with the civil war and the conflict with Paraguay no longer dominating the political agenda, Argentina’s leaders revisited the idea of gaining complete control over the regions still dominated by indigenous groups. Their basic argument was that were they to succeed, they would strengthen and legitimize the role of the state, enlarge Argentina’s economic potential, and enhance their stand vis-à-vis Chile with regard to their boundary dispute in the Patagonian region. General Julio A. Roca, who would assume the presidency first in 1880 and again in 1898, proposed that the government take possession of the eastern side of the Andes by force. He shared with other political leaders the belief that it was imperative to bring to an end the notion of “common property.” As members of the Sociedad Rural Argentina had noted, it was “indispensable to civilize the Indians, to persuade them to change their roaming habits, incompatible with all social progress, to make them property owners of a given tract of land, broken into small lots, so that its distribution can reach the largest possible number of Indians.”205 With the backing of the Argentinian government, General Roca launched two major operations against the indigenous groups in 1878 and 1879. His missions achieved their intended objective. After the indigenous resistance had been broken, only those few who were politically connected gained claim to the lion’s share of the southern Pampas and the entire region of Patagonia. It has been estimated that just 381 persons gained possession of 21 million acres of frontier land.206 Argentina today is considered to be the “whitest” of all Latin American states. Except for Uruguay, this perception is correct; however, it is important to identify some critical variances. First, during the colonial period, miscegenation was a common practice. In fact, a substantial portion of the

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gaucho population was of mixed ethnic background—either men of European descent and indigenous women, or Amerindians and people of African descent. Although it is difficult to ascertain how much Argentina’s ethnic composition has changed during the past 200 years, recent investigations have revealed some relevant data. In a genetic study of 246 unrelated males from eight provinces in three different regions, analysts established that though the Y chromosomes of 94.1 percent of those studied demonstrate that they were in part descendants of Europeans, the mitochondrial gene pool of 53.7 percent came from Native Americans.207 In a separate study, analysts established that the level of miscegenation varied from region to region. In Argentina’s central region, some 52 percent of the population exhibited the mitochondrial haplogroup characteristic of indigenous people; in the southwest the percentage increased to 56 percent; and in the north-northeast the percentage rose to 66 percent. The population component that does not have any Native American heritage is 43 percent in the central region, 37 percent in the south-southwest, and 27 percent in the north-northeast region. Second, between 1580 and 1640, slave trade was Buenos Aires’ main commercial activity. Upon reaching Buenos Aires, slaves would be sent to locations as far north as southern Peru, Paraguay, and Bolivia. Typically, regions that depended greatly on agricultural production attracted the largest percentage of African slaves. In several of them, African slaves made up over 50 percent of the population. Argentina’s black slave population revolted after Britain’s botched invasion of Buenos Aires in 1806. Although unsuccessful, the uprising alerted the criollos that failure on their part to address the situation could engender new revolts in the future. In 1813, as Argentina’s leading citizens were struggling to create an independent state, they passed the “freedom of wombs” law, which stipulated that children born to slaves would automatically become free citizens. The actual abolition of slavery, however, did not affect in major ways the lives of Afro-Argentinians nor the country’s ethnic cleavage. The cholera epidemic of 1861, along with the Paraguayan War, destroyed the lives of thousands of Afro-Argentinians. By the end of the nineteenth century, few Afro-Argentinians were left, most of whom were women. Their numbers were not large enough to help generate a significant ethnic influence or social cleavage in Argentina’s political structure. Slave labor, moreover, had almost no influence on Argentina’s post-independence agrarian order.208

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In sum, the absence of great mineral wealth and the presence of comparatively small indigenous groups unwilling to surrender their freedom and dispersed throughout different regions prevented Argentina’s Spanish settlers, just like their Chilean counterparts, from forming a rigid social configuration divided along ethnic lines. The effects of both conditions were overshadowed by two key variances—the size of the various regions and their level of agricultural productivity. During most of the colonial period, Argentina’s economy was divided into self-sufficient regional economies separated by considerable distances and ineffective modes of transportation, while Chile’s economy was predominantly concentrated in Santiago and its surrounding region and was organized to interact with foreign markets. This difference helps explain why Argentina took longer to consolidate the power of the state than Chile. In the years immediately after independence, Argentina’s regional elites were determined to protect and increase their own power and economic wealth. Although they recognized that they could not prosper unless Buenos Aires played the leading role, initially regional leaders were unwilling to abdicate their powers to the country’s most important city. Argentina was “plagued by a near-complete inability of competing elites to form any sort of stable political compromise for much of the post-­ independence era.”209 The tension generated by the rivalry between Buenos Aires and the provinces did not abate until 1829. Between 1829 and 1852, Rosas reduced the conflict by outwardly championing the right of the provinces to define and regulate their own destinies, while ­surreptitiously increasing his power over Buenos Aires and the provinces. As his attempt to usurp the powers of the provinces became evident, the regional leaders joined forces and ousted him. The overthrow of Rosas did not resolve Argentina’s quandary. Though the victors adopted a new constitution in 1853, Buenos Aires did not accept it. It took a major military victory by Buenos Aires’ forces for the competing regional elites to acknowledge that in order to expand commerce, promote industry, and attract foreign investors, a powerful executive residing in Buenos Aires had to lead Argentina.210 The constitution of the newly consolidated Argentine nation was designed to expand commerce, promote industry, encourage the free pursuit of wealth, facilitate the entry of foreign capital, and increase immigration.211 The new constitution organized “an authoritarian power destined to create a system in which financial capital and European workers [would] be able to populate and civilize the Argentine desert.”212 To help achieve

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their goal, the drafters of the 1853 constitution granted the president the authority to remove governors from office and omit articles that delineated the rights of the opposition. Such authority preserved the power of the existing elites and enhanced the likelihood that only those committed to Argentina’s rapid economic growth would be elected as president. As just noted, with unification came the belief that Argentina had to enlarge its population. Article 20 of the new constitution stipulated that aliens would “enjoy in the territory of the nation all the civil rights of citizens,” and would be permitted to obtain “naturalization by residing two consecutive years in the nation,” while Article 25 added that the “federal government shall encourage European immigration.”213 Articles 20 and 25 helped increase the size of Argentina’s population from approximately 1.1 million in 1857 to roughly 3.3 million in 1890, with more than half of the new population arriving from abroad.214 The influx of new people compelled Argentina’s political leaders to strengthen the authority of the state throughout the Pampas and Patagonia by moving forcefully against the regions’ indigenous people.215 The Genesis, Collapse, and Quasi-Rebuilding of Democracy in Argentina Voting practices in Argentina developed slowly. The first electoral law was sanctioned in 1821, in the province of Buenos Aires. The law extended voting rights to all free men within the province.216 Candidates to any elected position, however, had to be proprietors. Despite the fact that the suffrage applied to all free men, very few participated in the first elections, largely because most of the population remained uninformed. During the first elections only 300 voted out of a population of 60,000 men. The 1853 Constitution did not stipulate who could participate in the electoral process. This problem was resolved in 1857, when a new law specified that the country would be divided into 15 electoral districts, and that only men could vote. Voters were given a list with the names of the candidates for each post. Whoever received the largest number of votes assumed the post for which he had submitted his candidacy. The 1857 change also specified that voters had to express their votes vocally. The decision generated problems. Voters who did not acquiesce to the demands of a region’s caudillo risked losing their life or employment. Thus, electoral fraud became a common practice. Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, who served as senator of the province of Buenos Aires, then as

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governor of the province of San Juan, and finally as president of Argentina, summarized it best when he stated, in approving tones: “Our strategy has been based on audacity and terror … [We]generated so much terror amongst all the people with these and other means that on [March] 29 we won without opposition.”217 By the end of the 1880s, the new immigrants and a developing merchant class began to argue that their interests were significantly different from those represented by the “conservative” group in power, and to insist that they be properly represented. Their demands marked the genesis of the Radical Civic Union.218 Those who had dominated Argentina’s political arena were not ready to relinquish the baton. Although challenged as never before, they took extraordinary measures to ensure that they would not lose the 1892 presidential elections. Their victory, however, touched off a civilian revolt that “represented the first mass uprising against the monopoly of power held by the landed interests.”219 Afraid that the uprising would provoke anarchy, the National Congress passed the Law of Residence in 1902 and the Law of Social Defense in 1910. As noted earlier, the original goal of the drafters of the 1853 constitution was to help accelerate economic growth by enticing Europeans to move to Argentina. Their initial expectation was that immigrants of Anglo-Saxon, German and Scandinavian descent might contribute to the modernization or “civilization of an almost barbarous land.” Their goals were not fully realized. Between 1891 and 1909, 53.6 percent of the immigrants were Italians, and 29.5 per-cent were Spaniards. Many who came from the Mediterranean area brought with them a political tradition of militancy. By the late nineteenth century, the new immigrants were criticizing the country’s political and economic systems. Argentina’s conservative leaders responded swiftly. Not wanting to alienate those whom they deemed productive, they sought to differentiate between the two groups. A speech delivered in 1910 by one of the advocates of the Law of Social Defense captures the nature of the fear. Senator Salvador Macía stated220: Europe, which has given us civilization, progress, and liberty through examples and doctrines, also sends us subversive trends … I am shocked at anarchist manifestos, for they are symptoms of one and the same profound disruption, like the one in which they call our government ‘the Nation’s provisional government’, no less serious than the seemingly petty fact of wrenching the rosettes from the lapels of helpless primary school children in the streets.

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In 1911, Conservatives agreed to expand political participation. Convinced that they would be able to gain support from those who had rarely been involved in the political process and would continue to have the support from those who had been involved, Conservatives wrote a new election law that provided for universal, compulsory male suffrage, guaranteed a secret ballot, and ensured minority representation in the Congress. The law backfired. In 1916, Hipólito Yrigoyen, the leader of the Radical Civic Union, became Argentina’s first non-Conservative president. His election symbolized, if not the arrival of democracy, at least the establishment of a political system significantly more pluralistic than the ones that had existed previously.221 Independence altered the role of Argentina’s military. Freedom from Spain enabled regional leaders to demand that their interests be considered when questions were posed with regard to what form the state should assume. To ensure that their voices would be heard, regional leaders relied on the backing of their own militias well into the late 1850s. It was not until Buenos Aires had agreed to join the rest of the Río de la Plata provinces to form Argentina, and the civilian executive had gained extensive authority, that the civilian political leaders reduced their dependence on the military means. Nevertheless, in 1869, some eight years after Argentina had formally become a state, President Sarmiento created the Military College. Sarmiento, like his civilian counterparts in Chile, sought to ­professionalize the officers’ corps. In 1900, Argentina used the German military model to create the Supreme War School.222 Prior to 1900, factions within the military, although prohibited from becoming involved in the political process, had become quite active. In 1890, 1893, and 1905, many of them joined forces with the Radical Civic Union to demand that Argentina’s rulers alter the electoral process. Their actions, however, differed fundamentally from those who had overthrown governments in other Latin American republics. While in some other republics the military led, in the case of Argentina it remained subordinate to the civilians.223 This arrangement did not last long. In 1915, three years after the military had been granted the authority to safeguard the authenticity of the Argentine voting process, its leaders declared that their institution was created to guarantee “the cohesive operation of the [nation’s] parts” and to preserve it “from shocks and falls.”224 Such view was put into action 15 years later when the military overthrew President Yrigoyen, the same political leader who years earlier had recruited many of its officers to help his party mount its first major challenge to the ruling elite.

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Intervention by the military in 1930 brought Argentina’s march toward democracy to a standstill. From 1930 until 1983, Argentina’s military repeatedly redesigned the country’s political arena. Their justification was that the civilian leaders were not addressing the country’s economic ills, were allowing political rivalries to plunge the nation into a state of anarchy, or were unresponsive to challenges from radical forces. The absence of political institutions capable of moderating competition fosters the fear that unless rivalries are muffled, anarchy will result. In Latin America this fear has often led political competitors to pressure the military to intervene. By the 1920s, Argentina’s political process was defined primarily by intense partisan struggles. Although divided on whether Argentina should return to the oligarchical system of the pre-­Saenz Peña reform days or adopt a hierarchically ordered structure based on social function, the military became convinced that intervention was the only way to stop Argentina from degenerating into a state of anarchy. The military did not oust Yrigoyen with the intent of taking over the reins of government. New elections were held after the coup, and in 1932 General Augustin P. Justo became Argentina’s new president. Roberto Ortiz, the leader of the Radical Party, succeeded him in 1937. Unable to complete his term due to illness, Ortiz stepped down in 1940 and was replaced by Ramón Castillo.225 In 1943 the military decided once again that Argentina’s internal condition had become intolerable. It came to power with the intent of ridding Argentina “of politics, as well as politicians.”226 The regime dissolved Congress, decreed the end of political parties, and formed a cabinet that excluded all professional politicians. In 1946 one of its own, Colonel Juan Domingo Peron, who had been courting Argentina’s working class, won the presidential election with a 54 percent majority.227 Peron’s ascension marked the beginning of Argentina’s corporatist experiment. With society divided into functional organizations, each representing an array of interrelated interests and the state standing at the top of the hierarchy, the executive office became the final arbiter of political disputes. The new government’s objective was to make the state the principal force of economic development. It planned to rely on an alliance of workers, industrialists, and the military. Peron’s strategy was effective until 1949. The nationalization of foreign-owned companies was accompanied by significant economic growth. Guided by the “Justicialist” doctrine, Peron’s government implemented major social reforms aimed at assisting the urban working class. The president, however, made it clear that the state was the dominant actor that guided the unions, not the other way around.228

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In 1949, Argentina was struck by the onset of previously hidden economic realities. The prices of Argentina’s exports began to drop as those of its imports began to increase. Peron responded by launching a stabilization program designed to control increases in prices and wages, reduce governmental expenditure, and tighten credit. By 1952 the new economic measures had begun to pay off. Determined to remain in power, Peron pressured the Congress to amend the article of the 1853 constitution that prohibited a president from running for re-election. He succeeded and was re-elected. As Peron began his second term, he realized that with a weaker economy he would be able to continue assisting the workers only if he was willing to do it at the direct expense of the middle and upper classes. And so, he began his drive to alienate Argentina’s privileged classes. His most radical act was to attack one of Argentina’s most traditional pillars, the Catholic Church. He  backed mass demonstrations, legalized divorce, and placed all parochial schools under the jurisdiction of the ministry of education. In September, the military overthrew Peron and replaced him with a military junta. The overthrow of Peron did not bring order. In February 1958, Argentines went to the polls and elected Arturo Frondizi. The military overthrew him in 1962. In 1963, it was Arturo Ilia’s turn to be president. He ruled three years. In 1966, the military concluded that it could no longer afford to overthrow an incompetent government just to replace it with another equally inept administration. Determined to create a “purer” Argentine society, the military followed two paths. At home, it closed Congress, ousted adversaries in the universities, and sought to change the tone of social life. Abroad, it forged an alliance with foreign investors. But by the early 1970s, not even the military seemed to have the power to stop Argentina from being strangled by its own anarchy. Anti-government protests, labor stoppages, and political violence became common events. Afraid that if left untouched the Left would become too powerful, the military saw Juan Peron as the only figure with sufficient political stature to alter the trend. The military allowed the former president to return to Argentina and to become president in 1973, after a pro forma election. The act did not reverse the drift toward anarchy. Peron died shortly after his return and was replaced by his vice president, his wife Isabel. The new president had neither the strength nor the experience to alter the dire state of affairs; thus in 1976 the military once again became Argentina’s official government.

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The military returned to power determined to regain domestic order and restructure Argentina’s society. Its coup against Isabel Peron was designed to “end all coups.”229 It succeeded, directly and indirectly, on both accounts. Afraid that it might not win the war against leftist groups if it worked within the confines of Argentina’s legal system, the military responded with a vicious campaign. By the early 1980s the opposition no longer posed a threat. The military regime did not transform Argentina’s economic and social arenas, but the failure to do so was not counterproductive. After six years of governing with an iron fist, the military found itself puzzling over how to offset the people’s growing discontent with the state of Argentina’s economy. Eager to gain some badly needed legitimacy as the sole arbiter of Argentina’s state of affairs, the military government invaded the Malvinas (Falklands), a group of islands controlled by the British but claimed by Argentina as part of its sovereign territory. The undertaking weakened Argentina’s military government. In May 1982, British soldiers laid siege to 7500 Argentine soldiers and forced their surrender. Two months later, a new military president, cognizant that the armed forces lacked the legitimacy to continue governing, promised the return of an elected civilian government by the end of  1983. The announcement signaled the beginning of Argentina’s tortuous return to democracy. Argentina’s post-1983 democracy has been erratic. Carlos Menem, a populist of the Justicialist Party (PJ, commonly known as the Peronist Party) was elected president in 1989. He was scheduled to take office in December of that same year. However, because the retiring president, Raul Alfonsín, faced hyperinflation and public riots, resigned and transferred power to Menem five months early. Menem’s accession marked the first time since 1916 that a president peacefully succeeded one who was a member of an opposition party. Menem rejected the traditional policies of Peronism and embraced the Washington Consensus.230 With congressional backing, the Menem government began to reduce or remove subsidies and to privatize state enterprises. These measures did not generate the expected outcomes. Despite increased tax revenue and funds derived from privatizations, the economy remained unstable. Amid a second round of hyperinflation, and with a new economic ministry at the helm, Menem imposed a mandatory conversion of time deposits into government bonds. Congress sanctioned the Convertibility Plan, which set up a one-to-one fixed exchange rate between the United States’ dollar and Argentina’s new

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currency—the peso. Initially, the plan was a success—capital flights ended, interest and inflation rates went down, and economic activity increased. The money derived from privatizations allowed Argentina to repurchase many of the bonds issued during the crisis. The positive short-term effects were soon overridden by the negative long-term effects. Large numbers of employees of privatized state enterprises were fired, and unemployment grew to over 10 percent. Big compensation payments prevented an immediate public reaction, but free trade and the high cost in dollars drove private companies to reduce their labor force or risk bankruptcy. People with low incomes, such as retirees and state workers, were afflicted by the increase in taxes and the freezing of wages.231 The December 1994 Mexican peso crisis worsened Argentina’s condition. The depreciation helped to enlarge its deficit, engender a recession, and induce an increase in unemployment. The Argentine government counteracted by reducing public expenditures and the wages of state workers, and by raising taxes. These measures helped reduce the deficit and recession, but unemployment remained high, and both the external debt and capital flight increased. Argentina’s economic problems took another bad turn during the Asian and Russian financial crises of 1997 and 1998. Nevertheless, Menem managed to complete his second term in 1999. His successors were not able to revive the economy. Between December 2001 and the end of 2002, three different presidents ruled Argentina. The military, however, remained in the barracks and did not bring about their downfall. Demonstrators and violent protesters, angry with their leaders for failing to resolve the country’s economic ills, forced them out. Nestor Kirchner assumed the presidency in 2003 as the leader of the Front for Victory (FPV) coalition, a Peronista faction. The new president stabilized the economy, purged the country’s military and police leadership of authoritarian elements, and removed justices from the highly politicized Supreme Court. He also further centralized the authority of the executive branch, changed the tax system in order to limit the power of provincial governors, nationalized many of the companies that the Menem administration had privatized, and created new state-controlled enterprises. Kirchner’s wife, Cristina Fernández, succeeded him in October 2007. Driven by an improved international economic environment and higher agricultural prices, Argentina’s economy recovered temporarily in mid-­ 2010—just about the time of death of Fernández’s husband, who had been expected to be elected and to succeed her in 2013. Fernández was

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re-elected by a substantial margin. She and her allies also won eight of the nine governors’ races, regained control of the lower house of Congress, and increased their majority in the Senate. By then, however, Argentina’s economy had once again taken a turn for the worse. Capital flight, high annual inflation, a growing fiscal deficit, and a drought were the principal culprits. The decision by her administration to expropriate a Spanish oil company, previously controlled by the Argentine state, helped generate additional economic uncertainty.232 Although it is doubtful that Argentina’s democracy will once again break down, the path that it followed under President Fernández generated concerns. She had curtailed attempts by the opposition to openly challenge her policies. Corruption remained entrenched, with several former cabinet members being indicted for attempts to embezzle, bribe, and peddle influence. Unsurprisingly, Argentina did poorly in the Transparency International Corruption Perception Index. In 2000, it ranked 52nd in the world; three years later it had dropped to 92nd, and by 2014 it had descended to 107th.233 Its standing in the Democracy Index is not as unflattering. It ranks 49th in the world, behind Uruguay, Chile, Costa Rica, and Panama, but ahead of Peru and Mexico.234 When income inequality is assessed, Argentina’s standing is better than most Spanish American countries, with the exceptions of Uruguay, Nicaragua, and El Salvador. Analysis of Argentina’s State-Creation and Democratization Processes Argentina’s march toward democracy cannot be described as a conscious effort originated by a group of enlightened leaders. It reflects, instead, a response on their part to different tensions at different moments. Independence intensified the commitment on the part of several regional leaders to not relinquish their power to Buenos Aires and to augment their own economic wealth. Achievement of the second objective, however, could ensue only if Buenos Aires were granted a higher political and economic status. It was not until the early 1860s, after some five decades of absorbing very high costs in an attempt to prevent the city by the large river from becoming Argentina’s dominant actor, that the leaders of the provinces accepted reality. They formally acknowledged that to spur the rapid growth of the Argentine economy, several conditions had to be met. A state had to be formed; the state would have to play an active economic

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role; the president should have considerable authority; and Buenos Aires should be extended a higher political and economic status than the other regions. From the 1860s until the 1890s, Argentina’s economic elites, led by Buenos Aires’, focused on increasing the size of the pie rather than on determining how to divide it. Accomplishing Argentina’s economic potential required a substantial increase in its population. The 1853 constitution articles that gave rights to immigrants similar to those extended to Argentines were designed to help achieve that end. Moreover, determined to provide security to the “new” Argentines, the government mounted a major campaign to exterminate the threat posed by the indigenous populations. Argentina’s model was not unique. Chile had encountered a similar challenge. Because of its southwestern location so far away from Europe, initially Chile did not attract large numbers of immigrants. In an attempt to resolve the problem, Chile created in 1824 a law designed to invite Europeans, primarily Swiss, Germans, and English. Because its initial steps were not effective, in 1882 the Chilean government offered European immigrants uncultivated areas occupied primarily by the Mapuche in Chile’s southern region. To ensure the safety of the new arrivals, the Chilean army forcibly resettled the Mapuche on small tracts of land. The drive to increase the size of the population and to generate fast economic growth altered Argentina’s economic and social structure swiftly. The quick increase in Argentina’s population and the change in its economic and social structure led to the rise of interest groups, the Radical Civic Union being one of them, who did not share the same set of interests advocated by the Conservative ruling elite and demanded more equitable forms of political participation. The passage of the 1912 law that “declared secret and universal male suffrage and initiated a system of two-­ thirds-­one-third representation from each electoral district …”235 brought about the election of the first non-conservative president.236 Yrigoyen’s rise to power did not lead to the formation of a stable democracy. Instead, it encouraged the genesis of a new form of political anarchy. After 1912, Argentina’s political parties became vehicles for “the organized pursuit of power.” The scenarios that emerged during the next 70 years can be encapsulated as follows. The expansion of political participation in Argentina led to the growth of political parties determined to gain, or retain, power at whatever cost, which in turn compelled the military to prevent political leaders from assuming the presidency or to topple them. Repeated intervention by the

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Argentine military reinforced the attitude among members of the civilian political elite that it was politically expedient to engage in zero-sum games and eliminated any attempt on their part to create institutions sufficiently strong to set limits on the kinds of resources that they could rely on to acquire power. Constant intervention and the realization that replacing one civilian leadership with another would not alter the destructive cycle, as well as the fear that a radical group would gain control of the presidency, led the Argentine military to form temporary dictatorial regimes. Unsurprisingly, Argentina’s political system was also deeply affected by Fidel Castro’s rise to power in Cuba in the late 1950s. Military coups had ensued long before Castro began to transform his country’s political system and to urge other Latin American countries to follow similar paths. However, the actions by the Cuban leader intensified the commitment on the part of the various military institutions, typically with Washington’s tacit support, to prevent the materialization of “other Cubas.” Argentina’s military, along with its counterparts in Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay, eradicated all vestiges of democracy.237 Democracy in Argentina did not begin to resurge until its military had been badly defeated by the British during the Malvinas war. In the analysis of Chile, it was proposed that the likelihood that a military dictatorship would retain control of the government in a state that has experimented with democracy for extended periods depended on whether it could contain international pressure to open the political system, could limit domestic dissension, and could address effectively the state’s domestic competing economic interests. Although all of those factors impacted the Argentine military’s ability to rule, their failure to repossess the Malvinas forced the regime’s leaders to step down as rulers and to call for new democratic elections. It was also argued that during Pinochet’s dictatorial rule Chileans recognized that immoderate behavior could bring a democratic regime down. This awareness persuaded Chilean civilian leaders that following the demise of the military dictatorship they should implement moderate changes and accept that for some time they would have to allow the military and many of its members to retain undemocratic authority and privileges. Argentina’s leaders derived similar lessons from their past mistakes. The realization that they lacked the authority and knowledge to garner the popular backing they needed to tackle the country’s economic and social problems led them to accept the re-launching of democracy. Of no lesser significance was the recognition on the part of Argentina’s civilian political

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leaders that if they continued to compete for power without making extensive changes in their behavior, values, and attitudes, they would not be able to fully regain power. This recognition convinced them to moderate their political aspirations.

Notes 1. See J.H.  Elliot, “Spain and America in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” in Leslie Bethell, ed., The Cambridge History of Latin America, Vol. I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 294. 2. Ibid., 28. 3. See Roderic Ai Camp, Politics in Mexico: Democratic Consolidation or Decline? (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 27. 4. Ibid., 29. 5. Carlos Fuentes adds: “Today’s Spanish Americans are descendants of both verticalities.” That generalization is incorrect, because not all Spanish Americans were impacted by the Aztecs’ verticality. One can assume Fuentes meant to say: “Today’s Mexicans …” See Carlos Fuentes, The Buried Mirror: Reflections on Spain and the New World (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1992), 129. 6. See Elliot, “Spain and America in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,” in Bethell, ed., The Cambridge History of Latin America, Vo. I, 303. 7. Ibid., 339. 8. The pope’s bull generated great controversy within and outside Castile. Though Neo-Thomist theologians recognized the pope as the spiritual ruler of all Christians, they argued that he could not exercise authority in the secular world or over non-Christians. Moreover, French and English attacks on Spanish claims to sovereignty throughout the Americas almost invariably began with a rejection of the validity of the bull. See Anthony Pagden, Lords of all the World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 47 and 48. 9. Notwithstanding attempts by the conquerors and the Franciscan and Dominican orders to create an independent Church in the Americas, the Crown retained control of the ecclesiastical institutions in Spanish America throughout the colonial period. See Pagden, Lords of all the World, 59. 10. Hostility within Spain toward the pope’s relentless drive to centralize power reached its peak around the start of the fifteenth century. Though attempts to change the ways of the Church had been initiated in the late fourteenth century, it was not until after Ferdinand and Isabelle had mar-

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ried that the Church’s authority in Spain started to diminish. In 1474 and 1475 the king and queen sought to restrict and control papal tax collectors and to prevent the pope from appointing anyone to the archbishoprics, bishoprics, or military orders, unless the application came from them. Despite his initial unwillingness to acquiesce to the monarchs’ challenge, the pope agreed to compromise in 1482, when Isabella and Ferdinand requested that a major portion of the taxes collected from the clergy be used to finance the war against the Moors in Granada. See J.N. Hillgarth, The Spanish Kingdoms, 1250–1516 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 395–398. 11. See Lyle N. McAlister, Spain and Portugal in the New World” 1492–1700 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1984), 78–79, 157–160, 194. 12. “Peru—Topography,” Encyclopedia of the Nations, http://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/Americas/Peru-TOPOGRAPHY.html 13. See Fuentes, The Buried Mirror, 120–121. See also, Cynthia McClintock, “Peru: Precarious Regimes, Authoritarian and Democratic,” in Larry Diamond, Jonathan Hartlyn, Juan J. Linz, and Seymour Martin Lipset, eds., Democracy in Developing Countries: Latin America (Boulder, CO: Lynne Reiner, 1999), 312. 14. See “Peru,” Encyclopedia Britannica, http://www.britannica.com/ EBchecked/topic/453147/Peru/28041/Amazonia 15. As McAlister notes, “after the fall of Cuzco pretenders set a “Neo-Inca State in Exile” in the remote Eastern Andean province of Vicabamba.” But this state in exile was finally destroyed in 1572. See McAlister, Spain and Portugal, 106. 16. Frederick Pike, The Modern History of Peru (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1967), 24. 17. Jorge Dominguez, Insurrection or Loyalty (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980), 129. 18. See McAlister, Spain and Portugal, 211. 19. According to Dominguez, “[l]ife on a sugar cane plantation was harsher for a slave than it was on a cocoa or coffee plantation.” Dominguez, Insurrection or Loyalty, 129. 20. As remarked earlier, the production of sugar, cotton, and cacao is significantly more dependent on slave labor than is the production of wheat. It is not a coincidence, therefore, that during the colonial period slaves had constituted the basic labor force in Peru’s coastal force. Julio Cotler, Clases, Estado y Nación en el Peru (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1986), 30. 21. Ibid., 33. 22. “Túpac Amaru—Incan Revolutionary,” Encyclopedia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Tupac-Amaru-II

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23. Richard Graham, Independence in Latin America (New York: McGraw-­ Hill, 1994), 54. 24. Cotler, Estado y Nación en el Peru, 65. See also Marcus J. Kurtz, Latin American State Building in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 72–73. 25. Frederick B. Pike, The Modern History of Peru, 43. 26. Fernando Enrique Cardoso and Enzo Faletto, Dependency and Development in Latin America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), 41. 27. Cotler, Estado y Nación en el Peru, 68. 28. Pike, The Modern History of Peru, 54–55; Robertson, 1922: 336–337. 29. William Robertson, History of Latin American Nations (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1922), 337. 30. Dana Munro, The Latin American Republics (New York: Appleton Century, Inc., 1960), 153. 31. Robertson, History of Latin American Nations, 338. 32. Paul Gootenberg, Between Silver and Guano (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 6. 33. Paul Gootenberg, “North-South: Trade Policy, Regionalism and Caudillismo in Post-Independence Peru,” Journal of Latin American Studies, XXIII, 2 (May 1991): 277. 34. Ibid., 285. 35. Ibid., 295. 36. Ibid., 304. According to Gootenberg, the attenuation of economic differences between the two regions, along with other conditions, allowed “state formation to happen” in Peru. Gootenberg overstates his argument. Though he is correct in contending that Peru’s elites were finally in a position to deal effectively with the task of state creation, the evidence does not prove that Peru’s elites were successful at creating the state. That issue will be addressed shortly. 37. Heraclio Bonilla, “Peru and Bolivia,” in Leslie Bethell, ed., Peru After Independence, c 1820–1870 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987, 240–241. 38. Ibid., 241. 39. Gootenberg, “North-South: Trade Policy, Regionalism and Caudillismo in Post-Independence Peru,” 305. 40. Gootenberg, Between Silver and Guano, 80. 41. Ibid., 81–82. 42. Magnus Mörner, The Andean Past. Land, Societies, and Conflicts (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), 138. 43. Ibid., 153–154. Mörner, like other scholars who have analyzed the War of the Pacific, maintains that “the outcome was a given from the outset.”

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Aside from the fact that Chile’s naval power was clearly superior, “the national consciousness of its people and the firmness of purpose of its leaders made it much stronger than [Peru and Bolivia].” 44. Bonilla, “Peru and Bolivia,” 250–251. 45. See Cotler 1986: 65. The comparison is not Cotler’s but this analyst’s. The analysis of Peru, however, is Cotler’s. Those in Buenos Aires there who wanted to maintain ties with Spain were a very small minority. For an analysis of Argentina during this period, see David Rock, Argentina, 1516–1982 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), 79–101. 46. Gootenberg, “North-South: Trade Policy, Regionalism and Caudillismo in Post-Independence Peru,” 303–304. 47. Bonilla, “Peru and Bolivia,” 251–252. 48. This last measure had a major negative effect on Peru’s economy. As Cotler notes, the cancellation of the levy to which the indigenous population had been subjected to, not only reduced significantly the amount of funding available to the government but also brought about a major reduction in agriculture. The native person, no longer needing to pay a special levy, began to cultivate only that land that would feed him, his family, and his cattle. This behavior caused a major increase in the price of agricultural products. See Cotler, Estado y Nación en el Peru, 97–98. 49. Jonathan V. Levine, The Export Economies. Their Pattern of Development in Historical Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960), 117. 50. Bonilla, “Peru and Bolivia,” 254. 51. See Levine, The Export Economies, 113; and Cotler, Estado y Nación en el Peru, 92. 52. Pike, The Modern History of Peru, 100. 53. Levine, The Export Economies, 91. 54. Ibid., 81. See also Cotler, Estado y Nación en el Peru, 95–97. 55. Cotler, Estado y Nación en el Peru, 95. 56. Ibid., 99. 57. Pike, The Modern History of Peru, 106–109. 58. Ibid., 129. 59. It is estimated that while in 1868 Peru exported about half a million ton of guano and only 87,000 tons of nitrate, eight years later the amounts were 379,000 and 320,000 tons, respectively. Cotler 1986: 110. 60. Levine, The Export Economies. Their Pattern of Development in Historical Perspective, 109. 61. As Pike notes: “Chile, once in possession of the coveted Peruvian and Bolivian nitrate territories was to a certain degree overcome by the vices of the conquered republics. Peru, on the other hand, was purged of much of its economic madness.” See Pike, The Modern History of Peru: 150.

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62. Ibid., 153; and Cotler 1986: 125. 63. According to McClintock, between 1900 and 1919 two sugar magnates became presidents, and of the 25 oligarchical families who dominated Peru’s economy, “sixteen were represented in Congress, many of them by more than one family.” See McClintock, “Peru: Precarious Regimes, Authoritarian and Democratic,” 340. 64. Cardoso and Faletto, Dependency and Development in Latin America, 119. 65. The United States, with a substantially longer history as an independent state, has had fewer presidents. 66. See Natalia Sobrevilla Perea, “In Search of a Better Society: Constitutions in Peru.” http://data.rg.mpg.de/rechtsgeschichte/rg16_111sobrevilla_ perea.pdf 67. See Sarah Birch, Full Participation: A Comparative Study of Compulsory Voting (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2009). See also Roger Merino Acuña, “Access to Electoral Rights: Peru,” (Florence: European University Institute—Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, April 2015). http://cadmus.eui.eu/bitstream/handle/1814/35741/2015_04_Peru_ER_En.pdf?sequence=1; and Maritza Paredes, Weak Indigenous Politics in Peru (Oxford, UK: Center for Research on Inequality, Human Security and Ethnicity, University of Oxford, April 2008). http://www3.qeh.ox.ac.uk/pdf/crisewps/workingpaper33.pdf 68. See Thomas E. Skidmore, Peter H. Smith, and James N. Green, Modern Latin America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 156. 69. McClintock, “Peru: Precarious Regimes, Authoritarian and Democratic,” 314. 70. Ibid., 316. 71. Paulo Drinot and Carlos Contreras, “The Great Depression in Peru,” in Paulo Drinot and Alan Knight eds.), The Great Depression in Latin America (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014), 102–129. 72. See McClintock, “Peru: Precarious Regimes, Authoritarian and Democratic,” 318–319. 73. Ibid., 319. 74. For a discussion of the negotiations between the various parties, see Alex Roberto Hybel, How Leaders Reason. U.S. Intervention in the Caribbean Basin and Latin America (Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell, 1990), 178–184. 75. Ibid., 184–190. 76. McClintock, “Peru: Precarious Regimes, Authoritarian and Democratic,” 323.

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77. Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report, United States Institute of Peace, July 13, 2000. https://www.usip.org/publications/2001/07/ truth-commission-peru-01 78. McClintock: “Peru: Precarious Regimes, Authoritarian and Democratic,” 329. 79. Fujimori enacted many of the economic policies his presidential rival, Mario Vargas Llosa, had advocated during the campaign. 80. See Moisés Arce, Market Reform in Society: Post-Crisis Politics and Economic Change in Authoritarian Peru (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2005). 81. “Freedom in the World—Peru,” Freedom House https://freedomhouse. org/report/freedom-world/2014/peru#.Vcjct-3BzRY 82. “Peru Overturns Decrees That Incited Protests” The New  York Times, June 18, 2009. 83. “Freedom in the World—Peru,” Freedom House, https://freedomhouse. org/report/freedom-world/2010/peru#.Vcj2ne3BzRY 84. “Human Development Index—Comparison,” http://countryeconomy. com/hdi 85. As Heraclio Bonilla noted, in the case of Peru, rather than a national society, “it is more correct to talk of regional societies, centered on the hacienda … Politically, the hacendado, either directly or else in alliance with some local caudillo, exercised undisputed political power in each region, developing a whole system of typically client relationship in order to ensure the loyalty of his underlings. Despite their local power, landowners nevertheless lacked sufficient strength to generate and consolidate a system of political hegemony at the national level.” Julio Cotler concurred. The ­colonial political structure, wrote  Cotler, divided the social interests, which in turn obstructed the development of a common identity. See Bonilla, “Peru and Bolivia,” 248; and Cotler, Estado y Nación en el Peru, 46. (My translation from Spanish). 86. See McClintock, “Peru: Precarious Regimes, Authoritarian and Democratic,” 337 and 363. 87. Jose Bengoa, Historia del Pueblo Mapuche (Santiago, Chile: Ediciones Sur, Colección Estudios Históricos, 1996). 88. Ibid. 89. Gabriel Salazar and Julio Pinto, História Contemporanea de Chile III: La economía: mercados empresarios y trabajadores. (LOM Ediciones, 2002), 15. 90. Valenzuela Márquez, “Esclavos mapuches. Para una historia del secuestro y deportación de indígenas en la colonia,” in Rafael Gauna and Martin Lara, eds., Historias de racismo y discriminación en Chile. Revista de Ciencias Sociales número. 28, 2012. See also Brian Loveman, Chile: The

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Legacy of Hispanic Capitalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 48 and 56. 91. A point of clarification. Chile is often identified as a country that possesses substantial mineral wealth. This study concurs. According to Kurtz, Chile, just like Peru, was overwhelmingly dependent on mineral export. The problem with Kurtz’s contention is that he overlooks the issue of timing. Most of the mineral wealth uncovered and developed in Chile took place after the 1840s. Moreover, it was not until the end of the War of the Pacific in 1883 that Chile, by gaining control over Peru’s southern coast that was rich in nitrate, was able to further rely on the export of minerals to strengthen its economy. Kurtz indirectly acknowledged Chile’s initial low dependence on the exports of minerals when he noted that its non-servile, non-capitalist economy was largely agrarian. See Marcus J.  Kurtz, Latin American States Building in Comparative Perspectives: Social Foundations of Institutional Order (Cambridge University Press, 2013), 67 and 68. 92. Most of this section’s conclusions were borrowed from Dominguez’s argument. See Dominguez, Insurrection or Loyalty, 132–134. 93. Loveman, Chile: The Legacy of Hispanic Capitalism, 27. 94. For an excellent discussion of this period, see Hernán Ramirez, Antecendetes Economicos de la Independencia de Chile (Santiago, Universidad de Chile, 1967. Dominguez noted that “[t]he owning of slaves in Chile would have meant housing and feeding them during the winter without economic returns. In contrast, in tropical climates slaves could be exploited throughout the year.” Dominguez, Insurrection or Loyalty, 132–133. 95. Kurtz, Latin American State Building, 67. 96. Harold Blakemore, “Chile,” in Harold Blakemore and Clifford T. Smith, eds., Latin America: Geographical Perspectives (London: Methuen, 1976), 497. 97. Like Robert Keohane, this analysis distinguishes cooperation from harmony. As he  wrote: “Cooperation, as compared to harmony, requires active attempts to adjust policies to meet the demands of others.” Robert Keohane, After Hegemony (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 12. Ample disagreements between Chile’s economic elites would flare years later, but for the most part those in the central valley understood that their economic well-being was tightly linked to their ability to sell wheat in the international market. 98. The Council of Regency succeeded in 1810 the Central Junta, which was the first institution founded to rule following Ferdinand’s overthrow. 99. Quoted in Simon Collier, Ideas and Politics of Chilean Independence, 1803–1833 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), 338.

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100. Diego Portales made this argument in 1822. Quoted Ibid., 339. 101. For a similar argument, see Loveman, Chile: The Legacy of Hispanic Capitalism, 124–126. 102. Articles 40–51. The veto would delay the enactment of the law for at least one year and the vetoed measure had to be reintroduced within two years; otherwise, the whole procedure would have to start all over again. Collier, Ideas and Politics of Chilean Independence, 1803–1833, 346. 103. Article 116, 1833 Constitution. 104. Articles 82 and 161. 105. Federico Gil, The Political System of Chile (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1966), 86. 106. Loveman, Chile: The Legacy of Hispanic Capitalism, 124. 107. A. Crow, The Epic of Latin America (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1992), 641. 108. Paul Sigmund, “Chile,” in Howard J. Wiarda and Harvey F. Kline, eds., Latin American Politics and Development (Boulder, CO: Westeview Press, 1990), 204. See also Frank Safford, “Politics, ideology, and society,” in Leslie Bethell, ed., The Cambridge History of Latin America, From Independence to c1870, Volume III (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 79; Arturo Valenzuela, “Chile: Origins, Consolidation and Breakdown of a Democratic Regime,” In Diamond et al. eds., Democracy in Developing Countries: Latin America, 163; and Federico Gil, The Political System of Chile, 94–5. 109. Loveman proposed that considerable regional opposition arose in the northern and southern regions against the autocratic central region largely because these regions felt that although they produced a large share of the nation’s exports, they received a very small portion of the national budget. Loveman, Chile: The Legacy of Hispanic Capitalism, 139. Gil agreed with Loveman when he proposed that economic progress helped create a “new and vigorous group of wealthy mining and merchant families who, rebelling against the existing semi-feudal system, began to demand liberal reforms. Economic development had built up a new wealth and created a new power structure.” Gil, The Political System of Chile, 41. 110. See Collier, Ideas and Politics of Chilean Independence, 1803–1833, 284– 285. Valenzuela stated that the final defeat of the Spanish left Chile’s “administrative and governing institutions in shambles, and local elites bitterly divided by regional, family, ideological, and personal disputes.” See Valenzuela 1989: 162. This study does not challenge Valenzuela’s interpretation. It merely emphasizes that although Valenzuela may be correct when he stated that local elites were bitterly divided, such a statement tells very little unless one has a better grasp of how divided elites

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were in other colonies. The reader must keep in mind the earlier contention that there is a critical difference between harmony and cooperation. As Keohane noted, harmony refers to “a situation in which actors’ policies (pursued in their own self-interest without regards to other) automatically facilitate the attainment of others’ goals.” Cooperation, on the other hand, “requires that the actions of separate individuals or organizations—which are not in pre-existent harmony—be brought into conformity with one another through a process of negotiation …” See Keohane, After Hegemony, 51. 111. See Loveman, Chile: The Legacy of Hispanic Capitalism, 135. 112. Gil, The Political System of Chile, 42–3. 113. Loveman, Chile: The Legacy of Hispanic Capitalism, 165. 114. Ibid., 172. 115. Ibid., 172. 116. J. Samuel Valenzuela and Arturo Valenzuela, “Chile: The Development, Breakdown, and Recovery of Democracy,” in Jan Knippers Black, ed., Latin America, its Problems and its Promise: A Multidisciplinary Introduction (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1991), 478. 117. Loveman, Chile: The Legacy of Hispanic Capitalism, 179–180. 118. Ibid., 186–187; and Gil, The Political System of Chile, 51–53. 119. Gil, The Political System of Chile, 52–53. 120. Arturo Valenzuela, “Chile: Origins and Consolidation of a Latin American Democracy,” in Diamond et al. eds. Democracy in Developing Countries: Latin America, 1989. 121. J. Samuel Valenzuela, “Building Aspects of Democracy Before Democracy: Electoral Practices in Nineteenth Century Chile.” (The Kellogg Institute for International Studies, Working Paper #223, April 1996), 15. https:// www3.nd.edu/~kellogg/publications/workingpapers/WPS/223.pdf 122. Ibid., 9. 123. See James Petras, Politics and Social Forces in Chilean Development (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1969), 83–84. 124. Gil, The Political System of Chile, 58–89. 125. Emiliano Figueroa was elected in late 1925 after Alessandri had resigned. 126. Kimberly Stanton, “The Transformation of a Political Regime: Chile’s 1925 Constitution.” Paper delivered at the 1997 Meeting of the Latin American Studies Association, Guadalajara, Mexico (April 17–19, 1997). 127. Gil, The Political System of Chile, 65. 128. Women still were not permitted to vote. 129. The sole exception was in 1965. 130. Arturo Valenzuela, “Chile: Origins and Consolidation of a Latin American Democracy,” 203.

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131. Arturo Valenzuela, The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes: Chile (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), 3. 132. See Giovanni Sartori, Parties and Party Systems (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976). 133. Valenzuela, The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes: Chile, 6–7. 134. Ibid., 7. 135. Ibid. 136. See Hybel, How Leaders Reason. U.S. Intervention in the Caribbean Basin and Latin America, 80. This was the message brought back to Washington by Vice President Richard Nixon, following his trip to South America in the spring of 1958. 137. Ibid., 118. 138. Loveman, Chile: The Legacy of Hispanic Capitalism, 268. 139. Alessandri barely defeated Allende in the 1958 presidential elections. It is estimated that if Antonio Zomarano, another leftist candidate, had not entered the race, Allende would have won by some 8000 votes. See Valenzuela, The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes: Chile, 40; and Gil, The Political System of Chile, 81. 140. Felipe Larrain and Patricio Meller, “The Socialist-Populist Chilean Experience, 1970–1973,” in Rudiger Dornbusch and Sebastian Edwards, eds., The Macroeconomics of Populism in Latin America (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1991), 177. http://core.ac.uk/download/ pdf/6899577.pdf 141. Chile 1964: “CIA Covert Support in Frei Election.” The National Security Archive, September 27, 2004. http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/ news/20040925/ 142. Larrain and Meller, “The Socialist-Populist Chilean Experience, 1970– 1973,” 177. 143. See Hybel, How Leaders Reason, 222–225. 144. Carlos Fortin, “Law and Economic Coercion as Instruments of International Control; The Nationalization of Chilean Copper,” in Julio Faundez and Sol Piccioto, eds., The Nationalization of Multinationals in Peripheral Economies (New York: Macmillan, 1985), 147. 145. Valenzuela, The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes: Chile, 107. 146. Skidmore, Smith, and Green, Modern Latin America, 286–287. 147. Valenzuela, The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes: Chile, 107. 148. Ibid., 288–289. 149. Robert Dahl, Democracy and Its Critics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 245. 150. Terry Karl, “Dilemmas of Democratization in Latin America,” in Comparative Politics, Vol. 23, No.1, (1990): 2.

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151. Samuel Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976), 79. 152. Samuel Huntington, The Soldier and the States: The Theory and Politics of Civil-military Relations (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1957), 426. 153. See John Johnson, The Military and Society in Latin America (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1964), 69–70; and Sigmund, “Chile,” 206. 154. Huntington, The Soldier and the States: The Theory and Politics of Civil-­ military Relations, 381. 155. Munro, The Latin American Republics, 242–243. 156. As it will be argued during the analysis of the Argentinian case, Chile’s oscillation between civilian and military rule differed significantly from Argentina’s. 157. Quoted in Leslie Alan Horvitz and Christopher Catherwood, Encyclopedia of War Crimes and Genocide (New York: Facts on File, 2006), 79. 158. Mark Ensalaco, Chile Under Pinochet: Recovering the Truth (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), 157. 159. Lois Hecht Oppenheim, Politics in Chile: Socialism, Authoritarianism, and Market Democracy (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1999), 112. 160. Valenzuela, “Chile,” 228. 161. Collier, Ideas and Politics of Chilean Independence, 1808–1833, 298–300. 162. Kurtz, Latin American State Building in Comparative Perspective, 9. 163. Ibid., 9 and 87. 164. For a similar conclusion, see Cardoso and Faletto, Dependency and Development in Latin America, 54; and Tulio Halperin Donghi, The Contemporary History of Latin America, translated by John Charles Chasteen (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993), 205. 165. Ibid., 300–303. The value of foreign trade rose from 7,500,000 Chilean pesos in 1825 to $74,000,000 in 1875, while government revenues went up from 2,000,000 Chilean pesos in 1835 to 16,400,000  in 1875. Though this last increase was not as significant as the former, revenues generally outpaced expenditures until the 1860s. 166. It has been estimated that some 900,000 indigenous people lived in Argentina prior to the arrival of the Spaniards. See William Denevan, ed. The Native Population of the Americas in 1492, Second Edition (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992), xxvii. 167. Jonathan C. Brown, A Brief History of Argentina, Second Edition (New York: Facts on File, Inc., 2010), 6–7. 168. Ibid., 7–11. 169. McAlister, Spain and Portugal in the New World, 102; and Nicolas Shumway, The Invention of Argentina (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993), 7–8.

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170. The inhabitants of the city of  Buenos Aires are typically referred to as porteños, which translates as “people of the port.” 171. David Rock, Argentina 1516–1982 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), 37. 172. John A.  Crow, The Epic of Latin America, Third Edition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), 575. See also, John Lynch, Argentine Dictator: Juan Manuel de Rosas (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), 103. 173. See Joseph T. Criscenti, “Argentine Constitutional History, 1810–1852: A Re-examination,” The Hispanic American Historical Review, Vol. 41, No. 3 (Aug., 1961), 367–412. 174. Shumway, The Invention of Argentina, 13. 175. Argentines consider May 25, 1810, Independence Day. In the declaration of independence document, however, Argentines continued to claim allegiance to the Spanish monarch. Total independence did not come about until July 9, 1816, when the Congress of Tucumán finally declared total independence both from Spain and its monarch. 176. The reader should keep in mind that the name Buenos Aires applies both to the city and to the province within which the city is located. The city of Buenos Aires, however, is not the capital of the province of Buenos Aires. The capital of the province is La Plata. The issue faced by Argentina’s leaders after independence was whether Buenos Aires would become the nation’s capital, and what powers and authority it would assume. The analysis distinguishes the city from the province by referring to the former simply as Buenos Aires, and the latter as the province of Buenos Aires. 177. Quoted in Shumway, The Invention of Argentina, 43. 178. See Carlos H.  Waisman, “Argentina: Autarkic Industrialization and Illegitimacy,” in Larry Diamond, Jonathan Hartlyn, Juan J.  Linz, and Seymour Martin Lipset, eds., Democracy in Developing Countries: Latin America (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1989), 64. 179. L.S.  Rowe, The Federal System of the Argentine Republic (Washington, DC: The Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1921), 29. 180. The director of state would make his choices from lists submitted by the town authorities of the respective provinces. See Rowe, The Federal System of the Argentine Republic, 33–34. See also Santos Primo Amadeo, Argentine Constitutional Law: The Judicial Function in the Maintenance of the Federal System and the Preservation of Individual Rights (New York: Columbia University Press, 1943), 12–18. 181. It is not uncommon among English-speaking analysts to use the appellation River Plate for Río de la Plata. Though as a young man in Buenos Aires I was a dedicated fan of the River Plate soccer team, I refuse to use River Plate for Río de la Plata. As anyone who speaks or understands

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Spanish knows that the translation makes no sense whatsoever. Plata does not translate as plate, it translates as silver or, if we want to use the Latin term, as argentum, which is from where Argentina derives its name. The appropriate English translation for Río de la Plata, thus, should be River of Silver. Plata in Argentina, however, also denotes money, in which case we could also claim that the correct name should be the River of Money. 182. Miguel Angel Centeno, Blood and Debt: War and the Nation State in Latin America (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002), 152. 183. Rock, Argentina 1516–1982, 103. This agreement led to the creation of the Eastern Republic of Uruguay. 184. John Lynch is correct when he referred  to the conditions that created Rosas. “He was the individual synthesis of the society and economy of the countryside, and when the interests of this sector coincided with those of the federalists, Rosas was at once the representative and the executive of the alliance.” Lynch, Argentine Dictator: Juan Manuel de Rosas, 334. 185. Ibid., 20. 186. Tulio Halperin Donghi, “Economy and Society in post-Independence Spanish America,” in Leslie Bethell, The Cambridge History of Latin America-From Independence, Volume III (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985) 299–300. 187. A saladero is an industry that produces salted meat. It was one Argentina’s first industries. 188. Lynch, Argentine Dictator: Juan Manuel de Rosas, 21–23. 189. Ibid., 22 and 253. 190. Ibid., 20. 191. Ibid., 155. 192. Ibid., 92. 193. John Lynch, “From Independence to national organization,” in Leslie Bethel ed., Argentina Since Independence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 33. 194. Ibid., 34. 195. Article 5 of the 1853 national constitution. See “Constitución Nacional Argentina 1853 y reformas,” in Sitios Jurídicos. http://www.biblioteca. jus.gov.ar/constitucionargentina1853.html 196. Ibid., Article 6. 197. Rowe, The Federal System of the Argentine Republic, 93. 198. Giovanni Sartori, Parties and Party Systems (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 13. 199. Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies, 412. 200. See Robert Dix, “Latin American Oppositions and Development,” in Robert A.  Dahl, ed., Regimes and Oppositions (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974), 263.

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201. See “Constitución Nacional Argentina y Reformas.” The president could rely on a series of articles to impose his will on a governor, but generally he relied on Article 6 (see notes 34 and 35). It stated: The federal government shall have the right to intervene in the territory of the provinces in order to guarantee the republican form of government or to repel foreign invasions; and when requested by the constituted authorities, to maintain them in power, or to re-establish them if they shall have been deposed by sedition or by invasion from another province. 202. Austin Macdonald, Government of the Argentine Republic (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1942), 85–87. All those revolts were put down, but the 1890 revolt ultimately led to the resignation of the president. 203. The concept is being used in a manner similar to that suggested by Sartori, when he discussed the nature of a hegemonic party. But it is important to keep in mind that the concept “party” has been dropped from the definition simply because the group leading Argentina during the period could not be referred to as a party. See Sartori, Parties and Party Systems, 230. 204. Lynch, “From independence to national organization,” 1993, 43. 205. Kristine L.  Jones, “Civilization and Barbarism and Sarmiento’s Indian Policy,” in Joseph T.  Criscenti, ed., Sarmiento and His Argentina (Boulder, CO; Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1993), 41. 206. Jonathan C.  Brown, A Brief History of Argentina (Checkmark Books, 2004), 135. 207. Daniel Corach, Oscar Lao, Cecilia Bobillo, Kristiaan Van Der Gaag, Sofia Zuniga, Mark Vermeulen, Kate Van Duijn, Miriam Goedbloed, Peter M.  Vallone, Walther Parson, Peter De Knijff, and Manfred Kayser, “Inferring Continental Ancestry of Argentineans from Autosomal, Y-Chromosomal and Mitochondrial DNA” in Annals of Human Genetics, Vol. 74, Issue 1 (January 2010): 65–76. 208. Kurtz, Latin American State Building in Comparative Perspective, 99. 209. Ibid., 98. 210. It is not being suggested that complete harmony became the order of the day after 1861. It is fair to argue, however, that by 1874 federalism had become “little more than an unsavory memory of a troubled past.” See Rock, Argentina 1516–1982, 129. 211. Kurtz, Latin America State Building, 101–102. 212. Donghi wrote, la constitución “organiza un poder autoritario destinado a asegurar el orden en que las fuerzas del capital y el trabajo europeo podran poblar y civilizar el desierto argentine.” This analyst developed

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the English translation in the main body. Donghi, “Economy and Society in post-­Independence Spanish America,” 243. 213. Article 20 has a strong racist overtone, for it reflects the view, one that was quite common among members of Argentina’s elite, that many of Argentina’s internal problems could be attributed to its Spanish and Indian roots. 214. See Rock, Argentina 1516–1982, 132 and 142. 215. Both Juan Bautista Alberdi, who is typically identified as the father of the 1853 constitution, and Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, one of Argentina’s most effective presidents, made it a point to emphasize that Argentina’s economic development was dependent on its ability to attract immigrants. 216. Paula Alonso, Between Revolution and the Ballot Box (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 143. 217. Jorge Lanata, Argentina—Quinientos años entre el cielo y el infierno. (Editorial Sudamericana). http://www.cuspide.com/9789500730020/ Argentinos++Edicion+Definitiva/ Mazorqueros refers to groups who acted on behalf of Manuel de Rosas during his time in power and sought to bring him back to power. 218. The party was actually founded as the Civic Union, but it split into two groups one year later over the candidacy of Luis Saenz Peña. The new group, which has been the dominant one since the split, added the term “radical” to its name. See Macdonald, Government of the Argentine Republic, 90. 219. Peter Ranis, Five Latin American Nations (New York: Macmillan, 1971), 87–88. 220. Gabriela Anahí Costanzo, “The inadmissible turned history—the 1902 Law of Residence and the 1910 Law of Social Defense,” in Sociedad, Vol. 3 Buenos Aires (2007). http://socialsciences.scielo.org/scielo. php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0327-77122007000200001 221. The new law did not authorize voting participation by women. 222. Rouquie, The Military and the State in Latin America, 79–80. 223. Ibid., 105. 224. Ibid., 113. 225. See Thomas E.  Skidmore and Peter H.  Smith, Modern Latin America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 83–86. 226. Ibid., 86. 227. Ibid., 87. 228. Paul G. Buchanan, “State Corporatism in Argentina: Labor Administration Under Peron and Onganía,” in Latin America Research Review, Vol. 20, No. 1 (1985): 61–95. 229. Skidmore and Smith, Modern Latin America, 104.

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230. See John Williamson, “What Washington Means by Policy Reforms,” in John Williamson, ed., Latin American Readjustment: How Much has Happened (Washington, DC: Institute for International Economic, 1989). The Washington Consensus is a set of 10 economic policy prescriptions considered to constitute the “standard” reform package promoted by Washington for countries afflicted by financial crises. Institutions such as IMF, World Bank, and the U.S.  Treasury Department were involved in drafting the prescriptions. 231. See Luis Alberto Romero, (2013) [1994]. A History of Argentina in the Twentieth Century (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2013), 290–302. 232. “Argentina, 2013,” Freedom House. https://freedomhouse.org/report/ freedom-world/2013/argentina 233. See Iván Petrella, “El Laberinto de la Corrupcion,” La Nación, March 30, 2015. http://www.lanacion.com.ar/1779779-el-laberinto-de-lacorrupcion. See also Hugo Alconada Mon, “Alerta de la OCDE por la corrupción en el pais,” La Nación, January 19, 2015. http://www.lanacion.com.ar/1761209-alerta-de-la-ocde-por-la-corrupcion-en-la-argentina-pidio-medidas-urgentes 234. “Democracy Index 2015,” The Economist—Intelligence Unit http:// www.isie.tn/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Economist_Intelligence_ Unit-Democracy-Index-2015.pdf 235. Ranis, Five Latin American Nations, 103. Carlos Waisman and David Rock maintain that the electoral reforms of 1912 applied only to native Argentines. See Waisman, “Argentina: Autarkic Industrialization and Illegitimacy,” 62; and Rock, Argentina 1516–1982, 189. Law No. 8871 of February 13, 1912, however, states: “All citizens, native or naturalized, of 18 years of age or over, are national electors.” (My emphasis). Moreover, as I stated earlier, Article 20 of the 1853 constitution states that “[a]liens shall enjoy in the territory of the nation all the civil rights of citizens.” And it notes that aliens “may obtain naturalization by residing two consecutive years in the nation.” See Rowe, The Federal System of the Argentine Republic: Appendix B, 139, and Appendix C, 154. The distinction is critical, for the Radical party garnered a notable portion of its support from immigrants who had become Argentine citizens. 236. Before the adoption of the Saenz Peña Law, it was highly exceptional for a third of the nominal electorate to vote. After the reforms, turnouts reached 70 percent and 80 percent. See Rock, Argentina 1516–1982, 190. 237. “Argentina’s last military dictator jailed for role in international death squad,” The Guardian, May 27, 2106 http://www.theguardian.com/ world/2016/may/27/argentinas-last-military-dictator-jailed-over-rolein-operation-condor

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Freedom in the World 2014. Freedom House. Freedom House, 2014. Web. 24 Jan. 2019. Fuentes, Carlos. 1992. The Buried Mirror: Reflections on Spain and the New World. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. Print. Gil, Federico Guillermo. 1966. The Political System of Chile. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. Print. Gootenberg, Paul. 1989. Between Silver and Guano: Commercial Policy and the State in Post-Independence Peru. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Print. Graham, Richard. 1994. Independence in Latin America: A Comparative Approach. New York: McGraw-Hill. Print. Horvitz, Leslie Alan, and Christopher Catherwood. 2006. Encyclopedia of War Crimes and Genocide. New York: Facts On File. Print. Human Development Index. Countryeconomy.com, 2015. Web. 24 Jan. 2019. Huntington, Samuel. 1957. The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Print. ———. 1976. Political Order in Changing Societies. New Haven: Yale University Press. Print. Hybel, Alex Roberto. 1990. How Leaders Reason: US Intervention in the Caribbean Basin and Latin America. New York: Basil Blackwell. Print. Johnson, John. 1964. The Military and Society in Latin America. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Jones, Kristine L. 1993. Civilization and Barbarism and Sarmiento’s Indian Policy. In Sarmiento and His Argentina, ed. Joseph T.  Criscenti. Boulder/London: Lynne Rienner Publishers. Print. Karl, Terry Lynn. 1990. Dilemmas of Democratization in Latin America. Comparative Politics 23 (1). Web. 24 Jan. 2019. Keohane, Robert Owen. 1984. After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Print. Kurtz, Marcus J. 2013. Latin American State Building in Comparative Perspective: Social Foundations of Institutional Order. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Print. Kus, James S. 2017. Peru. Encyclopedia Britannica, Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., October 5. Web. 24 Jan. 2019. Lanata, Jorge. n.d. Argentinos: Quinientos Años Entre El Cielo y El Infierno. Cuspide—La Libreria Con Mayor Catálogo Del Páis, Editorial Sudamericana. Web. 24 Jan. 2019. Larrain, Felipe, and Patricio Meller. 1991. The Socialist-Populist Chilean Experience. In The Macroeconomics of Populism in Latin America, ed. Rudiger Dornbusch and Sebastian Edwards, 1970–1973. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Print. Levine, Jonathan V. 1960. The Export Economies: Their Pattern of Development in Historical Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Print.

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Loveman, Brian. 1988. Chile: The Legacy of Hispanic Capitalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Print. Lynch, John. 1981. Argentine Dictator: Juan Manuel De Rosas: 1829–1852. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Print. ———. 1993. From Independence to National Organization. In Argentina Since Independence, ed. Leslie Bethell. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Print. MacDonald, Austin. 1942a. Government of the Argentine Republic. New  York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company. Print. ———. 1942b. Government of the Argentine Republic. New  York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company. Marquez, Valenzuela. 2012. Esclavos Mapuches: Para Una Historia Del Secuestro y Deportación De Indígenas En La Colonia. In Historias De Racismo y Discriminación En Chile, ed. Rafael Gauna and Martin Lara. Revista De Ciencias Sociales. Print. McAlister, Lyle N. 1984. Spain and Portugal in the New World: 1492–1700. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota. Print. McClintock, Cynthia. 1989. Peru: Precarious Regimes, Authoritarian and Democratic. In Democracy in Developing Countries: Latin America, ed. Larry Diamond, Jonathan Hartlyn, Juan J.  Linz, and Seymour Martin Lipset. Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers. Print. Mon, Hugo Alconada. 2015. Alerta De La OCDE Por La Corrupción En El País. La Nacion, January 19. Web. 24 Jan. 2019. Mörner, Magnus. 1985. The Andean Past: Land, Societies, and Conflicts. New York: Colombia University Press. Print. Munro, Dana. 1960. The Latin American Republics: A History. New  York: Appleton Century, Inc. Print. Oppenheim, Lois Hecht. 1999. Politics in Chile: Socialism, Authoritarianism, and Market Democracy. Boulder: Westview Press. Print. Pagden, Anthony. 1995. Lords of All the World. New Haven: Yale University Press. Print. Paredes, Maritza. 2008. Weak Indigenous Politics in Peru. Center for Research on Inequality, Human Security and Ethnicity, University of Oxford, April. Web. 24 Jan. 2019. Peru. Encyclopedia Britannica. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/ topic/453147Peru/28041/Amazonia Peru Overturns Decrees That Incited Protests. The New  York Times, June 18, 2009. Print. Petras, James. 1969. Politics and Social Forces in Chilean Development. Berkeley/ Los Angeles: University of California Press. Print. Petrella, Ivan. 2015. El Laberinto De La Corrupción. La Nación, March 30. Web. 24 Jan. 2019.

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Pike, Fredrick B. 1967. The Modern History of Peru. New  York: Frederick A. Praeger. Print. Primo Amadeo, Santos. 1943. Argentine Constitutional Law: The Judicial Function in the Maintenance of the Federal System and the Preservation of Individual Rights. New York: Columbia University Press. Ramirez, Hernán. 1967. Antecedentes económicos de la independencia de Chile. Santiago: Universidad De Chile. Print. Ranis, Peter. 1971. Five Latin American Nations: A Comparative Political Study. New York: Macmillan. Print. Robertson, William. 1922. History of Latin America. New  York: D.  Appleton and Company. Rock, David. 1985. Argentina, 1516–1982: From Spanish Colonization to the Falklands War. Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press. Print. Romero, Luis Alberto. 2013. A History of Argentina in the Twentieth Century. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Print. Rouquie, Alan. 1987. The Military and the State in Latin America. London: University of California Press. Print. Rowe, L.S. 1921. The Federal System of the Argentine Republic. Washington, DC: Carnegie Institution of Washington. Print. Safford, Frank. 1987. Politics, Ideology, and Society. In The Cambridge History of Latin America. From Independence to C.1870, ed. Leslie Bethell, vol. 3. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Print. Salazar, Gabriel, and Julio Pinto. 2002. História Contemporanea de Chile III: La economía: mercados empresarios y trabajadores. LOM Ediciones. Print. Sartori, Giovanni. 1976. Parties and Party Systems: A Framework for Analysis. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Print. Shumway, Nicolas. 1993. Invention of Argentina. Berkeley: University of California Press. Print. Sigmund, Paul. 1990. Chile. In Latin American Politics and Development, ed. Howard J. Wiarda and Harvey F. Kline. Boulder: Westview Press. Print. Skidmore, Thomas E., and Peter H. Smith. 1992. Modern Latin America. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Print. Skidmore, Thomas E., Peter H. Smith, and James N. Green. 2014. Modern Latin America. 8th ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Print. Sobrevilla Perea, Natalia. In Search of a Better Society: Constitutions in Peru. http://data.rg.mpg.de/rechtsgeschichete/rg16_111sobrevilla_perea.pdf Stanton, Kimberly. 1997. The Transformation of a Political Regime: Chile’s 1925 Constitution. Meeting of the Latin American Studies Association, Guadalajara, Mexico, April 17–19. Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report. United States Institute of Peace, July 13, 2000. https://www.usip.org/publications/2001/07/truth-commission-peru-01

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Túpac Amaru—Incan Revolutionary. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/bibliography/Tupac-Amarua-II Valenzuela, Arturo. 1978. The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes: Chile. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press. ———. 1989. Chile: Origins, Consolidation and Breakdown of a Democratic Regime. In Democracy in Developing Countries: Latin America, ed. Larry Diamond, Jonathan Hartlyn, Juan J.  Linz, and Seymour Martin Lipset. Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers. Print. Valenzuela, J.  Samuel. 1996. Building Aspects of Democracy Before Democracy: Electoral Practices in Nineteenth Century Chile. The Kellogg Institute for International Studies, Working Paper #223, April. Web. 24 Jan. 2019. Valenzuela, J.  Samuel, and Arturo Valenzuela. 1991. Chile: The Development, Breakdown, and Recovery of Democracy. In Latin America, Its Problems and Its Promise: A Multidisciplinary Introduction, ed. Jan Knippers Black. Boulder: Westview Press. Waisman, Carlos H. 1989. Argentina: Autarkic Industrialization and Illegitimacy. In Democracy in Developing Countries: Latin America, ed. Larry Diamond et al. Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers. Print. Williamson, John. 1989. What Washington Means by Policy Reforms. In Latin American Readjustment: How Much Has Happened? ed. John Williamson. Washington, DC: Institute for International Economics. Print.

CHAPTER 5

Exploratory Hypotheses: Chile, Peru, and Argentina

Introduction The objective of this chapter is to derive a number of generalizations in the form of hypotheses by comparing the state-creation and democratization processes of Argentina, Chile, and Peru. Before the comparison is carried out, it is helpful to identify where each of the above three countries stood in the 2018 World Democracy Index. Though the rank assigned to each country has varied from year to year, for some time the change has not been significant. The “2018 Democracy Index” designed by The Intelligence Unit of The Economist, describes Chile, Argentina and Peru as Flawed Democracies.1 According to the index, Chile ranks 23rd  in the world, Argentina 47th, and Peru 59th. Based on the above ranking it would be reasonable to infer that Chile’s path to the creation of a legitimate state and of a democratic regime was easier than Argentina’s and Peru’s, and that Argentina’s was less cumbersome than Peru’s. One measure that could possibly help capture indirectly how difficult it was for each state to consolidate and legitimize its power is the number of constitutionally designed presidential elections each one held since independence. This approach is far from perfect and could generate misinterpretations. First, the constitutionally determined term in office varied from one country to another, and each one altered at least once the allotted time period.2 However, because the number of years designated by the constitution for each Spanish American country is not substantially © The Author(s) 2020 A. R. Hybel, The Making of Flawed Democracies in the Americas, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21178-3_5

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­ ifferent from that of the others, the enumeration of how many presidend tial elections each one held for a given period could reveal how stable or unstable its political system was. If the constitutionally dictated terms in office had been approximately the same, then each country should have had a relatively similar number of presidential elections.3 Thus, it could be inferred that if a state had a greater number of presidential elections than the norm, the higher number could be attributed to actions initiated by certain actors to remove the office holder from power. Conversely, if the number is substantially smaller than the norm, then it could be assumed that a political leader, a political party, or the military have obstructed, for whatever reasons, the electoral process. This explanation, however, still leaves in place the possibility that though political elections were held regularly, as dictated by the constitution, the same individual, or a representative of the same political organization or political party, adopted measures designed to prevent others from engaging in a fair competition, and thus retains control of the presidency for an extended period. Aware of such possibilities, the analysis that follows takes into account such irregularities whenever necessary. A useful reference point is the United States. Between 1789 and 2016, there should have been a total of 59 four-year terms in the United States.4 Because not every president completed his term in office, the actual number is 62. Four sitting US presidents were assassinated, but their assassinations did not bring to power a member of a different political party or a military junta. The political difficulties encountered by Spanish American states are reflected in the greater number of presidential elections they held during a substantially briefer period. As just noted, the constitutionally dictated term in office for a president for each of the aforementioned Spanish American states changed across time, and the term was not and is not the same for each one. At the moment those numbers are four years for Chile and Argentina, and five years for Peru. If one assumes 1824 as the year in which Chile, Argentina, and Peru attained independence; limits each presidential term to four years, with re-election counting as a new term; and assigns 2016 as the end point, each of the aforementioned states should have had a total of 48 constitutionally dictated presidential terms.5 The differences between them are revealing. The earlier analysis indicates that Chile encountered the fewest obstacles. The number of presidential changes it underwent supports this conclusion. In the period between 1824 and 2016, Chile has had a total of 54

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presidential changes.6 Argentina did not do as well—its total number reached 60. But both Chile and Argentina did significantly better than Peru, which underwent a total of 91 presidential changes. If one divides the processes of state creation and democratization but acknowledges that they are interrelated, then the first question that needs to be re-addressed is the following: Why was the drive to create the state less cumbersome for Chile than for the other two states? As explained earlier, the presence of a desert in the North that was believed to lack substantial mineral wealth, and of an indigenous population in the South unwilling to surrender its sovereignty, prevented Chile’s colonizers from enlarging their territory rapidly. The existence of both obstacles, and of a fertile terrain near the center of the colony that was conducive to agriculture, in turn compelled the new settlers to cooperate with one another in order to develop an economic foundation and build a powerful army to protect them from the country’s indigenous people. Thus, though upon attaining independence Chile’s elites were not of one mind as to the type of state structure they wanted to create, they inherited a system that had not been encumbered by the need to control a large territory, the presence of large indigenous populations, and access to great mineral wealth. Peru’s invaders encountered the three aforementioned conditions. By the time Peru had achieved independence, its mineral wealth had diminished measurably, but its political leaders still had to cope with the first two conditions. Argentina is a discrete case. For the first two centuries the Spanish monarchy and the Peruvian viceroyalty did not hamper substantially the political, economic, and social activities of Argentina’s new inhabitants. The relative absence of a bureaucratic system with the authority and capacity to enforce Spain’s dictates freed the colonialists to design their own distinct, independent arrangements. The Spanish monarch tried to temper their freedoms by creating a viceroyalty in 1776 from several dependencies that had been controlled by the Viceroyalty of Peru, but by then the leaders of several regions in those territories had developed their own pockets of power. Their reluctance to surrender their power to a central government in Buenos Aires became evident as they battled the Spaniards and tried to form a state upon attaining independence. Moreover, in the case of Argentina, though its colonizers encountered several indigenous groups, their nomadic tendencies and the absence of great mineral wealth reduced measurably the need to exploit them.

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Of the three Latin American entities, Chile was the most successful at relying on the presence of a powerful and unified armed force to accelerate the process of state formation. The existence of a strong Amerindian population determined to protect its territory and sovereignty in the southern part of the territory compelled the colonizers to create their own military force in order to defend themselves. By the time the struggle for independence had started, Chile had developed the strongest military force in Spanish America. Its existence ultimately enabled Chile’s conservative leaders to create a centralized state after defeating those who advocated the creation of a federalist-style system. The presence of a strong military also made it possible for the Chilean state to achieve several goals: repel threats posed by Peru and Bolivia during the second half of the 1830s; suppress attempts by liberals to topple the conservative regime in 1851 and 1859; pacify the Mapuche starting in the early 1860s; and defeat the Peruvians and Bolivians during the War of the Pacific in the late 1870s and early 1890s. At the same time, the drive to restructure the state into one in which the power of the Congress would be either superior to, or would at least match, that of the president, did not gain momentum until the early 1870s. Argentina and Peru could not rely on a unified military during their early state-creation years. In each instance, distinct leaders established their own military with the intent of retaining control of specific regions. Of the two, however, Argentina proved to be the most effective. The division in Argentina was not between multiple regions, as it was in Peru, but primarily between Buenos Aires on the one hand and the regional leaders on the other. Their struggle came to an end in the early 1860s, when Buenos Aires’ military force finally gained the upper hand over its rivals. Thereafter, the almost-consolidated state used its largely unified military to place under its jurisdiction the various Amerindian groups inhabiting the country’s northern region, and the Mapuches in the area commonly known as Patagonia. Eventually, the leaders of the various regions realized that without international trade everyone would be disadvantaged. Stated differently, though on paper a federalist system structured the Argentinian state, in practice Buenos Aires was by far the dominant authority. Moreover, by the start of the twentieth century the Argentine military had redesigned its organizational foundation and soon thereafter became one of the country’s most powerful political actors. The military challenges encountered by Peru were considerably more severe than those faced by Chile and Argentina. Without a civilian ruling

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class prepared to lead during the war of independence, Peru’s military leaders subsequently acted as caudillos and expanded their political power. Divided by ideological differences and personal power aspirations, they repeatedly mounted coups in order to gain control of the government. These divisions prevented the military from forming a united, organized front, and this failure in turn undermined their capability both to consolidate the power of the state and to overcome Chile’s territorial advances during their war in the late 1870s and early 1880s. Chile’s success alerted Peru’s leading officers that in order to become an effective military and political force, they needed to revamp their institution. Starting in the late 1890s, the Peruvian military relied on the expertise of French officers to adopt new regulations, modernize its institution, and increase its members’ degree of expertise and corporate sense. At the same time, military officers continued to claim that the army was the “best representative of the people because it was a microcosm of society upholding the perfect balance between equality and order, tradition and modernity.”7 Thereafter, instead of yielding to civilian rule, the military reaffirmed its commitment to its earlier dogma—that only authoritarianism could protect the state.8 Legitimacy is a two-way street. As noted by Bruce Gilley, a state’s legitimacy depends on the attitude of its citizens—the greater the number of citizens who view the state as the rightful holder and exerciser of political power, the greater its legitimacy.9 In turn, the inhabitants of a state will view the state as the rightful holder and exerciser of political power if it creates institutions able to protect them from the actions of external actors; maintain internal order; adjudicate disputes; and address their various political, economic, and social needs. Any population within a state that is purposely excluded from receiving the benefits and services it extends to other members of the population will not consider said state as the legitimate holder and exerciser of political power. The Peruvian state undermined its legitimacy by persistently excluding Amerindians from the same set of benefits and services it granted other members of the population. Though the creation and legitimization of the power of the state is a process distinct from the formation of a political regime, the democratization of a political regime can in due course help legitimize the power of the state. By the second decade of the twentieth century, Chile, Argentina, and Peru faced uncertain futures. The three shared several critical challenges. The leaders of each state had to decide how to respond to an increase in the demand for greater political participation; a surge in the

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number of political parties, some of which advocated radical changes in the nature of their respective political, economic, and social systems; and the emergence of the military as an institution determined to play a viable political role. The first two phenomena were not unique to Spanish America. In fact, in a sense, several Spanish American states were undergoing the same experiences many European states had been enduring for a number of decades. As already explained, Chile’s greater success at consolidating the power of the state made its task of creating a democratic system less cumbersome than Argentina’s and Peru’s. Chile’s experience, however, was not trouble free. The structural strength of a political system is tested by its capacity to withstand intense challenges. By the 1920s, a number of conditions obstructed Chile’s road to democracy. The rapid growth in the country’s economy compelled those who had been excluded from the political process to demand that they be extended the legal rights to participate. Their demands were accompanied by the emergence of political parties with conflicting political ideologies. By the middle of the 1920s, the tension between Chile’s executive office and Congress had grown so intense, with the latter unwilling to pass any legislation proposed by the former, that certain members of the military intervened and established a de facto military dictatorship between 1927 and 1931. The uncertainty afflicting Chile’s political system during this period was compounded by the world economic crisis triggered by the stock market crash of 1929. Such a crisis, however, rather than strengthening the power of the military, informed its members that they lacked the capacity to address their country’s financial and economic woes. Thereafter, between December 24, 1932, and November 3, 1970, every Chilean president completed his term, with the exception of two who died in office due to illness. The military’s decision to step aside and allow Chile to fortify its democratic structure was the outgrowth of a measured evolutionary process that enabled the state and its political system to steadily build the infrastructure they needed in order to respond to demands that were growing in size and complexity. But then the system broke down in 1973. Thus, one must ask: If the foundational structure of Chile’s democratic political system became stronger with the passage of time, why did it fracture? The evolution of Chile’s economy after the military had relinquished control of the government in the early 1930s accelerated the emergence of centrifugal forces provoked by conflicting ideologies. The development of the centrifugal forces in a highly competitive political system resulted in

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the election of Salvador Allende in 1970. For the next three years, the radical political, economic, and social transformations sought and implemented by the Allende regime generated intense domestic opposition. Their negative effects were compounded by the existence of a hemispheric political system, largely controlled by the United States, which strove to prevent the development of a Cuban-style, anti-status quo political ideology. Throughout Allende’s presidency, the United States went out of its way to rupture Chile’s economy and pressure the Chilean military to topple the regime. Washington succeeded. Convinced that it was its duty to reset the course of the state, the Chilean military left the barracks in 1973, toppled the elected government, and took over. For the next 18 years, the Chilean military strengthened the power of the state and aggressively reduced the capacity of extremist parties to transform the political system. Argentina’s experience was more chaotic than Chile’s. For the first 40 years or so after independence, regional divisions within Argentina prevented the creation of a unified government. By the time Argentinians had agreed to establish their central government in Buenos Aires in the early 1860s, the Chilean government, though it still had to cope with dissenting voices, had for all practical purposes solidified much of the power of the state. After the 1860s, Argentina’s economy grew at a pace faster than Chile’s. The enlargement energized Argentina’s rapidly rising population to demand greater political participation. And as in Chile, the demand was accompanied by the development of political parties with competing ideological beliefs and policy proposals. The Argentine military, as in Chile, expressed its dissatisfaction by toppling the government. But thereafter, the military in Argentina did not respond to crises the same way that Chile’s military had. Between 1932 and 1973, Argentina underwent ten military coups; in some, the conflict ensued between rival military branches or leaders. Thereafter, Argentina endured four more military coups. During that entire period Chile experienced only one military coup. Perhaps ironically, Argentina’s transformation into a democratic regime was markedly more tortuous than Chile’s, and yet it came about seven years earlier. The last statement begs the question: What finally compelled the leaders and people of Chile and Argentina to give democracy a second chance? A related question could be: Was the source of the demand for a competitive political system entirely domestic, or did it also have an international component? It is difficult to prove which of the two sources had the strongest impact, but nevertheless it is worth comparing the people’s stance

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toward democracy in each of the two aforementioned states with the prevalent attitude in the West. Scott Mainwaring and Aníbal Pérez-Liñan presented the most concrete explanation as to what energized the peoples of various Latin American states to create or rebuild democratic structures. The greatest change in attitudes toward democracy in Latin America, contended Mainwaring and Pérez-Liñan, originated among members of the revolutionary left. In the 1960s and 1970s, the extreme left rejected liberal democracy, advocated the creation of authoritarian-type systems, and encouraged the use of violence, all in order to “liberate” the working class. By the 1980s, “the revolutionary left had become a non-actor in most countries,” the fascination with revolution had subsided, and intellectuals had come to believe that democracy was the most reasonable solution. By then, those on the right, who for decades had dominated the political arena, were also beginning to experience their own transformation. The reduced power of the Soviet Union, along with the waning capacity of Cuba to export its revolutionary ideology throughout Latin America, diminished the fear among conservative political leaders of being overtaken by communism. This change in sentiment, along with the recognition that most members of the left were no longer advocating radical political, economic, and social changes, led many conservative leaders to accept greater domestic political competition.10 These transformations did not ensue in isolation. Members of the left were part of an intellectual trend. Throughout Europe, intellectuals had started to question the authoritarian nature of the left, rejected Marxism, and advocated liberal democracy. In turn, the West, particularly the United States, quietly encouraged those on the right to be more receptive to greater political participation and competition.11 Such changes in attitude were particularly noticeable in Argentina and Chile. From the late 1920s until 1973, Argentina’s political parties valued winning more than protecting the political system. After 1976, as the military imposed its will almost indiscriminately, key Argentine actors began to view open political competition as the only viable option. Those who called for the opening of the political system were greatly aided by several failings of the military: the humiliating defeat it experienced in the Malvinas/Falkland War of 1982, the deep economic crisis it was unable to resolve, and the human rights abuses it committed during its dictatorial rule between 1976 and 1983. Those developments undermined the claim by the Argentine military that it was the only institution with the moral capacity to understand and protect the interests of the nation. At the same

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time, the military’s record helped strengthen the voices of those who favored the rebuilding of Argentina’s democratic political system. The change in attitude became particularly evident after the 1983 elections. The first two post-1983 Argentine presidents used their notable electorate mandate to impose strict restrictions on the armed forces. Of no less significance, though for the next 30 years or so Argentina endured severe economic crises, hyperinflation, a steep rise in inequality, and periods of bad economic performance, the call to replace democracy with a nondemocratic regime never gained momentum. Attitudes toward the challenges Argentina’s democracy faced, and continues to face, are reflected in some of the polls conducted by Latinobarómetro. Though for the period between 1995 and 2015, only 54 percent of the Argentines polled expressed satisfaction with their democracy, 70 percent claimed that they favored it over any other type of political system.12 In other words, despite the fact that a substantial number of Argentines had been unhappy with the way their democracy had been performing, they were not willing to give it up. Chileans underwent a somewhat different experience. As already noted, elected political officials ruled Chileans uninterruptedly from the early 1930s until 1973. In the early 1960s, the Chilean Socialist Party started to advocate Marxist ideals, criticize liberal democracy, and call for the creation of a dictatorship of the proletariat. By 1973, with the left still demanding that more radical changes be implemented, the military, with support from the Chile’s conservative wing, toppled the regime. Nine years later, with the military still in power, many of the members of the Socialist Party denounced their previous claims and advocated the establishment of a competitive political system.13 Several conservatives also favored the opening of the political system. At the 1988 plebiscite conducted to determine whether Augusto Pinochet should continue to rule for another eight years, nearly 56 percent voted against; among those who voiced their disapproval were members of a number of conservative parties, such as Independent Democratic Union, National Advance, National Party, and National Renewal. Because the Chilean military had improved the economy and had governed the country effectively, before relinquishing control of the executive it was able to demand the enactment of extensive institutional safeguards and financial guarantees.14 As time went by, however, the organizational strength of the political parties, particularly those of the center-left, reduced many of the original safeguards the military had put in place.

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During that period, the political parties acted in a measured manner, determined not to overreach the military’s level of tolerance.15 Since the rebirth of democracy in Chile, its people have been less inclined than Argentines to express satisfaction with their democratic ­system—43 versus 54 percent—or to favor democracy over other types of political system—65 versus 70 percent. Paradoxically, for a number of years Chile has been considered markedly more democratic than Argentina.16 On both measures, however, Chileans have been more appreciative of democracy than most other Latin American countries.17 In short, the disintegration of the political system by the military coup and the lengthy rule by an authoritarian regime forewarned Chile’s political leaders that if they hoped to reinstate democracy they had to contain the destructive capacity of their country’s centrifugal forces. Attuned to this reality, convinced that democratic procedures were the most appropriate ways to govern collective life in their society, and emboldened by the major Western powers’ demand that Chile rebuild its democratic regime, Chileans broke their ties with the ruling authoritarian regime and moved cautiously forward toward democracy. Mainwaring and Pérez-Liñán explained it best when they stated that having “experienced life under brutal dictatorships, most survivors concluded that democracy was necessary and desirable.”18 By now it has been determined that Argentina experienced more military coups than Chile, and that when compared to  both, for the same period, Peru has been troubled by as many coups as Argentina has.19 During the 1968–2000 period, however, Peru underwent a political transformation dissimilar to those experienced by the other three states. In 1968 the Peruvian military toppled Fernando Belaúnde, who had been elected president five years earlier, and who during his five-year tenure had developed numerous projects designed to alleviate poverty in the major suburban areas and to address the needs of the indigenous people in the country’s northeastern regions. The military junta that replaced Belaúnde adopted an economic approach different from those implemented by the other Spanish American military governments. In addition to limiting the economic influence of the United States in Peru, the Peruvian military nationalized transportation, communication, and electric power, and transformed many privately owned farms into worker-­managed cooperatives. These measures did not help resolve Peru’s economic problems, and in 1975, a different group of military leaders replaced the existing government with a new military junta. Though the new government overturned some of the previous policies, it did little to reverse the downturn.

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In 1980, Peruvians and the military gave democracy another chance. Belaúnde won the presidency, and his party, Popular Action, emerged as the largest party in both chambers of Congress. The drive to democratize the political system, however, was short-lived. It was at around that time that Shining Path, which had been formed in the late 1960s, launched a series of violent attacks against the Peruvian government. The guerrilla movement based its activities mainly in the rural regions of the country, though in due course it also unleashed operations in the suburban areas. Fearful that the Peruvian military would seize power to offset the violent acts initiated by the Shining Path, Belaúnde declared a State of Emergency for the department of Ayacucho in October 1980. By the end of May 1983, after a series of bombings by members of the Shining Path had blacked out much of Lima, Belaúnde issued a State of Emergency for the entire country. In response to the attack, Peru’s Nobel prizewinner, novelist Mario Vargas Llosa, who would run for president seven years later, stated that if the government did not end terrorism, Peru was “going to have a tougher military dictatorship than before.”20 Conditions did not improve measurably under the presidency of Alan Garcia, who was elected in 1985. By the end of 1989, 49 percent of the Peruvian population was living under a State of Emergency.21 During that period, Garcia’s government relied extensively on illegal actions, such as torture and random assassinations, to break the guerrilla movement. In short, though Peru began to experiment with democracy in 1980 after granting its indigenous people the full right to participate in the political process, it was bound to fail, because the state had yet to consolidate its power and a substantial portion of the population did not view it as a legitimate actor. During the 1990s, Peru underwent a pivotal transformation. Fujimori’s 1992 military-backed auto-golpe, two years after he had been elected president, received extensive popular support despite intense international criticism.22 His action, though unconstitutional, freed his military to use extraordinary measures to destroy the threat Shining Path had posed to the state. Thereafter, he exploited his new popularity to remain in power until the end of the decade. Ironically, his abuse of power during the 1990s ultimately achieved two things: it helped consolidated the power of the state and set the groundwork for the reemergence of democracy in Peru. The percentage of Peruvians who have been satisfied with their democratic system has been below average when compared to other Spanish American states, and their opinions have been associated not with the growth of Peru’s economy but with how much they benefit from its

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growth. As noted by Latinobarómetro in its analyses of polls, Peruvians believed that a democracy that fails to ensure that everyone benefits from the growth of the economy is a democracy that does not merit their support. It is not a coincidence, thus, that Peruvians have been markedly more willing to accept military governments than the citizens of other Latin American states, with the exception of Mexico, Paraguay, and Guatemala.23 A few final reinforcing points are beneficial before the end of this section. As the analysis of Argentina’s political experience revealed, the presence of a homogeneous population does not guarantee the development of a stable democratic regime. But deep divisions along a society’s ethnic lines, reinforced by an acutely unequal distribution of wealth, invariably undercut a state’s capacity to develop a stable democratic regime. The governments of Argentina, Chile, and Peru have failed to address the needs and demands of their own indigenous populations. In each of those countries, members of such populations are typically among the poorest. But the governments’ failures have not had equal impacts on their respective political systems, because the sizes of the indigenous populations vary considerably from one country to another. Argentina’s Amerindian population varies from 1.4 percent to 2.4 percent, depending on whether they are officially recognized as such or they self-recognize themselves as indigenous, or descendants of indigenous, peoples. Almost a quarter of their households are deprived of basic needs. Among nonindigenous people, those who live in poverty is around 14 percent. Chile’s Amerindian population is larger than Argentina’s and is also disproportionately poorer, with 32.3 percent living in poverty, compared to 20.1 percent of the nonindigenous population.24 The percentages change considerably when Peru is analyzed. Forty-five percent of Peru’s total population is indigenous. In 2011, the level of poverty nationwide in Peru was around 33 percent, but in parts of the Andean and Amazonian regions, where the country’s indigenous population is concentrated, it reached 70 percent.25 The numbers just presented inform us that no precise correlation exists between the size of a country’s indigenous population and the quality of its democracy. Were that to be the case, Argentina’s democracy would be more developed than Chile’s and Peru’s. Stated differently, one cannot postulate that the smaller the size of a state’s indigenous population, the simpler it will be for the state to develop a stable and solid democracy. But

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at the same time, one cannot overlook that Chile and Argentina have been markedly more successful than Peru at creating democratic regimes. Thus, it is reasonable to contend that because discrimination against indigenous groups continues to dominate the political environment of most Spanish American countries, those states with large numbers will continue to encounter difficulties creating stable democracies.

Exploratory Hypotheses Possibly the most noteworthy conclusion one can derive from the analysis throughout this chapter is that despite the repeated pro-democracy claims made by Spanish American political leaders, creating democratic regimes has never been their initial objective. Their dominant goal has been the acquisition of power. Political leaders became advocates of democratic regimes when they realized that the near-indiscriminate and unregulated pursuit of political power generally gave way to zero-sum competition, and that often they were likely to end on the zero side of the equation. Stated differently, Spanish American political leaders learned after repeatedly absorbing very high political costs that it was not in their long-term interests to try to negate the goals and expectations of their rivals or potential rivals, because such actions generally provoked military intervention followed by the establishment of authoritarian military regimes. All the arguments presented below focus on the processes of state creation and democratization that began after the attainment of independence from Spain. The first three propositions function as foundational pillars for the arguments that follow them. A. A stable democratic political system cannot be built within a state that has failed to consolidate and legitimize its power. However, not every state that consolidates and legitimizes its power serves as a conduit for the formation of a democratic regime. B. The creation of the state is always accompanied by the creation of a political system, an economic system, and a social system. C. The consolidation and legitimization of the power of the state and the creation of a stable democratic regime are complex processes; both take time. The fewer the obstacles a state faces as it strives to consolidate and legitimize its power, the easier it is to build a stable democracy.

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The hypotheses posited below apply to Argentina, Chile, and Peru. HCPA 1: The greater a territory’s size, mineral wealth, and indigenous populations, the harder it was to consolidate and legitimize the power of the state. The combined presence of great mineral wealth and large indigenous populations produced greater hindrances to the state-­ creation process than did the existence of a vast terrain divided by conflicting regional interests. The leaders of a territory with competing regional economic interests generally disagreed on whether to create a state in which its power would be centralized or one in which it would be distributed between the regions.26 Frequently, the tension was exacerbated by the question of whether Roman Catholicism should be decreed the country’s official creed and the practice of any other religion prohibited. Typically, those who favored the design of a centralized state also advocated preserving the role the Catholic Church had played during the colonial period, and vice versa. HCPA 2: The greater the conflict between those who advocated the establishment of a centralized system with Catholicism as the official creed and those who promoted the creation of a secular federalist system, the harder it was to consolidate and legitimize the power of the state. Intense rivalries between those who advocated a centralized structure and those who supported a decentralized one remained unresolved until one of the competing parties defeated its militia rivals. The power distribution between rival militias within a territory affected the ability of any one of them to achieve near military hegemony and, thus, their capacity to consolidate the power of the state. HCPA 3: The greater the balance in military power between the rival groups, the harder it was for any one group to achieve near military hegemony and, thus, to consolidate the power of the state. The elimination by one militia of rival regional militias within a territory was usually followed by the institutionalization and bureaucratization of the armed forces. As the armed forces solidified their organizational

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structure, they developed, cultivated, and propagated the ethos that they were the only institution within the state able to comprehend the real nature of the nation’s interest and protect it. Political leaders relied on various measures to limit political participation during much of the nineteenth century. Economic growth, accompanied by increases in the size of the population, spawned the creation of political parties and demands that barriers to political participation be removed. Initially, the elimination of political impediments benefited only non-Amerindian and non-African American men. HCPA 4: Economic growth, along with an increase in political participation, stimulated the formation of political parties that advocated radical political and economic transformations. HCPA 5: During the first three decades of the 20th century, increases in political participation and in the number of political parties, including non-status quo political parties, increased the probability that the involved political parties would engage in zero-sum-style competition, and that a non-status quo political party could become the governing party. HCPA 6: An increase in zero-sum political competition between political parties, or an increase in the likelihood that a non-status quo party could become the governing party, led to an increase in military intervention either to prevent a non-status quo party from gaining power, or to topple the ruling government, replace it for a limited period with a military junta, and call for new elections. The Cold War and the 1959 Cuban Revolution, as well as the end of the Cold War and the loss in significance of the Cuban Revolution, affected indirectly the structure of several Spanish America’s political regimes. HCPA 7: The Cold War and the 1959 Cuban Revolution increased attempts by the United States to prevent communists from becoming the rulers in any Spanish American state and deepened the fear among Spanish American military and conservative leaders that the zero-sum game practiced by the political parties would increase the likelihood that a group committed to creating a communist regime would achieve political supremacy. HCPA 8: Fear, and the conviction that the military was the only institution capable of protecting the national interest, predisposed Spanish

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American military officers to mount coups and rule for extended periods and US leaders to tacitly support their actions. HCPA 9: The end of the Cold War; the conviction among leftist political leaders that it was preferable to be part of a competitive political regime in which sometimes they might lose and their rivals would rule for a constitutionally ascribed period than to be voiceless under authoritarian military regimes; the acceptance by conservative leaders that communism was no longer a threat and political leaders of the left no longer advocated radical structural changes; and the inability on the part of military regimes to resolve the economic, political, and social problems plaguing their countries paved the way to the resurgence of democratic regimes in Spanish America. Finally, it is quite evident that the culture of democracy has yet to develop solid roots in Argentina, Chile, and Peru. Moreover, though there are variances among Argentines, Chileans, and Peruvians, it could be postulated that, HCPA 10: Throughout Spanish America, the longer the economic needs of the majority of the people were served well under a democratic regime, the greater their willingness to embrace the culture of democracy. The longer the people embraced the culture of democracy, the stronger their opposition to authoritarianism and the greater the likelihood that the regime would remain democratic.

Notes 1. “Democracy Index 2018—in The Economist—The Economist Intelligence Unit. http://www.yabiladi.com/img/content/EIU-Democracy-Index2018.pdf 2. For instance, in the case of Chile the initial term in office was limited to five years, with the possibility of re-election. In the 1990s it was lengthen to six years, but then in 2006 it was reduced to four years, with perpetual non-­ consecutive re-election permitted. 3. Each re-election of a president is counted as a new president. 4. Each re-election is counted as a new term. 5. They did not achieve independence at the same time. I  use 1824 as an artificial starting point to facilitate the comparison. 6. As noted in the previous note, each re-election is counted as a new term. Chile attained independence in February 1818, Argentina in July 1816, and Peru in July 1821. To simplify the counting process, I chose 1824.

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7. Mariella Reano, “The Origin of Peruvian Professional Militarism,” Master Thesis, Louisiana State University, May 2002. http://etd.lsu.edu/docs/ available/etd-0418102-094729/unrestricted/Reano_thesis.pdf 8. Ibid. 9. Bruce Gilley, “The Meaning and Measure of State Legitimacy: Results for 72 Countries,” European Journal of Political Research, Vol. 45 (2006): 499–525. 10. Scott Mainwaring and Aníbal Pérez-Liñan, “Latin American Democratization Since 1978: Democratic Transitions, Breakdowns, and Erosions,” in Frances Hagopian and Scott Mainwaring, eds., The Third Wave of Democratization in Latin America: Advances and Setbacks (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 44–5. 11. Ibid. 12. “Latinobarómetro: Opinión Pública Latinoamericana, Informe 1995– 2015” http://www.eltelegrafo.com.ec/images/eltelegrafo/portafolio/ 2015/INFORME_LB_2015.pdf 13. Mainwaring and Pérez-Liñan, “Latin American Democratization Since 1978,” 45. 14. Wendy Hunter, “Continuity or Change? Civil-Military Relations in Democratic Argentina, Chile, and Peru,” Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 112, No. 3 (Autumn 1997), 453–475. http://www.jstor.org.peach. conncoll.edu:2048/stable/2657566?seq=2#page_scan_tab_contents 15. Ibid. 16. Might the discrepancy in ranks signify that Chileans expect more from their democracy than Argentinians? 17. Latinobarómetro: Opinión Pública Latinoamericana, Informe 1995–2015. 18. Mainwaring and Pérez-Liñan, “Latin American Democratization Since 1978,” 45. 19. As explained earlier, in 1992, Alberto Fujimori mounted what is now commonly referred to as a “self-coup.” 20. “Peru declares state of emergency after bombing by Leftists guerrillas,” The New  York Times, May 31, 1983. http://www.nytimes.com/ 1983/05/31/world/peru-declares-state-of-emergency-after-bombings by-leftist rebels.html 21. Carlos Iván Degregori and Carlos Rivera Paz, “Peru 1980–1993: Fuerzas Armadas, Subversion y Democracia” (Lima, Peru: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, Documento de Trabajo No. 53), 13. 22. See Mitchell A.  Seligson and Julio Carrión, “Political Support, Political Skepticism, and Stability in New Democracies: An Empirical Examination of Mass Support for Coups de’Etat in Peru,” Comparative Political Studies, Vol. 35, No. 1 (February 2002), 64. 23. Latinobarómetro: Opinión Pública Latinoamericana: Informe 1995–2015.

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24. See Claudio A. Agostini, Philip H. Brown, and Andrei Roman, “Poverty and Inequality among Ethnic Groups in Chile,” June 2008, http://core. ac.uk/download/pdf/6542944.pdf 25. “Peru Society and Conflict—Discrimination and Inequality,” http:// www.perusupportgroup.org.uk/peru-society-and-conflict.html 26. Though historically the argument in Latin American was dominated by those who favored a unitarian-type state versus those who advocated a federalist-­type system, in most instances even those who favored a federalist-­ type system ultimately strove to centralize the power of the state as much as possible. It is preferable, thus, to focus on the degree to which power was finally distributed between the center and the regions.

Bibliography Degregori, Carlos Iván, and Carlos Rivera Paz. 1994. Perú 1980–1993: Fuerzas Armadas, Subversión y Democracia: Redefinición Del Papel Militar En Un Contexto De Violencia Subversiva y Colapso Del Régimen Democrático. Instituto De Estudios Peruanos. Print. Democracy Index 2018: Democracy in an Age of Anxiety. The Economist—The Intelligence Unit, 2018. Web. 24 Jan. 2019. Gilley, Bruce. 2006. The Meaning and Measure of State Legitimacy: Results for 72 Countries. European Journal of Political Research 45: 499–525. Print. Hunter, Wendy. 1997. Continuity or Change? Civil-Military Relations in Democratic Argentina, Chile, and Peru. Political Science Quarterly 112 (3): 453–475. Web. 24 Jan. 2019. Latinobarómetro: Opinión Pública Latinoamericana, Informe 1995–2015. Latinobarometro.org, n.d. Web. 03 May 2017. Mainwaring, Scott, and Aníbal Pérez-Liñan. 2005. Latin American Democratization Since 1978: Democratic Transitions, Breakdowns, and Erosion. In The Third Wave of Democratization in Latin America: Advances and Setbacks, ed. Frances Hagopian and Scott Mainwaring. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Print. Peru Declares State of Emergency After Bombing by Leftist Guerrillas. The New York Times, May 31, 1983. Web. 24 Jan. 2019. Peru Society and Conflict: Discrimination and Inequality. Discrimination and Inequality. Peru Support Group, 2013. Web. 24 Jan 2019. Reano, Mariella. 2002. The Origin of Peruvian Professional Militarism. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University. Print. Seligson, Mitchell, and Julio F.  Carrión. 2002. Political Support, Political Skepticism, and Political Stability in New Democracies. Comparative Political Studies 35 (1): 58–82. Web. 24 Jan. 2019.

CHAPTER 6

An Exploratory Theory of State Creation and Democratization in the United States, Chile, Argentina, and Peru

Introduction Comparative studies of democratization that derive generalizations based on analyses that focus on a relatively short time period typically encounter two critical weaknesses. First, such studies generally do not account for the possible effects generated by conditions from earlier periods. Democratization is a process, and as such, past developments typically impact later events. And second, too often such hypotheses are refuted, particularly in Latin American cases, when the same analyses are conducted at a later time. A summary of arguments postulated by three highly reputable scholars will suffice to demonstrate the criticism just voiced. In a comparative analysis of 20 Latin American countries, Scott Mainwaring and Aníbal Pérez-Liñán assessed the extent to which six f­ actors explain the emergence or survival of democracy. The six factors are the level of economic development as a proxy for modernization, class structure, economic performance, the regional political environment in Latin America, party system fragmentation, and party system polarization.1 After conducting a statistical analysis, the two scholars reach several conclusions. First, they concluded that with the exception of one condition, none of the others helped explain the transitions to democracy. Second, they posited that a more favorable regional environment was the one condition that best helped to boost the rate of transition to democracy. Third, they actually questioned the utility of the last variable by adding that its predictive capacity is very low. And last, and possibly least unexpected, they concurred with © The Author(s) 2020 A. R. Hybel, The Making of Flawed Democracies in the Americas, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21178-3_6

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scholars who have argued that structural and regime-performance factors did not have significant effects on democratization.2 This study questions Mainwaring and Pérez-Liñán’s last conclusion. It does not outright propose that structural and regime-performance factors had significant effects on democratization. Instead, it argues that it is not possible to ascertain whether or not said factors affected democratization by looking at 20 countries as static cases, without first accounting for the structural conditions that defined each case at different points in time, and their possible transformational effects. Stated in simpler terms, one cannot compare, for instance, the effects any of the factors identified by the two authors had on Chile and Peru at any one point in time without first describing each state’s internal structural conditions and its interaction with, and standing within, the regional system. By the end of 1973, both Chile and Peru were ruled by military leaders. Democracy was restored in Peru in 1979, but President Alberto Fujimori undercut it in 1992 with a coup in which he eliminated the constitution and called for new congressional elections. Eight years later, the Peruvian Congress removed Fujimori from power. Chile’s military dictatorship came to an end in 1989, when Chileans went to the polls and elected Patricio Alwyn as their new president. Since then none of Chile’s presidents has sought to emulate Fujimori’s behavior in Peru. A statistical analysis that includes those two cases and others during a set period, and that is designed to explain the effects of the earlier-mentioned factors on the emergence or survival of democracy, has very limited value, because it does not capture the political, economic, and social conditions of each state and its standing in the regional environment at different point in time. The argument just presented can be reaffirmed by juxtaposing it with a brief example posited separately by Mainwaring and Frances Hagopian. They noted that during the 1978 period, democracy survived in poor countries such as Bolivia and Nicaragua; in countries with the worst economic distribution, such as Guatemala; in countries with profound economic divides, such as Guatemala and Peru; and in countries that have performed very poorly economically.3 However, it did not take long for Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Guatemala to lose their democratic status. Of the four, only Peru remains a democracy, albeit a flawed one. In other words, very little understanding can be gained by positing general arguments that do not apply to lengthy time periods and do not account for the ­transformations experienced by each state’s structural conditions during the time frame.

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This final chapter presents time-related hypotheses4 that capture the evolution of the state-creation and regime-formation processes of the United States and three Spanish American states from the colonial period to independence to the present. It concludes with a brief analysis of the future of democracy. The four countries studied throughout this book share at least five characteristics. First, none of their original inhabitants had a say on how the emerging states and their respective political regimes in the two continents should be structured. Second, the formation of the states and their respective political regimes throughout the Americas entailed not only the destruction of most members of their original populations but also the imposition of alien political, economic, and social structures among the surviving descendants. Despite this development, the actual size of the remaining indigenous populations did affect the type of political regimes the colonists created after they had attained independence from Britain and Spain. Third, none of the original leaders of the initial states intended to create a democratic regime. In those states where democracies took form, each one evolved in an unplanned, piecemeal, and disorderly manner. Fourth, the political, economic, and social environments created during the colonial period affected the extent to which the established elites within a colony would commit themselves to the attainment of independence. Those conditions also helped shape the types of states and political regimes the original leaders initially tried to create after they had freed themselves from their colonial powers. And fifth, with the passage of time each state and its political regime encountered additional sets of conditions engendered by developments in the domestic and international arenas. In turn, the new conditions determined whether or not a democratic regime would emerge, and if a democratic one did develop, how democratic it would be.

From Colony, to Independence, to State Creation, to Political-Regime Formation The early hypotheses focus on three questions: What conditions obstructed/delayed the reaching of bargains and the establishment of cultural bonds across networks of local power-holders? What  conditions obstructed/delayed the creation of institutions for the extraction of resources required for the performance of a wide range of state’s functions, such as common defense, the maintenance of internal

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order and the adjudication of disputes, the protection of established rights and privileges, and the elementary infrastructure requirements of the economy and the polity? What conditions obstructed/delayed the creation of new channels of contact with the peripheries in order to induce the population to identify more closely with the political system? The colonization relied on by the British and the Spaniards differed, but in both set of cases, a region’s economic wealth had similar effects on the process of state creation after the attainment of independence. H A1: The greater the number of economically developed regions within a colony, the greater the commitment on the part of their respective leaders to decentralize the power of the new state. Religion also played distinct roles throughout the Americas during and after the colonial period. H A2: The smaller the role a hierarchically structured church played during the colonial period, the greater the commitment on the part of certain leaders to create a secular state. The greater the role a hierarchically structured church played during the colonial period, the greater the commitment on the part of certain leaders to create a non-­ secular state. The last hypothesis acknowledges that despite the important role the Catholic Church played during the colonial period, many of the leaders of the newly formed states had also been influenced by the ideas emanating from the United States and parts of Western Europe, where calls for creating secular states had gained tremendous momentum. And as explained earlier, it is important to keep in mind that leaders who sponsored creating a secular state also championed decentralizing the power of the state, while leaders who advocated establishing a non-secular state typically supported centralizing the power of the state. H A3: The greater the divide between leaders who advocated the creation of a centralized, non-secular state and those who supported the formation of a decentralized, secular state, the harder it became to reach agreements, establish cultural bonds across networks of local power-­holders,

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and create institutions for the extraction of resources required for the performance of a wide range of a state’s functions. During the early decades after the attainment of independence, Spanish American leaders were prone to rely on militias to perform the following tasks: protect and promote their own regional political and economic interests; resolve whether to create a centralized or a decentralized state; settle whether to establish a secular or a non-secular state; and, when the opportunity arose, take over the reins of government and design a new constitution. US leaders never relied on militias to address their political and economic differences except during the Civil War. Hence, H A4: The greater the discord between leaders who favored the creation of a centralized, non-secular state and those who opposed it, the greater their tendency to rely on military force to resolve their differences. The above hypotheses—H A2, H A3, and H A4—help explain not only why the United States encountered fewer problems during the earlier stages of the state-creation process than Spanish American states in general but also clarifies differences among Spanish American states. Spanish American leaders who were not deeply burdened by whether to create a decentralized secular state or a centralized non-secular state, were markedly less prone to use military force to resolve political differences than those who had to deal with such divisive issues. Chile and Argentina were more successful than Peru at consolidating the power of the state. At this stage the critical question is: What enabled states that were intensely divided and consistently resorted to military force to address their differences, to finally reach agreements and establish cultural bonds across networks of local power-holders? Ultimately, the consolidation of the power of the state depended on which interest group or region was able to create the strongest militia and overpower its rivals. Moreover, one of the first steps the victorious party typically took after defeating its adversaries was to consolidate the power of the military and transform it into the state’s armed forces. H A5: The greater the dependency on the use of military force to resolve political differences, the harder it was for political leaders to reach agreements, establish cultural bonds across networks of local power-holders, and create institutions for the extraction of resources required for the performance of a wide range of a state’s functions.

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The above hypothesis applies regardless of whether the hostility was generated by regional divisions within the state, by disputes on whether the power of the state should be centralized or distributed, or by disagreements on whether the Catholic Church should play a core role within the state. H A6: The sooner one of the rival groups within a state overcame the military might of its rival or rivals, the sooner the victorious group was able to consolidate the power of the state and place the armed forces under the authority of the state. The above hypothesis helps explain why the United States was markedly more effective at creating a political regime than Chile, Argentina, and Peru, and why Chile was substantially more successful at achieving the same end than its two Spanish American counterparts. By the start of the twentieth century, as the power of several Spanish American states was being consolidated, economic growth was starting to transform their respective political regimes. As economies grew and the size of the workforce increased, so did the demand that voter restrictions on men be either totally eliminated or reduced. This change applied equally to all the states in the Americas, except that because the economy of the United States grew sooner and faster than the economies of the Spanish American states, the removal of voting restrictions was carried out earlier in the former than in the latter. In either case, the general effect was the same: H A7: Economic growth led to an increase in the demand that suffrage restrictions on non-black and non-indigenous men be reduced or eliminated. H A8: Increase in the demand that suffrage restrictions be reduced or eliminated encouraged status-quo political parties to lessen or remove them in order to increase party membership. H A9: Reduction in suffrage restrictions led to an increase in voter participation. The above three hypotheses can be interconnected as follows: H A10: Economic growth led to an increase in the workforce, which in turn generated an increase in the demands that voting restrictions on

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non-black and non-indigenous men be removed. The increase in the demand led to the elimination of voting restrictions and to the steady growth in voting participation. Economic growth accompanied by an increase in voter participation created the potential for the emergence of non-status-quo political parties. Political systems responded differently to the increase of such potential. In Argentina, Chile, and Peru, status-quo political systems initially accepted the emergence of non-status-quo political parties. In the United States, the status-quo parties tried to broaden their political appeal in order to curtail the capacity of non-status-quo parties to rise and disrupt the system. H A11: Economic growth, increase in voter participation, and the initial inability or unwillingness on the part of established political parties to address the economic problems faced by the rapidly growing working class heightened the potential for the emergence of non-status-quo political parties. H A12: The involvement of non-status-quo parties in the political process increased the likelihood that they would be voted into power. This increase led to an increase in the likelihood that some form of martial means would be used, either to prevent non-status-quo parties from assuming power or to remove them from power were they to gain control of the government and implement radical political, economic, and social reforms.5 H A13: The likelihood that the military would intervene, either to prevent a political party from assuming power or to topple a government, was greater in states where non-status-quo political parties participated in the political process than in states where status-quo political parties broadened their political appeal in order to prevent the emergence of non-status-quo political parties. At first light, the inclusion of the United States in the same group may seem unjustified. Though the United States faced challenges from radical groups, it never reached the level of discord and internal violence the other three states encountered. And yet, the escalation of tensions within and between each party has not been ameliorated by the continued exclusion from the political arena of political parties that could actually represent the interests, values, and beliefs of those to the extreme left and extreme right of the Democratic and Republican parties. The continued

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attempts of both political parties to represent and control a multitude of conflicting voices will further increase and intensify the divide that for decades has afflicted the United States’ political, economic, and social environment. Hence, H A14: Representation of a wide range of conflicting political, economic, and social interests by one or two political parties may be effective in the short run, but not in the long run. In the long run, such political parties fail to eliminate the great divides and help engender greater political discord. Why is it that the United States was never plagued by military coups and never ruled by a military government, while throughout much of their post-independence history Spanish American states—some more than others—endured multiple coups and civil wars, most of which were followed by the establishment of a military government? In all democracies, there is a level of uncertainty about who will be elected and what policies the voted officials will implement. Uncertainty in democracies, however, is always bounded. For a political regime to be democratic, its elected officials must be able to exercise their constitutional power free of fear that non-elected officials, such as members of the military force, could override their actions. In other words, a political regime is not a democracy if the elected civilian officials do not control the military.6 Until 1861, no leader in the United States had ever used military force to impose his will on other political actors, protect his own political standing, or maintain the independence of his own state. From the very beginning, the leaders of the thirteen states agreed that they would respect each other’s rights, including the right to decide which inhabitants within each state would be authorized to vote. These agreements removed the need by any party to rely on military force. The only exception emerged in 1861, when southern states used military force against the newly elected president for fear that he would abrogate their rights to retain slavery. Despite this serious breakdown, throughout most of the history of the United States its various leaders, regardless of their ideological or political affiliation, accepted that no civilian or military official would ever use martial means to affect the internal nature of the state’s political regime. This canon was also adopted and protected by members of the US military. On the other hand, from the moment they attained independence from Spain, the leaders of Chile, Argentina, and Peru relied on military means

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to decide whether to centralize or decentralize the power of the state, determine whether to create a secular or a non-secular state, protect their regional interests, and choose who would rule. The extent to which they relied on martial means was determined by the intensity of the discord. The dependency on the use of military force did not vanish when leaders agreed what form the state would assume and whether to accept the Catholic Church as a central component of the state. The military used the increase in voter participation and the emergence of non-status-quo political leaders and parties to justify its continued governmental intervention, and eventually its decision to rule not just as a provisional government but also as a legitimate one. Stated differently, the sustained use of martial means—first by militias and then by an established and well-­ organized armed force—validated the role of the military as an essential actor in the domestic political affairs of Spanish American states. The armed forces did not lose their political legitimacy until it was revealed that they had repeatedly engaged in major human rights violations and lacked the means and knowledge to resolve entrenched domestic political, economic, and social problems. It was only then that the door to democracy opened in Chile, Peru, and Argentina. The argument can be restated as follows: H A15: The greater the use of military means to address political and economic differences during the early days after independence, the greater the likelihood that such means will be used later on. H A16: The longer political actors used military means during the 19th century to resolve their domestic political differences, the greater the value placed on the military as an independent domestic political actor. H A17: The greater the value placed on the military as an independent domestic political actor during the 19th century, the greater the commitment on the part of the military during the 20th century to overthrow a government or to prevent political parties or political leaders from participating in the political process. H A18: The longer the military intervened domestically to address political issues during the 20th century, the longer it took for civilian political leaders to resume control of the political system, and for political parties to renew their roles as legitimate political actors. H A19: The longer it took for civilian political leaders to resume control of the political system and for political parties to renew their roles as legitimate political actors, the longer it took for a culture of democracy to develop deep roots.

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As already explained, the Second World War, the Cold War, and the United States’ rivalry with the Soviet Union had different effects throughout the Americas. Without the involvement of civil right activists and political leaders, the Second World War and the Korean War alone would not have transformed the political system, but both events strengthened the already existing strong argument as to why African Americans merited equal rights. If African Americans were expected to risk their lives for their country, then they had the right to demand and be extended equal political and social rights. The above argument clearly does not apply to Argentina, Chile, and Peru. The worldwide “cold” conflict that ensued between liberalism and communism had a critical impact on how the United States viewed its southern counterparts in the Americas. Washington’s fear that Spanish American states would be overtaken by communists intensified after Fidel Castro and his revolutionary forces took over the reins of government in Cuba and developed close political, military, economic, and social ties with the Soviet Union. In short, notwithstanding the negative political effects initially generated by McCarthyism, the Second World War and the Korean War had positive effects on one aspect of the United States’ political system, while the Cold War and the emergence of Fidel Castro in Cuba had negative effects on the political systems of various states in Spanish America. H A20: The Second World War and the Korean War helped enhance the standing of African Americans and, as a result, eased the approval of the 1964 Civil Rights and 1965 Voting Rights Acts. The approval of both acts helped transform the United States into a democracy. On the other hand, another factor emerged: H A21: The greater the perceived likelihood that a leftist-radical political party or revolutionary group would assume power in Argentina, Chile or Peru – either through the democratic process or through force during the Cold War, and especially after the rise of the Fidel Castro regime in Cuba – the greater the likelihood that the military, with Washington’s explicit or tacit support, would prevent such a development, gain control of the government for an unlimited period, curb political liberties, and prohibit competition between political parties.

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From the last hypothesis it can also be inferred that, H A22: The Cold War and Castro’s rise to power in Cuba delayed the process of democratization amongst states in which political liberalization had gained strength. After a lengthy period, however, military regimes agreed to step down and call for new elections. Thus, it could be postulated that H A23: In states in which the armed forces had assumed control of the government, their failures to generate steady economic growth and the end of the Cold War helped restart the process of democratization. Lastly, democracies depend on the creation and protection of a culture of democracy. A people’s willingness to accept a culture of democracy depends on whether the needs of the majority are served well. Hence: H A24: The longer the economic needs of the majority of the people are well-served under a democratic regime, the greater their willingness to embrace a culture of democracy. The longer the people embrace the culture of democracy, the stronger their opposition to authoritarianism and the greater the likelihood that the regime will remain democratic. Before closing this section, it is necessary to try to ascertain the effects of ethnic and racial cleavages on the capacity of a state to build a democratic regime. In the previous chapter, it was argued the absence of a large indigenous population does not, in and by itself, facilitate the establishment of a democratic regime. One could postulate a similar argument with regard to the absence of a large African American population. On the other hand, if one were to consider the obstacles the political regimes of the United States and Peru encountered through the decades, one could postulate that the sizable presence of a black or indigenous population actually delayed the democratization process. Blacks in the United States had to wait until the enactment of the civil right acts of the mid-1960s to be legally recognized as equals. Moreover, because of literacy requirements, most of Peru’s indigenous people were excluded from voicing their voices at the ballot box until 1978, when the new constitution removed the restrictions. Hence, all other things being equal,

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H A25: The presence of a sizable indigenous or black population in a society that is predominantly white and mestizo, or white delays the development of a democratic regime.

Conclusion With the end of the Cold War and communism no longer being perceived as a critical threat, attempts to create democratic regimes throughout Spanish America gained momentum. The so-called “third wave of democratization,” however, was born more out of discontent with the failure by military regimes to solve the grave economic problems that afflicted Spanish American states than by deep public commitments to creating political systems governed by democratic norms and rules. No longer able to justify their political involvement, military regimes gave in to domestic and international pressures to authorize the establishment of democratic governance. The reduction in the domestic political role played by military regimes, however, did not always give way to the creation of effective democratic systems. Failures by a few embryonic democracies to resolve the economic problems that had afflicted the military regimes of earlier years led to the rise of authoritarian populist regimes. The Hugo Chávez phenomenon spread rapidly into Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Bolivia, and temporarily to Argentina. In every instance, the common claim by the emerging authoritarian leaders, and their closest allies, was that they possessed the ability and judgment that would enable them to build equitable and just socioeconomic systems. In order to strengthen the power and authority of the executive power, such leaders and their closest allies typically relied on democratic instruments to diminish the capabilities of potential adversaries to pose viable political challenges. The end result has been the creation of populist authoritarian regimes.7 The preceding statement sets the path for the voicing of one final conjecture. This book sought to describe the processes of state creation and regime formation of four states in the two American continents with the intent of postulating a general argument that explains why certain regimes became democratic while others did not, and why among those state that are democratic, some are more democratic than others. Whether such a goal has been achieved is for the reader to decide. More significant at the moment is the vision that drove the analysis carried out throughout the book.

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This book is built on the conviction that creating democracies is a worthy endeavor. Such a belief remains firm, but this study has reaffirmed the initial view that the survival of well-established democratic regimes is not assured, nor is there any guarantee that new ones will arise and become members of the community of democracies. Every democratic system carries within itself the seeds of its own decline and possible demise. Every democratic system is built on the assumption that if given a chance, every political leader has the potential to be corrupted by power. The intent of every political leader in either a democratic or a non-democratic system is to protect her or his own power and diminish the capacity of her or his adversaries to increase their own power. The decisive difference among democratic systems, and between democratic and non-democratic systems, is the degree to which political leaders can exploit the existing norms and rules designed to prevent the abuse of power—the stricter the rules and the longer they have been enforced, the greater the capacity of a democratic regime to survive and prosper. It is no coincidence that in each of the Spanish American cases that have been transformed into authoritarian populist regimes, the first step their political leaders took was to rely on democratic means to challenge the existing norms and rules in order to increase their own power. And there is the United States. As recently as 2016, it would have seemed unfounded to suggest that the United States was moving closer to creating a populist authoritarian regime. But by 2019 such concern seemed less farfetched. The Democracy Index compiled by the Economist Intelligence Unit notes that between 2008 and 2017 the number of “full democracies” had decreased from 30 to 21, while the number of “flawed democracies” for that same period had increased from 39 to 61. Among those regimes that have descended to the category of “flawed democracy” is the one that inhabits the United States. Donald Trump’s election to the presidency has reinforced the belief among political analysts that though the constitutional obstacles present in the United States are too powerful to enable any one leader to transform its political regime into an authoritarian one, during the first two years of his presidency he has borrowed the playbook utilized by authoritarian leaders who used populism to undermine the structures of their own democratic regimes. The 2020 elections will reveal whether such fear is justified. It is difficult to predict whether the trend toward populist authoritarianism will continue. Ultimately, whether it does or does not depends on the capacity of existing and emerging democratic regimes to resolve the

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economic and social dislocations generated by the increasing globalization of capitalism. To suggest that the overall net effect of the globalization of capitalism has been positive is to overlook a crucial reality: in a democracy those who are affected negatively by the globalization of capitalism or are convinced that the culprit of their own personal economic displacement is capitalism have the power to generate and support populist antidemocratic counterforces. Though it is unlikely that such forces will stop globalization, they will weaken or wreck democratic regimes unless those with the capacity to stop the downfall process recognize that their greed for power may ultimately lead to their own self-destruction.

Notes 1. Scott Mainwaring and Aníbal Pérez-Liñón, “Latin American Democratization since 1978,” in Frances Hagopian and Scott P. Mainwaring, eds., The Third Wave of Democratization in Latin America (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 21. 2. Ibid., 25 and 30. 3. Scott Mainwaring and Frances Hagopian, “Introduction: The Third Wave of Democratization in Latin America,” in Hagopian and Mainwaring, eds., The Third Wave of Democratization in Latin America in Frances Hagopian and Scott P. Mainwaring, eds., The Third Wave of Democratization in Latin America (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 5. 4. One of the reviewers of the manuscript suggested that the term hypothesis be replaced with the terms “lessons learned,” because the hypotheses presented throughout the book have not been tested. This writer begs to differ as to what a hypothesis is. A hypothesis is: “A supposition or proposed explanation made on the basis of limited evidence as a starting point for further investigation.” The clear objective of this study is to present ­arguments based on the study of a limited number of cases with the expectation that subsequent studies will be conducted to test the validity of the proposed hypotheses. 5. The fact that the US government never used the armed forces to prevent the rise of a radical political party does not mean that it did not rely on other means to achieve said goal. 6. Philippe Schmitter and Terry Karl, “What Democracy Is … and is Not,” Journal of Democracy (Summer 1991): 10. 7. See Alex Roberto Hybel, The Challenges of Creating Democracies in the Americas (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019).

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Bibliography Hybel, Alex Robert. 2019. The Challenges of Creating Democracies in the Americas: A Comparative Analysis of the United States, Colombia, Venezuela, Costa Rica, Guatemala and Mexico. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Schmitter, Philippe, and Terry Karl. 1991. What Democracy Is … and Is Not. Journal of Democracy 2 (Summer): 75–88. Print.

Index1

A Adams, John on democracy, 3 African Americans (Blacks), 232, 233 and slavery, 75, 77 and the 1789 Constitution, 75 Allende, Salvador, 211 Argentina and Alfonsín, Raul, 177 armed forces, 13 and Articles 20 and 25 of Constitution, 172 and Asian and Russian financial crisis, 136 and black population, 170 and Buenos Aires, 123, 161–167, 170–172, 174, 179, 180 and Congress, 174–177, 179, 193n175 and Conservatives, 142, 173 and Constitution of 1853, 167, 171–173, 176, 180, 196n215, 197n235

and Convertibility Plan, 177 and corruption, 179 and coups, 175, 177, 181 and democracy, 117, 172–182 and Diaguitas, 160 and Díaz de Solis, Juan, 160 and federal government, 167, 168, 172, 195n201 and federalists, 163, 164, 166, 167, 194n184 and Fernandez, Cristina, 178, 179 and gauchos, 162, 170 and Guaranis, 160, 161 and “hegemonic” system, 168 and indigenous population, 180 and Justicialist doctrine, 175 and Kirchner, Nestor, 178 and Law of Residence, 173 and Law of Social Defense, 173 and Malvinas (Falkland) war, 177, 181 and Menem, Carlos, 177, 178 and Mexican pesos crisis, 178

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s) 2020 A. R. Hybel, The Making of Flawed Democracies in the Americas, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21178-3

239

240 

INDEX

Argentina (cont.) and military, 142, 164, 166, 167, 171, 174–178, 180, 181 and mineral wealth, 160, 171 and miscegenation, 169, 170 and Morenistas, 163 and Peron, Juan Domingo, 175–177 political regime, 5, 9 and porteños, 161, 163, 165, 193n170 and Primera Junta, 163 and Radical Civic Union, 173, 174, 180 and Rivadavia, Bernardo, 164, 165 and rivalry between federalists and unitarists, 123, 164 Roca, General Julio A., 169 Rosas, Juan Manuel de, 165–167, 169, 171, 194n184 and Saavedistras, 163 and Sarmiento, Domingo Faustino, 172, 174, 196n215 and slave trade, 170 and Sociedad Rural Argentina, 169 state, 1, 4–6, 10, 13 and suffrage, 144, 172, 174, 180 Supreme War School, 174 and Unitary Party, 163 and United Provinces of the Rio de la Plata, 164, 166 and Urquiza, General Justo José, 167 and Viceroyalty of La Plata, 162 and Yrigoyen, Hipólito, 174, 175, 180 Articles of Confederation and Article II, 67 and Congress, 67, 69 Axioms, 7 B Bailey v. Patterson rule of 1962, 94 Belaúnde, Fernando, 214, 215 Brazil, 6

British colonizers beliefs, values, and ideas, 10 religion, 11 Brown v Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, 94 and “separate but equal,” 94 C Catholic Church and the military, 13 and the unitary state, 12 Catholicism as official creed, 218 Cessation of territory, 69 Chavez, Hugo, 234 Chile and Alessandri, Arturo, 147–151, 153 and Alessandri, Jorge, 149, 159 and Allende, Salvador, 149, 151–153, 155, 156, 159, 160, 191n139 and Araucano (Mapuche), 139 and Aylwin, Patricio, 156 and breakup of democracy, 148 and Bulnes, General Manuel, 143 and captaincy general, 121 and Catholic Church, 142, 157 and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 151 and centrifugal political system, 148, 149, 152 and Christian Democratic Party, 156 and Communist Party, 147, 159 and competitive oligarchy, 146, 148 and Congress, 142, 144, 146, 147, 150, 152, 154, 155, 158, 159 and Council of Regence (Spain), 141 and democracy, 117, 155, 156, 160, 181 and Ferdinand II, 182n10 and Ibañez, General Carlos, 148, 155

 INDEX 

and indigenous population (also Native Americans), 139, 140, 161 and Kennedy, John F. (also Kennedy Administration), 150, 151 and military, 122, 141–143, 147, 154–160, 174, 181 and mineral wealth, 157, 188n91 and miscegenation, 140 and murder of General René Schneider, 152 and National Guard, 143 and National Junta, 141 and National Party, 144, 159 and Perez, Jose Joaquín, 144 and Peruvian earthquake, 141 and Pinochet, General Augusto, 153, 155–157, 159, 160, 181 and Popular Union, 151 and Portales, Diego, 143 and Radical Party, 144, 175 and Socialist Party, 159 and Soviet Union, 150 and Spanish Crown, 118, 120, 121, 140 and state during colonial period, 139–141 and tenant farmers, 140 and visit by Fidel Castro, 150, 181 and voting rights, 172 and War of the Pacific, 125, 128, 145, 154, 158, 184n43, 188n91 and wheat production, 141 political regime, 9 state, 1, 4–6, 13 Christianity, 63 Churchill, Winston, 3 on democracy, 3 Civil Rights Acts of 1960, 94 of 1964, 95, 100 of 1965, 95, 100, 101

241

Civil War, 73, 80–83, 88, 89, 93, 97, 98, 100, 108 and African American men, 89 Colonial period pre, 8 Colonizers, 5, 11 values, beliefs, and ideas, 8 Common characteristics fifth, 225 first, 225 fourth, 225 second, 225 third, 225 Competitive oligarchy, 68, 73 Confederation, 67, 69, 70, 79 Congress and custom duty on imports, 68 and 14th and 15th Amendments, 80, 99, 100 Connecticut Compromise, 71 Constitution, 59, 67, 72, 73, 75, 77, 78, 81, 94, 101, 102 and Article II, Section I, 72 Conversion of thirteen colonies, 67 Corporate contributions and Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, 106, 107 and Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, 106 and Buckley, James, 106 and Citizens United, 106, 107 and Federal Campaign Act, 106 and Federal Corrupt Act, 105 and Federal Election Campaign Act, 106 and Hatch Act, 105 and Roosevelt, Theodore, 105 and Tillman Act, 105 Creation of legitimate state Argentina, 205 Chile, 205 Peru, 205

242 

INDEX

Creation of stable democracy (democratization) Argentina, 205, 217 Chile, 205, 217 Peru, 205, 217 Culture of democracy, 231, 233 D Dahl, Robert closed hegemonic regimes, 27 competitive oligarchies, 27, 30 conditions necessary to develop a polyarchy, 36 definition of democracy, 26 inclusive hegemonies, 27 Declaration of independence, 67, 83 A Declaration of Sentiments, 88 Democracy contradictions, 3 culture of, 44, 46, 47 impact of economic growth on, 38 impact of ethnic cleavages on, 43 impact of regional cleavages on, 43 and ranking of US, 108 and the Electoral College, 102 and the House of Representatives, 102, 104 seeds of own destruction, 3 theories of, 17, 34–48 in the United States, 59, 93, 95, 99–108 and the US Senate, 102, 104, 105 Democracy Index Argentina, 205 Chile, 205 Peru, 205 Democratic regime creation (formation) of, 1, 5–7, 14 stability of, 1, 5, 7

Democratization international effects on, 14, 15 theory of, 3 third wave of, 14 Demos the nature of the, 31 Diamond, Larry civil society and democracy, 45, 46 conditions necessary to generate a democracy, 46 control over the military in a democracy, 28 Difference amongst democratic systems, 235 Difference between democratic and non-democratic systems, 235 Dominguez, Jorge definition of state, 17 Douglass, Frederick and African American men, 89 and rights of women to vote, 89 Duverger, Maurice, 31 competition within a party, 31 E Economic growth impact of economic growth, 13 on voting, 13 English Common Law, 87 and the role of women, 87 F Federal system, 12, 13 Ferrero, Guglielmo role of opposition in a democracy, 28 First World War and the 19th Amendment, 90 and the role of women, 88, 99 Fujimori, Alberto, 215, 221n19

 INDEX 

G Garcia, Alan, 215 Gerrymandering, 103 Grant, Ulysses and Native Americans, 81, 82 and Peace Policy, 82 Great Depression, 92, 98 H Haynes, Jeff conditions necessary to develop a democracy in Latin America, 38 Huntington, Samuel patterns of political modernization, 22 Hypotheses on democratization, 205, 223 on non-status quo political parties, 229 on state creation, 205, 225, 227 on the effects of a culture of democracy, 233 on the effects of communism, 232 on the effects of Fidel Castro’s rise to power, 233 on the effects of political parties, 229 on the effects of reduction in suffrage restrictions, 228 on the effects of religion, 226 on the effects of rivalries between groups with competing ideologies, 230; as to what type of structure the state should have, 224 on the effects of rivalries between interest groups, 227 on the effects of the Cold War, 233 on the effects of the First World War, 89–90, 99 on the effects of the military, 227, 229, 233

243

on the effects of the Second World War, 232 on the effects of voter participation, 228, 229, 231 I Independence, 1, 5, 8, 10, 13 Indian Citizenship Pact, 90 Indigenous population Argentina, 216 characteristics of, 10 Chile, 216 Peru, 216 size of, 8, 10, 11 structure of, 8 J Jefferson, Thomas, 73, 110n33 and the Federalist and Democratic-­ Republicans groups, 73 Johnson, Andrew and 1866 Civil Rights Act, 80 and 14th and 15th Amendments, 80 K Kansas-Nebraska Act, 76, 78 Karl, Terry Resource Curse (Paradox of Plenty Theory), 24, 25 Venezuela’s oil dependence, 25 Katzenstein, Peter strong and weak state, 18 Kennedy, John F., 94, 95 and 1963 civil rights speech, 94 King James, 60, 61 and Anglican Church, 61 King, Martin Luther, 94, 95 and “I have a dream,” speech, 95

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INDEX

L Latinobarómetro Argentina, 213 Chile, 213, 216 Peru, 216 Lincoln, Abraham and Abandoned Lands, 80 and 1860 elections, 78 and emancipation and sanctity of slavery in the South, 79, 80 Freedmen, 80 and Ten Percent Plan, 80 and The Bureau of Refugees, 80 Linz, Juan, 37, 40, 41, 43, 44, 47 conditions necessary to develop a democracy, 37 difference between state and nation, 21 Lipset, Seymour Martin, 22, 37 persistence of American values, 21 Locke, John and freedom, 68 and slavery, 68 London Company, 60 López-Alvels, Fernando, 25, 52n37 process of state formation in Latin America, 25 state creation hypotheses, 24 Lowi, Theodore dimensions of state strength, 18, 19 M Machiavelli on democracy, 2 Madison, James on democracy, 3 Massachusetts Bay Company, 61 Merkel, Wolfang conceptualization of democracy, 27, 30 delegative democracy, 29 domain democracy, 29

exclusive democracy, 29, 30, 33 illiberal democracy, 29, 30 Methodology process tracing, 4; theoretical argument, 4 sequential relationships, 4 Mexican-American War and impact on US economy, 97 Napoleonic Wars, 74 Middle Colonies, 64, 65 and composition and size of population, 64 Military and communism, 14 coups, 6 force; impact on democratization, 6, 12, 13 impact on state creation, 14 Military coups in Argentina, 208, 211, 214, 230 in Chile, 208, 211, 214, 224, 230 in Peru, 208, 214, 224, 230 and their absence in the United States, 230 Mineral wealth Argentina, 207, 218 Chile, 207, 218 Peru, 207, 218 Missouri Compromise, 75 Mitchell, Timothy boundary between state and society, 18 N National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), 89 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NACCP), 93, 94 Native Americans and composition of population, 62, 63, 82 and disease, 62, 63

 INDEX 

Natural resources, 8, 10 New England and composition and size of population in colonial period, 64 and cult of true womanhood, 89 New Jersey Plan, 71 Nineteenth Amendment, 86, 90, 108 passage of, 90 Non-democratic, conditions, 31, 33 Northern states, and industrialization, 69, 75, 76, 84, 85 Number of presidential elections Argentina, 205, 206 Chile, 205, 206 Peru, 205, 206 O O’Donnell, Guillermo, 33 democratic oligarchy, 30, 31 On the effects of economic growth, 228, 229 P Paine, Thomas, 66 and Common Sense, 66 Pax-Americana, 98 Pequot, 63 Peru and Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana (APRA), 131, 132, 134, 135 and audiencia, 121 and Belaúnde, Fernando, 132–135 and Bolivar, Simón, 123 and Catholic Church, 118, 121 and Civilista Party, 127, 129, 130 and Congress, 123, 126–128, 130–133, 136, 138 and constitutions, 123, 127, 129, 132, 134, 138 and corruption, 136, 138 and coups d’état, 129 and curacas, 121

245

and debt service, 126, 127, 135, 137 and democracy, 117, 129–139 and Democratic Party, 129, 130 and economy of scale and vertical integration, 120 and encomienda, 119 and ethnic cleavages, 136, 137 and Ferdinand VII, 122, 141 and First World War, 130 and Fujimori, Alberto, 135, 136, 138 and Garcia, Alan, 135, 136 and “Grace Contract” (also Peruvian Corporation), 128 and guano production, 126 and Guzmán, Abimael, 134, 138 and Haya de la Torre, Victor, 131, 132, 134 and Incan Empire, 119 and indigenous people (Amerindians), 138, 170 and International Petroleum Company (IPC), 133 and Leguía; Augusto, 130, 131 and liberal elites, 124 and military, 122, 123, 126, 132–134, 136–138 and mineral economy, 119 and mita, 120 and nitrate, 127, 128, 137, 145, 185n59, 185n61, 188n91 and political parties, 127, 130, 137 political regime, 9 and protectionist elites, 124 and Reformist Democratic Party, 130 and regional differences, 184n36 and Second World War, 131 and 1746 earthquake, 121 and Shining Path, 134, 135, 138 and slavery, 120, 125, 137 state, 4, 6, 9, 10, 13 and state during colonial period, 117–122 and Vargas Llosa, Mario, 135 and Velasco Alvarado, Juan, 133 and War of the Pacific, 129, 137

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INDEX

Q Qualifications to vote, 70 and white men, 70

and state creation, 96 theory of state creation, 20, 51n18 Role of military (armed forces) in Argentina, 208, 211–213, 218, 231 in Chile, 208, 210, 211, 213, 218, 224, 230, 231 in Peru, 208, 209, 213, 218, 224, 230, 231 in the United States, 230, 236n5 and voter participation, 229–231 Role of religion in Argentina, 176 in Chile, 137, 142, 143, 147 in Peru, 129 in the United States, 226 Roosevelt, Franklin and Emergency Banking Act, 91 and Glass-Steagall Banking Bill, 91 and Home Owners’ Loan Act, 91 and National Industrial Recovery Act, 91 and Public Works Administration, 91 and Social Security Act, 91 and Tennessee Valley Authority Act, 91 and Works Progress Administration, 91

R Racial differences, 76 and cultural beliefs, 76 Reconstruction era and Mississippi Plan, 81 and responses by Southern states, 81, 92 Region divisions, 12 economic significance, 11 Rokkan, Stein, 19, 96 stages of state creation, 20

S Safford, Frank, 23, 25 state building in Latin America, 52n37 Sartori, Giovanni, 29–31 definition of democracy, 29 elite theory of democracy, 34 majority rule, 28 Sassen, Saskia evolution of United States as a State, 21 and lawmaking though judiciary, 84

Plato on democracy, 2 Political participation, 13 Argentina, 209, 211 Chile, 209, 211 Peru, 209 Political parties, 12, 14 Democratic Party, 77 emergence of, 12, 13 Republican Party, 73, 77, 78 Whig Party, 65, 77 Political regime, 59, 69, 73, 92, 95, 101, 108 Populist authoritarian regime, 234, 235 Powhatan nation (Algonquians), 60 President (US), 71–73, 77–80, 91, 94, 97, 100–104 election of, 72, 73, 97, 104 Property and liberty, 67, 68, 78 and suffrage, 68, 74 Puritans, 61, 62 and their beliefs, 62

 INDEX 

and new form of capitalism (Imperialism), 85 and world economic rivalry, 85 Satisfaction with democracy Argentina, 213, 214 Chile, 211, 213, 214 Peru, 213, 214 Schumpeter, Joseph exclusion of participants, 32 The Second Bank of the United States (BUS), 74 Second World War, 91, 93, 98 and impact on African Americans, 93 Secular state, 226, 227 Separate Car Act of 1890, 81, 89, 92–93 and Plessy v Ferguson case, 93 Shining Path, 215 Skcopol, Theda state autonomy, 19 Skowronek, Stephen and changes in the American economy, 84 constitutional federalism, 23 and creation of administrative bureaucracies, 84 creation of US state structure, 22 impact of forces of industrialization on state creation, 23 and political parties and courts, 83 and post-Civil War era, 83 Social constructivism, 42 Southern Colonies, 64 and composition and size of population, 64 Southern states and differences with Northern states, 69, 75, 76 and slavery and right to vote, 81 Spanish American colonies, 5, 11 leaders, 5, 12 states, 4–6, 10, 12–14

247

Spanish colonizers values, beliefs, and ideas, 10 Stamp Act, 66 Stanton, Elizabeth Cady and Lucretia Mott, 87 and Susan Anthony, 89 State consolidation of power of, 7 creation and political regime formation, 8, 9 failed, 1, 7 legitimate, 7, 8 obstacle to state creation (formation), 5, 8 State creation theories, 17, 19–26 State legislatures, 69, 71, 72 Stepan, Alfred, 37 conditions necessary to develop a democracy, 37 difference between state and nation, 21 Strong Principle of Equality, 32, 33, 95 and democracy, 95 Sugar Act, 66 T Territorial expansion and protectionism, 73 and sectionalism, 73 and slavery, 73 and state rights, 73 Third wave of democratization, 234 Tilly, Charles, 17–19 definition of state, 17–19 theory of state creation, 19–26 Truman, Harry and Marshall Plan, 92 and Truman Doctrine, 92 Trump, Donald, 235

248 

INDEX

U Unitary and non-secular state versus federal and secular state, 218, 226–227 Unitary (centralized) system, 12, 19, 20, 85, 123, 158, 208, 218 United States Civil and Voting Rights, 14 economic cleavages, 12 independence, 10, 13 Northern Colonies, 10, 11 political regime, 1, 5, 9 settlers, 10 Southern Colonies, 10 thirteen colonies, 10, 11 V Vargas Llosa, Mario, 215 Vattel, Eric sovereignty, 18 Viceroyalty of New Granada, 121

and relationship with Spanish Crown, 118 of Río de la Plata, 121, 161, 164, 165 Virginia Company, 60, 61 Virginia Plan, 71 Voting as a natural right, 70 and anarchy, 70 and taxation, 68 and voting rights, 72, 73, 86, 95, 108 W Wars their impact on democratization, 14 their impact on state formation, 14 Washington, George, 68 Whig Party, 77 Wilson, Woodrow and First World War, 86, 91, 92 and women’s rights, 90