alan knight - democratic and revolutionary traditions in latin america

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Democratic and Revolutionary Traditions in Latin America Author(s): Alan Knight Source: Bulletin of Latin American Research, Vol. 20, No. 2 (Apr., 2001), pp. 147-186Published by: on behalf of Wiley Society for Latin American Studies (SLAS)Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3339607Accessed: 10-05-2015 02:54 UTC

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Bulletin of Latin American Research, Vol. 20, No. 2, pp. 147-186, 2001

Democratic and Revolutionary

Traditions in Latin America*

ALAN KNIGHT

St Antony's College, Oxford OX2 6JF

This article seeks to identify and explain the historical links between democracy and revolution in Latin America. It first defines and analyses 'democratic' and 'revolutionary' traditions in the continent. It notes the precocity of nineteenth-century Latin American liberalism which, stimulated by the independence struggles, carried implications for the subsequent onset of democracy in the twentieth century. It then presents a typology of five twentieth-century political permutations (social democracy, revolutionary populism, statist populism, socialist revolution, and authoritarian reaction), seeking to tease out the corresponding relationships between the two 'traditions'. It concludes (inter alia) that the current triumph of liberal democracy in Latin America, while in part attributable to historical precedent, is also significantly contingent, and dependent on the apparent exhaustion of the revolutionary tradition.

Keywords: Authoritarianism, Democracy, Liberalism, Populism, Revolution, Rights, Tradition.

This article tries to unravel two crucial threads in Latin America's political history - democracy and revolution, their respective 'traditions' and mutual

relationships. It begins with some some conceptual clarification. For, while

starting articles with a pernickety 'naming of parts' is not necessarily good rhetorical practice, in this case, when we are handling several slippery parts -

revolution, democracy, tradition - it is probably as well to make the attempt, in order to avoid dropping things and generating confusion. Foilowing a brief

clarification, therefore, I offer a broad and schematic analysis of democratic and

revolutionary traditions in Latin America which invites comparison with other cases.

* This paper was written in response to an invitation to participate in a cross-national panel on 'Democratic Traditions and Revolutionary Traditions' at the American Historical Association 114th Annual Meeting, Chicago, January 2000. It has been rewritten in light of helpful readers' comments.

? 2001 Society for Latin American Studies. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA. 147


Alan Knight

1. Democracy, revolution, tradition

Of the three constituent concepts, 'democracy' is the most fully theorized and, I would say, theorizable. That is to say, it is a useful - as well as an actual -

concept; whereas revolution and, a fortiori, tradition, are less well worked and, I would suggest, less useful; 'tradition', in fact, is often more trouble than it's worth. The rough consensus among political scientists today is to take liberal

representative democracy, often defined in Dahlian ('polyarchic') terms, as the norm: this definition would embrace the twin principles of (i) free association and

expression (civic rights) and (ii) electoral participation (political rights).1 Of course, this definition is not meant to be normative (we are not saying this is best

system), or exclusive (that it is the only form of democracy, either conceptually or

practically). Indeed, a principal concern of this article is to consider how alternative forms of 'democracy' ('illiberal', 'non-bourgeois', 'participatory') have been conceived, not least by regimes of 'revolutionary' provenance and 'tradition'. Thus, critics of bourgeois democracy have touted the claims -

whether in theory or practice - of popular, participatory, organic, direct, social, and workers' democracy. They have justified these claims, it seems to me, in terms of two supposed advantages: first, superior representation (representation that is more direct, transparent, and inherently democratic); and, second, superior provision of welfare, of socio-economic benefits (thus,'social rights', the third of MarshalPs famous triad, are grafted on to civic and political rights) (Marshall, 1977). Beneficiaries will thereby enjoy the political rights of Athenian citizens coupled with the welfare provision of, say, the Swedish welfare state in its heyday. In turn, critics of these critics have in turn called - in Enrique Krauze's words - for a 'democacy without adjectives', that is, a plain, unadorned, procedural, Dahlian democracy (Krauze, 1986).

The previous paragraph contained the crucial qualifier 'in theory or practice'. Throughout the discussion it is clearly necessary to distinguish between, on the one hand, rhetorical claims made for either greater political representation or fairer socioeconomic arrangements, and, on the other hand, practical outcomes, which may be quite different. It may also be interesting (if difficult) to try to assess whether, when theory and practice diverge, such divergence is the result of:

(a) initial - or 'structuraP? - hypocrisy: the theory was never seriously entertained in the first place; the Bolsheviks never contemplated a workers' democracy; it was merely a rhetorical ploy; or

(b) creeping - or 'contingent'? - hypocrisy, alias 'the revolution betrayed'; an instance of the old Actonian principle,2 whereby, for example, the Bolsheviks, Stalin in particular, though initially sincere, succumbed to the lure of power and the pressures of paranoia; or

1 See Dahl (1971) and, for glosses and operationalizations of the definition, Held (1996, pp. 201-8); Huntington (1991, pp. 6-9); Lopez-Alves (2000, p. 4).

2 'All power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely'.

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Democratic and Revolutionary Traditions in Latin America

(c) ineluctable circumstances; the iogic of the revolution'; what might be called the MacMillan principle;4 that is, the revolution blown off course by hostile

storms, whether of domestic or external origin (e.g., the Kornilov rebellion, the Allied intervention in Russia); all of which oblige initially sincere revolutionaries to renege on their early promises.

Needless to say, these three interpretations - to which I shall briefly return in conclusion - are not mutually exclusive; most revolutionary situations embody aspects of all three.

But there is an important and easily overlooked rider to this (familiar) argument. Revolutionary regimes are not the only ones to dispiay a yawning gap between theory and practice, between the 'public' and 'hidden' transcripts (Scott, 1990). Nor are they the only ones to try to bridge the gap by specious reasoning and hollow rhetoric. Liberal-bourgeois regimes are also pretty good at claiming a false fidelity to their self-proclaimed (democratic) principles. Slavery coexisted for decades with the Bill of Rights; women were denied the vote - even in 'consolidated' democracies - for even longer (Collier, 1999, pp. 26-7; Markoff, 1996, pp. 55-6). Today, as (Dahlian) democracy has again become the norm in Latin America (only Cuba and, some would say, Venezuela now buck the trend), it is a democracy of many colours, which, apart from its inherent fragility, embodies significant failings: less than transparent elections;6 manipulated media; endemic corruption (Little and Posada-Carbo, 1996, chaps. 3, 9-12); and recurrent political violence (Koonings and Kruijt, 1999).8 Indeed, it may be true

Knight (1986,1, p. 302) which stresses the importance of 'factors' (exigencies, motives, loyalties) which cannot be explained purely or even primarily in terms of prior (structural?) 'factors' (e.g., class, ideology, geography, ethnicity), but which have to be seen in terms of the contingent logic of the Revolution. Indeed, it might be roughly generalized that as revolutions proceed, so the prior structural factors lose importance relative to the contingent. What did politicians most fear, British Prime Minister Harold MacMillan was asked? To which he replied: 'events, my dear boy, events'. It is worth stressing that the question of fragility, however crucial in practical terms, has to be analytically separated from the question of democratic status: you can have genuine - but fragile - democracies, just as you can have strong and durable pseudo- democracies: see Huntington (1991, pp. 10-11). Mexico, whose 'transition' to democracy has been the most halting and ambiguous of all the major Latin American countries, has nevertheless advanced significantly in terms of clean, competitive elections, hence of greater political pluralism, which the presidential election of July 2000 seemed to confirm. State elections (e.g., Tabasco in October 2000) are another matter. As of 1998, 61% of Mexicans expected elections to be 'dirty' (as against 33% who expected them to be clean); Costa Ricans and Chileans had quite different perceptions: Costa Ricans: 28% (dirty) and 63% (clean), Chileans 23% and 68%: see Hewlett/MORI (1998, p. 34). As elections are cleaned up, so critical focus has switched to the broader context of political campaigning and electioneering, notably party funding and media coverage: for example Orme (1997); Skidmore (1993). Indeed, there is some suggestive evidence from Mexico that, as political competition and pluralism increase, so political violence (e.g., attacks on party activists and journalists) also increases; thus, civil and political rights do not march ahead in

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Alan Knight

that South America's most democratic country (Colombia) is also its most violent. Hence, students of Latin American politics have resorted to their own academic qualifiers (counterparts of the politicians' 'workers', 'social', and

'organic' democracy): 'hybrid regimes', 'delegative democracy', 'low-intensity democracy' - all of which seek to convey the outstanding 'democratic deficit' which Latin America suffers (Von Mettenheim and Malloy, 1998, pp. 4-6, 176). Thus, the gap between theory and practice, public and hidden transcript, is not confined to 'progressive', 'socialist' or 'workers' states. (We could debate the relative size of the gap in different contexts; but this could easily become an exercise in cheap Cold War point-scoring).

If 'democracy' is complicated but relatively clear, the same cannot be said of 'revolution' and 'tradition'. As regards 'tradition, we need not (fortunately) get ensnared in the trammels of 'tradition and modernity', those two conceptual impostors who have for too long conned the public and who, it seems, have

recently enjoyed something of a comeback. For in this context, 'tradition' does not denote a bundle of all-embracing and supposedly structurally-related attributes (Parsonian 'pattern variables', if you like) locked in timeless dichotomous tensions with their 'modern' counterparts (Parsons, Shils, and

Olds, 1962, p. 76ff.). Rather, I take our our ('revolutionary' and 'democratic') traditions to be living, contingent, idiosyncratic, historical organisms, evolving over time, and shaped by particular spatial and temporal environments. (Given the Darwinian metaphor, we might even wish to call them 'memes') (Blackmore, 1999). Thus, in Latin America, we might talk of the Mexican and Cuban

revolutionary traditions; or the Uruguayan and Costa Rican democratic traditions; and each would comprise a sui generis (though possibly connected)

l

lockstep: Foweraker and Landman (1997, pp. 95-7). A more serious and pervasive factor - in Mexico, Colombia, and Peru in particular - is 'narco-violence'. Of course, the impact of drugs is an independent variable which cannot be blamed on demo? cracy; we are dealing with an unfortunate temporal coincidence (democratization + drug boom). However, it could be argued that the political systems of these countries have proved deficient in mitigating the violence; in some cases, there is clear evidence of collusion between ('democratic') politicians and narco interests.

9 Most violent in terms of both outright guerrilla activity and quotidian violence (murders and kidnappings). Critics will point to Colombia's longstanding democratic deficit; but the country has experienced over fifty years of civilian rule, regular competitive elections, and party alternation in power.

10 I choose these cases because they are familiar stereotypes. The case of Uruguayan democracy is interesting, since it figured as the classic - consolidated? - democracy (the 'Switzerland of Latin America') in older texts: e.g., Dix (1973, pp. 294-5). Within a few years it had succumbed to what was, in terms of political prisoners per capita, the harshest authoritarian regime in Latin America: Rouquie (1987, pp. 224-5, 248-57).

11 Connected particularly by virtue of the demonstration effect which seems to breed political emulation throughout Latin America (perhaps the world): an authoritarian wave in the 1960s and early 1970s; a democratic wave since the 1980s: Huntington, (1991, pp 31-3, 45); Markoff (1996, pp. 81, 86). For analysis of the recent emulatory trend, see Whitehead (1996).




set of principles, experiences, myths, texts, 'transcripts', songs, symbols, heroes, memories, assumptions, and narratives. In accordance with the trend toward

provincial and local history, we might wish to disaggregate further and refer, for

example, to the revolutionary traditions of Cuba's Sierra Maestra, or of Mexico's

insurgent zones: Chihuahua, Morelos, Juchitan, or the Laguna region (Thomas, 1971, pp. 246-7, 319, 904ff.; Knight, 1986, I, pp. 105-6, 118-27, 280-1, 373-4).

While 'tradition' may be usefully and briefly defined in these terms, the

qualifier 'revolutionary' complicates the matter considerably. Compared to

'democracy', 'revolution' is poorly theorized; partly because less attention has been lavished upon it (especially in the last twenty years);12 but moreso, I think, because it is inherently resistant to theorization. Revolutions are, as Eric Wolf once put it, 'just-so stories', individual, unique, and contingent (Wolf, 1971, p. 12). Just-so stories can, of course, constitute a meaningful category: we can refer

generally to 'revolutions' or more specifically to 'great', 'social', 'peasant', 'bourgeois', or 'socialist' revolutions, and thereby denote a recognisable category, analogous, say, to 'wars', 'civil wars', or 'total wars'. My own working definition of a 'great revolution' would involve both process (a substantial, violent, and voluntaristic struggle for political power) and outcome (a major reordering of social and political relations) (Knight, 1990, pp. 179-80). But a recognisable - and therefore useful - description does not add up to a theory (which I take to imply some sort of causal logic;13 or, if you have a nostalgic taste for old jargon, certain 'laws of motion'). I have yet to encounter any explanatory logic or 'laws of motion' which illuminate revolutions (the kind of laws or logic which are usually presented are either plain wrong, utterly trivial, or purely tautological).14 Revolutions, as Alasdair Maclntire once suggested, are like holes in the ground: we know one when we see one, but a 'theory of holes in the ground' would be a scholastic chimaera (Maclntire,1971, p. 260).

'Democracy' is, I think, somewhat different. It is not only a recognisable category; it also more amenable to comparative analysis and theorization. One

good reason - if we compare 'democracies' with 'great revolutions' - is that democracies have been much more common, hence the sample is bigger. (Latin America experienced only three, or perhaps four, 'successful' 'great' revolutions

12 Although the books keep coming (recent examples would include Kimmel [1990] Rice [1991] and Foran [1997]), it seems to me that both the volume and the originality of 'theoretical revolutionary studies' have declined since the 1960s and early 1970s, especially relative to other themes (such as democratization, state-building, nation- formation, and political economy); a trend which is hardly surprising in view of events in the 'real world'.

13 That 'logic' may involve supposed causes (e.g.,'relative deprivation', the 'J-curve') or stages in the process - or 'natural history' - of revolution (e.g., moderate?radical- Thermidor): Kimmel (1990, pp. 47-52, 75-82).

14 For a recent list, see Wickham-Crowley (1997, pp. 46-64). It is worth noting that, despite a generation of revolutionary theorizing, the fall of the Soviet Union and its empire was not foreseen (though, of course, it retrospectively confirmed some pet theories): Runciman (1998, p. 16).



Alan Knight

during the twentieth century). More important, however, 'democracy' denotes a form of political organization which can be abstracted from the messy 'real world'; its incidence and viability can then be tested; it can be correlated with, say, country size, per capita income, or literacy (Dix, 1973, pp. 270, 274-5; Huntington, 1991, pp. 59-72; Seligson, 1987, pp. 6-10); its longevity can be measured; and, perhaps most convincingly of all, variant forms of democracy can be assessed (two-party against multi-party; proportional representation against 'first past the post'; presidential againt parliamentary) (Linz and Valenzuela, 1994). Such inquiries, even if they are not always conclusive, can at least proceed on the basis of reasonably clear premises, accessible (including quantitative) data, and broad samples. None of these conditions apply in the case of 'great revolutions'; and while dropping the qualifier 'great' - thus expanding the field to include all forms of revolution, coup, insurrection and even civil violence1 - may boost the sample, it also stretches the category to breaking point. Finally, 'revolution' has an inherently narrative, hence contingent, quality, which

'democracy' does not. A democracy - especially a 'consolidated' democracy -

can be analysed in terms of durable structural characteristics (parties, elections, voting patterns, perhaps 'political culture'). A revolution - by definition a transient phenomenon - embodies sharp twists and turns, accidents, and a

multiplicity of incommensurate factors (political, social, economic, military). It lends itself to - even requires - narrative treatment. We can learn from a static

analysis - a snapshot - of, say, European or North American democracy; but a

15 Mexico, 1910; Bolivia, 1952; Cuba, 1959; Nicaragua, 1979. These were successful in that they toppled old regimes and transformed social and political systems. In Cuba the revolutionary regime still rules; in Mexico it ruled, in highly mutated form, down to 2000. In Bolivia it fell after only twelve years; but its revolutionary efforts could not be undone (compare Guatemala, 1954, which experienced a pretty thorough counter- revolution). The Nicaraguan revolution (1979) perhaps bears comparison to the Bolivian.

16 For example, Eckstein (1964); Tilly (1991). Crahan and Smith (1992, pp. 79-108) seem somewhat ambivalent: they define 'revolution' broadly as 'an illegal seizure of political power, by the use or threat of force, for the purpose of bringing about a structural change in the distribution of political, social, or economic power' (p. 79): a definition which would seem to include a range of politically ambitious military coups (Guatemala, 1954; Peru, 1968; Chile, 1973; Argentina, 1976). Yet they concur with my estimate that there have been 'only four genuine revolutions' in Latin America (Mexico, Bolivia, Cuba, Nicaragua); and coups, such as Pinochet's, are not 'revolutionary in any strict sense of the term' (p.83). This seems to imply a 'stricter' definition than that originally given by the authors themselves.

17 Trotsky gave us the notion of 'permanent revolution'; however, this, insofar as I understand it, involves (a) an elision of bourgeois, proletarian and peasant revolutions in one country (e.g., Russia) and (b) a process of world revolution (which in turn would bolster and justify [a]). 'Permanent revolution' does not therefore mean a protracted or prolonged revolution; on the contrary the idea of elision implies a rapid, telescoped process, in contrast to the 'vulgar Marxism' of Jaures, Guesde and the Mensheviks, who (wrongly) envisaged 'democracy and socialism ... as two stages in the development of society which are not only distinct but also separated by great distances of time from each other': Trotsky (1969, pp. 125-34; quote on p. 131).




synchronic 'snapshot' of the Russian or Mexican Revolutions would make little sense.18 Again, revolutions are like wars.

Given the contingency and variation of 'revolution', what do we mean by a

'revolutionary tradition'? By definition, it derives from particular circumstances: it relates to a country, or even a region/group. It also necessarily implies some sort of

longevity, even prescription. Revolutionary (or any other) traditions do not spring fully-formed like Pallas Athene from the head of Zeus; they are born, they grow and mature, and they may die (the Mexican 'revolutionary tradition' is, if not moribund, at least in sad decline; the sesquicentennial of 1848 did not, as far as I

know, stir much popular nostalgia or spontaneous commemoration in Europe). Even after 'death' occurs at the national level - when regimes decide to to ditch

revolutionary policy, discourse, and myth; when the statues of Lenin are toppled or Cardenas is excised from Mexican school text books - the 'revolutionary tradition'

may yet linger on in the minds of certain people, in certain regions or sectors of

society. Hence the confident brandishing of revolutionary death certificates should be avoided: the Chiapas rebellion, with its overt claim to the mantle of Zapatismo, surprised a Mexico supposedly committed to the new fanti-revolutionary') project of neo-liberal reform and North American economic integration (Collier and

Quaratiello, 1994; Harvey, 1998). Despite their inherent contingency and specificity, 'revolutionary traditions'

are amenable to some kind of rough typological analysis. Indeed, such analysis may be necessary if we are to grasp the phenomenon and relate it to democracy. I would propose two axes (more could no doubt be introduced). First, a

'revolutionary tradition' can be 'official' or 'unofficial'; that is, it can form part of an 'official' transcript (in countries where revolutions have succeeded: e.g., Mexico or the USSR after 1917, Cuba after 1959); or it can constitute an 'unofficial' or contestatory transcript (in countries where revolutions have not succeeded: the list is long, of course, but classic Latin American cases would be Peru and Colombia, neither of which has experienced a genuine popular revolution, both of which have produced vigorous and durable revolutionary movements: Sendero Luminoso in Peru, the FARC and the ELN in

Colombia).There is, too, the complicated case of erstwhile revolutionary regimes - for example, contemporary Russia or, increasingly, contemporary Mexico -

which have repudiated their 'revolutionary tradition' in favour of a new 'anti-

revolutionary' project , thus enabling dissidents (Zhirinovsky, Subcomandante

Marcos) to take up the discarded banner in opposition to the 'new' regime. Zhirinovsky and Marcos appeal to 'the people' rather than to the incumbent

government: that is, they do not really expect the government to renounce its current project and return to the old 'revolutionary tradition'; neither do they appeal to the government in terms of its own, official, 'public transcript'; rather,

18 Of course, 'snapshots' of the old regime - synchronic analyses of prerevolutionary structures of power and production - are entirely valid and necessary (consider the famous first chapter of Macaulay's History ofEngland - in essence, a preamble to the revolution ofl688). But such snapshots cannot explain the process and outcome of the subseqiient revolutions.

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Alan Knight

they seek a popular mandate to transform state policy or, at the very least, to extract substantial concessions.1 In the old days of revolutionary orthodoxy, however, when the revolutionary tradition still held official sway (in both Russia and Mexico, roughly, from 1917 to the 1980s), this discursive tactic could be

employed against the government itself. So long as revolutions failed to live up to their promises and proclamations, their 'official transcripts' provide a canon

against which judgements and appeals can be made, whether in the name of the

rights of man, tierra y libertad, or the tenets of socialism (Scott, 1990, p. 54; Przeworski, 1991, pp. 1-3, which includes good examples and jokes).

Secondly, as this brief ideological menu suggests, it is crucial to flag what kind of revolution we are talking about. Here, two related clarifications are necessary. First, for several good reasons the 'great' or 'social' revolutions of history - those which comfortably fit my previous definition - have usually been, broadly speaking, popular and progressive in their thrust.20 However, there is a species of

right-wing, conservative, 'counter-revolution' which may also fit a diluted version of this definition (voluntaristic violent mass mobilization ?? substantial social and political reordering): the fascist 'revolutions' of interwar Europe; to a lesser extent the 'bureacratic authoritarian' coups and regimes of the southern cone of South America in the 1960s and '70s (Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile). While the 'revolutionary' status of these phenomena will depend on

19 Needless to say, the comparison does not imply any close political kinship between Marcos and Zhirinosky; nor between Presidents Fox and Putin.

20 I would define 'popular' in terms of the patterns of class support and 'progressive' (which is a little trickier) in terms of the revolutionary programme and its capacity to benefit and empower popular groups. Note that formally revolutionary (e.g., Marxist) programmes are not essential; peasant movements can hitch revolutionary movements to quite moderate, ostensibly 'reformist' programmes (see Knight, 1986, I, pp. 309- 15).

21 As I have noted (fn. 16 above), Crahan and Smith (1992, pp. 79-83) concede that 'right-wing revolutions' could fit their broad definition; yet when confronted by precisely such revolutions, in the shape of southern cone military regimes - which are violent enough and which, in the authors' own words, 'substantially alter the means of capital accumulation' and 'bring about profound socioeconomic transformation' (p.83) - their nerve fails them and they depict such regimes as representing 'not revolution but ... right-wing repression'. The same could, of course, be said of Nazism. If we wish to reserve the term 'revolution' purely for progressive or lefist movements/regimes, we either have to built such a criterion into the initial definition (a somewhat arbitrary approach, which Crahan and Smith do not adopt), or we have to infer a necessary leftism/progressivism from the definition as given: for example, we could argue that only leftist movements/regimes can (a) elicit sufficiently broad support and (b) promise and enact sufficiently deep 'structural change' to qualify as truly revolutionary. Such an argument is not without merit, but, I believe, is ultimately unconvincing. Ask yourself a simple question: was Hitler more revolutionary than, say, Danton, Zapata, or Vctor Paz Estenssoro (leader of the Bolivian MNR in 1952)? If you have to pause for thought, you at least credit the possibility of ugly, repressive, right-wing movements being 'revolutionary', in respect of both eliciting broad support and achieving profound sociopolitical transformations.




your definition of 'revolution' (as well as your reading of the historical record), it cannot be doubted that they too embodied the principles, experiences, myths, texts, 'transcripts', songs, symbols, heroes, memories, assumptions, and narratives which together constitute a 'tradition' (or a meme, or a set of

memes). We may, if we wish, refer to them as 'counter-revolutionary traditions':

they have been seen, by some, as formative influences in, for example, Argentina's historical trajectory.22 While I do not intend to dwell on these cases - their inclusion would burst the already strained seams of this article - their existence should be recognised: (a) because they are numerous; (b) because they exist in dialectical relationship with 'revolutionary' traditions, the one defining and testing the other (I shall return to this point later); and (c) because they may even derive from previous revolutionary traditions. That is, as history marches

on, yesterday's revolution (and revolutionary tradition) becomes tomorrow's counter-revolution (and counter-revolutionary tradition).

This leads to the second clarification. Great revolutions assume different

forms, and various typologies have been proposed. Typologies may relate to class content ('peasant' as against 'workers' revolutions); to questions of agency (revolutions 'from above' and 'from below') (Moore, 1969, chaps. 7, 8); to broad

objectives (e.g., 'nationalist' revolutions and wars of national liberation); to

patterns of state-building, as stressed by Skocpol (Skocpol, 1979); or to sui

generis categories, such as Huntington's 'eastern' and 'western' revolutions

(Huntington, 1971, p. 266ff.) While I am quite happy to play the field -

revolutions may have multiple characteristics, hence may demand multiple typologies - I would give chief priority to the conventional class approach, which distinguishes, among the 'great revolutions', between 'bourgeois' and 'socialist' versions. Indeed, this distinction is particularly pertinent in the present context, since the relationship of 'revolutionary' to 'democratic' traditions is

closely associated with the contrasting 'bourgeois' and 'socialist' forms.

'Bourgeois' revolutions, conventionally and usefully defined, embody (i) the seizure of power by the bourgeoisie (a somewhat circular argument which begs

22 Shumway (1991) posits a kind of original ideological sin into which Argentina was born, condemning the country to recurrent authoritarian and exclusionary regimes; experts are not wholly convinced. Rock (1993) offers a less controversial survey ofthe nationalist counter-revolutionary tradition.

23 That is not to say that all typologies are equal in explanatory power. Some - even assuming them to be 'true' (i.e., displaying some reasonable conformity to reality) - are largely descriptive and do not therefore shed much light on the why's and wherefores of revolutions (why they happen, what they accomplish). For example, Moore's (1969) analysis of the 'three routes' does, I think, embody a series of reasonably robust and plausible propositions about types of revolution, as does Goldstone's (1991) demographic model of revolutions in agrarian societies. In contrast, Skocpol's (1979) assimilation ofthe English, French, and Chinese revolutions - and their respective causes and consequences - under a state-building rubric seems to me to be less helpful, since the common criterion is deficient and to a degree tautological. It may offer a moderately convincing descriptive typology, but I am not sure it explains a great deal.



Alan Knight

the question of who the bourgeoisie are) and (ii) a programme or project which addresses bourgeois interests and thus promotes a capitalist market economy, the free movement of factors of production (hence the abolition of serfdom, corporate land tenure, and ancien regime monopolies), guarantees for property and contracts, and (probably) the formation of a (liberal, representative?) nation- state capable of protecting and advancing bourgeois interests (Knight, 1990, p. 184). Such a project, traditionally defined in somewhat narrow politico-economic terms (indeed, sometimes conceived of both instanteously and

anthropomorphically: the bourgeoisie, Phrygian cap on collective head, storming the Bastille under the leadership of a bare-bosomed Liberty), is better viewed as a

long process, punctuated, perhaps, by dramatic accelerating events, such as the fall of the Bastille, and embracing not only political and economic but also cultural transformation. Thus we arrive at the 'Great Arch' of E.P.Thompson, further glossed by Corrigan, Sayer, and others. Socialist revolutions, while

involving a comparable transformation in political and economic structures (the socialization of the means of production, the creation of a command economy, a

supportive cultural project, usually the rule of a single socialist party),25 tend to be more sudden and purposive, not least because they come equipped with a

revolutionary blueprint. It is axiomatic - or, at least, common and conventional - to discern a major

difference between the political projects of these two revolutions (and their

ensuing revolutionary traditions), a difference which has to do with democracy. In simple and familiar terms, the liberal representative (Dahlian) form of

democracy is intimately associated with bourgeois revolutions (which typically institute such a form); while socialist revolutionaries often repudiate such a form

(as a 'bourgeois sham') and claim - sincerely or hypocritically, as we have noted -

to offer a superior form of (workers', popular, participatory, or direct)

24 See Corrigan and Sayer (1985), which serves as a theoretical optic on Mexican revolutionary state formation in Joseph and Nugent (1994).

25 I am referring, of course, to Marxist/socialist revolutions, which undertake a decisive transformation of society and economy, not to social democratic reforms, which usually do not (as Przeworski, 1991, p. 7, observes: 'social democracy is a program to mitigate the effects of private ownership and market allocation, not an alternative project of society'). Of course a social democratic project might be revolutionary in a suitably back ward, feudal, clerical, authoritarian context (e.g., southern Spain in the 1930s?). As it happens, successful (= durable) socialist revolutions have always been Marxist/socialist rather than social-democratic, hence the 'rule of a single socialist party' has been the norm. However, the shortlived Allende experiment was socialist - it went beyond social democracy - but it did not impose one-party rule. The apparent historical incompatibility of (genuine) socialism and electoral democracy is explored by Przeworksi and Sprague (1986).

26 Here I would agree with Hobsbawm's depiction of bourgeois revolutions as (my terms) flexible and fungible, but I would see rather more purposiveness - and rather less 'experiment, groping, and changing of courses' - in socialist revolutions/regimes: Hobsbawm (1986, pp. 26-7, 30-1).




democracy. It therefore appears to be a conclusion of almost Euclidean

certainty that bourgeois revolutions generate Dahlian democracy, which socialist revolutions in turn destroy, perhaps in pursuit of a regime that is more genuinely representative and/or economically equitable.

History, however, does not work like geometry. While there is some truth in this generalization, at least two sorts of serious deviation from the presumed norm are apparent. First, even if a liberal democratic order is, as Lenin put it, the 'best political shell' for a bourgeois-capitalist economic order (Barrow, 1993, p. 59), it is not the only one. Early capitalist societies were - for long periods of time - oligarchic rather than democratic (this would apply as well to eighteenth- century England as to nineteenth-century Latin America);28 some more mature

capitalist societies have been frankly authoritarian - witness European fascism or the 'bureaucratic authoritarianism' of the southern cone. Postcolonial Africa is

broadly capitalist but hardly democratic. Perhaps these are transient aberrations; perhaps, even if the relationship between capitalism and democracy is far from

certain, it is mutually optimal, such that we can talk of an 'elective affinity' which, in the right circumstances, is happily achieved; perhaps, as I note in

conclusion, the 'right circumstances' currently pertain in Latin America. But the

exceptions are numerous and, in some instances, quite durable. The essential

point was well made by Barrington Moore some thirty years ago: the capitalist 'route to the modern world' did not necessarily lie among the green fields of liberal democracy; it might also blaze a trail through the deserts of authoritarianism (Moore, 1969, chap. 8) And history has produced plenty of

relapses, such as Brazil after 1964, where capitalism endured - even flourished -

while democracy yielded to authoritarianism. The second deviation is part theoretical, part practical; it also has a particular

relevance for Latin America. Socialist and Marxist atitudes to liberal democracy have not been uniformly hostile or dismissive. If, for some, it was a bourgeois sham, for others it offered a means to advance the political and even the economic interests of the working class. Proponents of the latter course were not

necessarily revisionist disciples of Edouard Bernstein: Marx himself was ambivalent concerning the potential of 'bourgeois democracy' and plenty of his followers - 'pluralist Marxists', according to one formulation - have stressed the

potential for exploiting democratic opportunities in the interests of the working class: 'in countries where the liberal democratic tradition is well established, the

27 As Lenin put it: 'the bourgeois parliament, even the most democratic in the most democratic republic in which the property and the rule of the bourgeoisie are preserved, is a machine for the suppression of the toiling millions by small groups of exploiters': quoted in Przeworski (1991, p. 41). On Latin America, see Dix (1973, p. 283, n. 35).

28 'Oligarchic' is one of several possible labels for nineteenth- and early twentieth- centuries regimes in much of Latin America : Dix (1973, p.268) prefers 'limited- participation aristocracies [sicY; Moore (1969, p. 438), in one of his two references to Latin America, suggests 'authoritarian semi-parliamentary government'; which is echoed by Mouzelis (1986), one of the best and most systematic of such comparisons.



Alan Knight

"transition to socialism" must utilize the resources of that tradition - the ballot box, the competitive party system - first to win control of the state and second to use the state to restructure society' (Held, 1996, pp. 147-52). Long before its recent conversion to liberalism and corporate capitalism, European social

democracy accommodated to (Dahlian) democratic politics, as did many Communist parties. In Latin America, too, most Communist parties opted for democratic participation (when it was allowed them); they spurned quixotic revolutionary adventurism (such as Che's sally into Bolivia) (Gott, 1973, pp. 498-

514); and Chile witnessed the first election of a democratic Marxist administration in history. The via chilena therefore offered the possibility of

combining a genuine socialist programme with democratic politics, something which previous paladins of socialism (Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro), victors on the battlefield rather than at the ballot box, had carefully avoided. The Chilean

experiment, of course, came to a premature and bloody end. However, the Sandinistas, too, though victors on the battlefield, allowed democratic politics to

proceed, and were in turn voted out of office in 1990. Hence, the relationship between revolutions and 'revolutionary traditions' on

the one hand, and democratic or authoritarian regimes on the other, is clearly not invariant; it warrants closer inspection in order to see if recognsable patterns emerge. In the rest of the paper, therefore, I will address the question in the context of Latin America, taking a broad perspective in terms of both time (c.1800 to the present) and space (all Latin America).

2. Latin American liberalism

The Americas in general can be seen, sub specie aeternitatis, as a haven of liberalism. The principles of 'bourgeois liberalism' - representative government within the framework of republican nation-states, linked to an economic project premised on market relations - exerted an early appeal; most clearly in the Thirteen Colonies/United States, but also south of the Rio Grande. There are two basic and obvious reasons for this. First, the Americas formed part of Europe's initial imperial expansion, hence they received the imprint of European values and practices more deeply and durably than either Africa or Asia. Iberian America experienced over three centuries of formal European empire; in contrast, India experienced a century of informal hegemony, followed by a century of (more-or-less) formal rule; Africa experienced less than a century of formal rule; and China less than a century of informal hegemony. The European imprint was especially deep in the American 'Neo-Europes' - typically the outer peripheries, rather than the old Andean and Mesoamerican heartlands - where the Indian population was largely eliminated and European settler societies developed: in Canada, the United States, Uruguay, central Chile, southern Brazil, and littoral Argentina (Crosbie, 1986, p. 2ff).

The American peripheries - as compared to the American heartlands (typically, Mexico and Peru) - embodied four characteristics: (i) they were, at least by the

15 o ? 2001 Society for Latin American Studies



late eighteenth century, closely linked to world trade, especially the trade in

primary agricultural commodities (as opposed to bullion);29 (ii) their population of 'prefabricated' Qollaborators not only traded briskly with Europe, they were also unusually open to European ideas, including liberalism (hence Tulio

Halpern's aphorism: Argentina was 'born liberal') (Halperin Donghi, 1988); (iii) the relative absence of a dense Indian population diminished caste and ethnic barriers, thus making the notion of a uniform citizenry both plausible and attractive; and (iv) the Catholic Church, which had put down deepest roots in the more densely populated heartlands, was weaker in the peripheries (as a series of simple dyadic comparisons suggests: Mexico City/Veracruz; Bogota/ Barranquilla; Quito/Guayaquil). Involvement in world trade made mercantilist restrictions all the more galling; while the absence of caste divisions, coupled with the weakness of the Church, encouraged sentiments of home rule and

independence. (Conversely, where the Indian or black population was large and

threatening, colonial rule offered a certain guarantee of white, propertied interests: as the Cuban elite frankly recognized, contemplating the horrific

example of Haiti, 'Cuba sera espanola o africana') (Martinez Alier, 1977, p. 95). It is not surprising, therefore, that the cradles of Latin American independence were to be found in the peripheries - Buenos Aires, Caracas, Santiago - rather than in the old colonial heartlands (Lima, Mexico City). It was in the periperies, too, that the example of the United States carried more weight and, indeed, had more

relevance, by virtue of being more directly comparable (Adelman, 1999, p. 87; Bushnell, 1993, pp. 118-19). Buenos Aires, in particular, displayed a precocious liberalism, which married free trade, slave emancipation, universal suffrage, popular patriotism, and notions of republican virtue (Adelman, 1999, p. 90).

What is more, the achievement of independence - a matter of autonomous heroic action in, for example, the Rio de la Plata and New Granada - generated

29 Buenos Aires was, of course, a major entrepot of the colonial bullion trade, especially foilowing the Bourbon administrative reforms. However, that trade rapidly declined with the French revolutionary and Napoleonic wars and, after 1810, the porteno economy came to depend on the export of pastoral products: hides, jerked beef, tallow, and later wool. Indeed, this 'physiocratic' outcome was the declared preference of independence ideologues like Belgrano: Adelman (1999, pp. 62-3, 69).

30 There is an obvious snag in this argument: precisely because they lacked dense Indian populations which could be put to profitable work, the American peripheries - from the Old South down to Buenos Aires - came to rely, in several cases, on black slave labour, which was hardly conducive to the formation of a comprehensive citizenry, and which made anti-colonial rebellion downright risky. Indeed, the process of rebellion - in Venezuela, for example - was strongly influenced by the fact of slavery. However, two points should be noted: first, the structural hypocrisy of 'bourgeois liberalism' (seen most starkly in the Thirteen Colonies) could allow slavery and colonial rebellion to co-exist, at least so long as rebellion did not open the door to slave insurrection (as it did in Haiti); second, the anti-colonial rebels of Buenos Aires and Caracas were - unlike their counterparts in Havana - ultimately prepared to sacrifice slavery on the altar of rebellion and republicanism; either because their ideological attachment to liberal principles was stronger, or their material attachment to slave labour was weaker.



Alan Knight

patriotic myths which wove notions of liberalism into the foundation myths of the new republics. Despite some initial flirtations with monarchy, the Spanish American nations emerged firmly republican; monarchical experiments proved to be costly failures; hence there was no dynastic principle to which conservatives or clericals could make effective appeal. (Andean Indians might hark back to the Incas: but such indigenous atavism, briefly and bloodily embodied in the Tupac Amaru revolt of 1780, and sporadically revived in lesser nineteenth-century revolts, could not but terrify whites and mestizos).31 Republics born in the context of anticolonial, often antidynastic, struggle carried the imprimatur of liberalism from the outset: even conservatives, like Ecuador's Garcia Moreno, who dedicated the nation to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, preached the sovereignty of the people as the basis of legitimate government (Maiguashca, 1996, p. 101). Comparatively speaking, from the early nineteenth century Spanish America lacked monarchs, tsars, tribal kings, and princely states; the principles of

republican government, grounded in anticolonial rebellions, prevailed; and President Monroe obligingly committed the United States to defend this

republican status quo against European revanchisme.32 Of course, 'republican' does not mean 'democratic'. But, by virtue of

dissolving dynastic, ascriptive principles, and asserting the notion of republican government, the founding fathers of the Latin American states made subsequent liberal democratic practices likely if not inevitable. For if the people were

sovereign, how could their sovereignty be expressed but by means of

representative government? Indeed, at the outset, Latin American government was not only republican, but also liberal and sometimes even democratic. Early constitutions embodied male suffrage, sometimes a fairly broad male suffrage (Posada-Carbo, 1996, pp. 4-6ff.; Lopez Alves, 2000, p. 41). Even when, in the 1830s, a reaction set in, leading to a more exclusionary politics, the result was

rarely a principled repudiation of republican government: rather, franchises were narrowed, elections were fixed, and conservative caudillos seized the reins of

power. But the caudillos - Santa Anna, Rosas, Paez, Portales - remained

republicans, continued to claim popular legitimacy, and never established

enduring dynasties. Furthermore, the inclusionary turn of the 1830s was followed, around mid-century, by a renewed asssertion of liberal values, associated with the rise of a new, post-independence generation (Juarez in Mexico, Mosquera in Colombia, Sarmiento in Argentina) and inspired, in some measure, by 1848 and the example of European liberalism (Bushnell, 1993, pp. 101-2; Gazmuri, 1992).

31 As a result, the Indian heritage of (Aztec) Mexico and (Inca) Peru had contrasting consequences; the former could be safely appropriated (in suitably sanitized form) by creole patriots; the latter was too threatening to serve as a common symbol of nationhood: Brading (1991, pp. 341-2, 386-90, 455-64, 489-91). When Belgrano proposed an Inca constitutional monarch to the portenos the proposal, not surprisingly, 'went nowhere': Adelman (1999, p. 90).

32 Not that Monroe could in practice do much about it; the Monroe Doctrine remained a rhetorical statement through much of the nineteenth century.




Indeed, the dialectical pattern evident in the first two generations after

independence (liberal opening in the 1810s and '20s; conservative closure in the

1830s; liberal re-opening around mid-century) appears to repeat itself in

subsequent generations: a turn towards more authoritarian and positivistic regimes in the last quarter of the nineteenth century; greater contestation and

political opening in the early twentieth century (now, some Latin American

polities form part of Huntington's 'first wave' of global democratization); a renewed authoritarianism in the interwar period (especially after 1930); a democratic opening in the late 1940s (Huntington's 'second short wave') (Huntington, 1991, p. 16); the 'new authoritarianism' of the 1960s and '70s

(Collier, 1979); and the recent, almost unanimous, turn towards democracy and neoliberalism in the 1980s and '90s, Huntington's 'third wave' (Huntington, 1991, pp. 16, 40ff.). Even if this sequence is open to question - it glosses over major regional and national variations and takes 'authoritarianism' and 'democracy' excessively at face value (Von Mettenheim and Malloy, 1996, pp. 2-3) - it nevertheless illustrates the fact that, for something like six generations, republican forms of government have remained standard; elections - even when fixed or postponed - have remained the primary form of legitimation; and, with a few minor exceptions,33 no man-on-horseback has claimed an indefinite, still less

dynastic, mandate to rule. 4

However, by the twentieth century the political scenario had substantially changed. Liberalism had been outflanked by doctrines and movements on the left

(socialism, communism, anarchism); the growth of cities, exports, and industry focused attention on the new 'social question' (Dix, 1973, p. 285; Bushnell, 1993, pp. 162-3; Knight, 1986,1, p. 148; Collier and Collier, 1991, p. 59ff.) Crudely, one could say, militant trade unions and incipient radical parties now replaced belligerent Indians and insurgent peasants as threats to peace and property; and the traditional promises of liberalism - civil rights, representative government - were

trumped by new socio-economic demands (jobs, wages, land, social insurance). Of course, demands for material provision or protection were ancient - they went back at least as far as the land seizures, grain riots, and anti-tax protests of the

colony. What was new was the - actual or advocated - inscription of such

33 The Brazilian monarchy, being oligarchic and constitutional, is not really an exception; and, anyway, it fell in 1889. Mexico's two emperors - Agustin Iturbide in the early 1820s and Maximilian in the 1860s -were shortlived failures who served to reinforce the republican norm. Twentieth-century exceptions - 'sultanistic' regimes like those of Stroessner in Paraguay, Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, the Somozas in Nicaragua, the Duvaliers in Haiti - are 'minor' in that they misruled small countries, hence only a tiny minority (perhaps 5%) of Latin America's total population. That, of course, was no consolation for the Paraguayans, Dominicans, Nicaraguans and Haitians.

34 Though the Somozas and Duvaliers managed two-generation dynasties. Foilowing on from fn.32, it could be added that by the late nineteenth century the Monroe Doctrine began to count for something in terms of Realpolitik as well as rhetoric; hence the export of European dynasties - even if the Latin Americans had wanted them - would have become more difficult.



Alan Knight

socioeconomic claims within the 'public transcript' of the state: for example, with Batllismo (1902-6, 1911-15), Lopez Pumarejo's revolucion en marcha, or the Mexican and Cuban Constitutions of 1917 and 1940 respectively (Lopez Alves, 2000, p. 50; Bushnell, 1993, pp. 185-7; Knight, 1986, II, pp. 470-1; Thomas, 1971, pp. 716-21). Again, in very schematic terms, one could say that Latin America mirrored Marshall's formulation of entitlement to rights: initially, liberalism

promised certain basic civil rights; subsequently, broader access to representation was conceded (i.e., political rights); finally, 'social rights' received recognition.

However, in Latin America, as in much of Europe, this sequence proved highly contentious in practice. The smoother, social-democratic route (political liberalism leading to the welfare state), had its rare Latin American counterparts in Costa Rica and, perhaps, Uruguay (as I mention below). But elsewhere, it

proved difficult to graft social rights on to political and civil rights; indeed, the demand for social rights - by unions, leftist parties and, later, peasant movements - often provoked reaction (in the specific sense), political closure, and an

abrogation of rights previously enjoyed. Alternatively - in Mexico (1910), Bolivia

(1952), Cuba (1959), and Nicaragua (1979) - popular demands assumed

revolutionary form, again with mixed results for Dahlian democracy. Civil, political, and social rights, it seems, do not necessarily develop sequentially, nor do they co-exist in happy synergy. Their relationship may resemble a zero-sum

game. Thus, to assume, today, that Latin American political democracy is consolidated and that, according to the logic of Marshallian sequencing, it can

provide the firm foundation for social reform, hence social rights, may be risky. We need to focus on the relationship between Latin America's longstanding liberal-democratic tradition(s) and its twentieth-century experience of social demands, popular mobilization, and outright revolution.

The variants on this relationship are multiple; hence any attempt to synthesize (rather than to tell a series of detailed but inconclusive 'just-so stories') involves some ambitious aggregation - or, if you will, some lavish 'lumping' which will offend single-minded 'splitters'. I shall, furthermore, compound the problem by straying beyond the 'great' revolutions per se (that is, beyond Mexico, Bolivia, Cuba and, perhaps, Nicaragua), the rationale for which is that, even if revolutions are distinctive forms of - rapid, violent, 'bottom-up' - social change, they nevertheless embody many of the same tensions as non-revolutionary historical phases; the stage and the dramatis personae may be much the same; it is the unfolding of the plot that differs. Pursuing the theatrical metaphor, I will

present an initial backdrop, then suggest five major plot-lines, each involving our chosen themes, revolutionary and democratic 'traditions'.

3. Challenges to liberalism

First, the democratic backdrop. By the turn of the twentieth century all Latin American countries had become independent republics, boasting liberal-

representative constitutions (the last monarchy, Brazil, had fallen in 1889; and




the last colony, Cuba, had experienced a flawed independence in 1898).35 However, the degree of genuine democratization varied greatly. In some cases, notably in Andean America, constitutions embodied property or literacy qualifications which greatly restricted the electorate; in all cases, women were denied the vote.36 No less important, constitutions were often honoured in the breach. Civilian rule was recurrently interrupted by military coup; and elections were regularly compromised by force and fraud. However, even when generals seized power they did not usually linger long in office; and when they did, they did not brazenly dispense with constitutions and elections, but chose instead to finesse the former and rig the latter. Examples include Porfirio Diaz in Mexico

(1876-1880 and 1884-1911), Juan Vicente Gomez in Venezuela (1909-35), and Manuel Estrada Cabrera in Guatemala (1898-1920). These fin-de-siecle authoritarian regimes, it is worth noting, justified their infringement of democratic practices (though not of democratic principles) in terms of a

positivistic emphasis on material development, which required a strong state, sound finances, and a disciplined population; democratization had to be

postponed pending the creation of a productive, integrated, modern economy. Thus, republican, representative government remained the official norm, if not the actual practice; and, of course, it provided a canon to which liberal- democratic critics of authoritarian regimes could appeal, with Madero in Mexico or Rui Barbosa in Brazil (Knight, 1986,1, pp. 56-8, 68-9; Bello, 1966, pp. 211-12). Where civilian rule and genuine alternation in office occurred, it usually did so under 'oligarchic' or 'semi-parliamentary' auspices (Mouzelis, 1986, pp. 3-4, 16-

20, 28-9; Bushnell, 1993, pp. 161-2; Sabato, 1992): that is to say, parties consisted of narrow coteries of notables and lacked mass membership; elections, though regular and sometimes quite lively, were usually fought between rival bosses

(caciques, gamonales, coroneles) and their clienteles; the dominant landlord class, even if it did not provide the bosses,38 could usually rest secure that the political

35 We should note the exceptional case of Puerto Rico, which, following the final collapse of the last remnants of the Spanish empire in the Americas in 1898, failed to achieve independence, but became an American protectorate.

36 Following the democratic dawn of the 1810 and '20s, the second quarter of the century saw a shift towards more restrictive franchises; and, while this closure was followed by a renewed opening in some states after 1848, the 'Indoamerican' republics of Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia resisted the democratizing trend: Posada-Carbo (1996, p. 7); Guerra (1996, pp. 18-19). The Colombian province of Velez, governed by a 'radically doctrinaire' Liberal, married to a 'politically forceful wife', voted to extend the suffrage to women in 1853 (sixteen years before Wyoming initiated the trend in the United States); but the national Supreme Court annulled the reform before any Velena could east her vote: Bushnell (1993, pp. 108-9).

37 Though the goals differed, the parallels with authoritarian socialist regimes are apparent.

38 There was often, it seems, a certain division of labour between the economically and socially dominant landlord class and the political cadres who ran the electoral machines; this division was particularly marked when it came to (a) lower-echelon posts (in Mexico, for example, big landlords more usually occupied governorships than jefaturas - prefectships) and (b) rich, entrepreneurial landed elites (who



Alan Knight

system would not infringe their basic interests. As a result, oligarchic politics often allowed genuine scope for debate, a semi-free press and congress, and some

respect for civil rights (notably in Chile, Uruguay, and Argentina). Parallels with

Spanish or Italian 'artificial democracy' are apparent; Mouzelis (1986) draws an

illuminating parallel with Balkan Europe. The progressive democratization of the early twentieth century - the last

impulse of Huntington's 'first wave' - carried some Latin American states beyond narrowly oligarchic politics to something more fully democratic.39 Significantly, this occurred in the prosperous southern cone (Argentina, Uruguay, Chile), where

living standards and literacy levels were higher, and traditional ethnic tensions were weaker.4 Conversely, where large Indian populations predominated, oligarchic politics tended to remain more narrowly exclusionary and harshly authoritarian; regimes responded to white/mestizo fears of Indian insurgency and to the perceived need for repressive labour systems (e.g., Peru, Bolivia, Guatemala, southern Mexico). Apart from the evident correlation between income and democracy (Seligson, 1987, pp. 7-9; Huntington, 1991, pp. 60-1), we

may also note a tendency for this deepening of democracy to occur in those

peripheral regions (Argentina, Uruguay, Chile) where anti-colonial liberalism had flourished at the time of independence; while narrowly oligarchic or authoritarian politics survived in the old Indian heartlands of Mesoamerica and the Andes (Mexico, Guatemala, Peru, Bolivia). Thus far, then, the story is

disdained the hurly-burly of electoral politics and did not need the money any way): here, Argentina is the classic case. See Halperin Donghi (1995, pp. 39-66).

39 Huntington (1991, pp. 14?15) includes four Latin American cases in his 'first wave' (i.e., pre-1920s democratization): Argentina, Uruguay, Colombia, and Chile. The point at which 'oligarchic' politics becomes 'democratic' is, of course, moot. (I have already noted that these infant democracies were based on universal male suffrage: none enfranchised women). Huntington, pp. 11-12, opts for a dichotomous approach to the problem of definition (most states are either democracies or they are not); however, there are, he admits, borderline cases; and the 'sudden' onset of democracy (e.g., Argentina, where the Saenz Pena law of 1912 reformed the ballot and made possible the election of a Radical administration in 1916) may not be the norm (compare Chile or Colombia, where the expansion of a mass electorate, based on a tradition of vigorous but limited electioneering in the nineteenth century, was more gradual and incremental).

40 I stress 'traditional', in that the Indian population had been reduced and marginalized, while slavery had been long abolished and the population of black descent was (relative to Brazil or Cuba) tiny. European immigration generated new ethnic tensions (hence the anti-immigrant pogrom - if that is not too strong a word - in Buenos Aires in 1919). However, only naturalized Argentines had the vote; hence mass suffrage could advance on the basis of a fairly homogenous (male) citizenry. Above all, free wage labour prevailed, hence democratization was not barred by systems of serfdom or peonage ('extra-economic coercion').

41 Thus Markoff (1996, p. 44) is probably even closer to the truth than he realizes when he states that 'the countries bordering on the Atlantic were the places of the democratic breakthrough' (he is referring to the incipient liberalization of the eighteenth century, as experienced in England, France, Holland, and the United States).




one of relative continuity, incremental change (progress, perhaps?), and a quasi- European path. A prior tradition of liberal - i.e., representative, tolerant, civil -

politics lays the foundation for subsequent opening and democratization. Possibly one could go further (both analytically and chronologically) and suggest that anti-colonial republicanism, premised on a revolutionary repudiation of dynastic and ascriptive principles, in turn underwrote that liberal tradition. Saenz Pena, we might say, owed a good deal to Belgrano and Rivadavia; Argentina's 'guiding fictions' (Shumway, 1991) could promote inclusion as well as exclusion.

Entering the twentieth century, however, the story takes some sharp twists. (The most obvious twist is that the harshest forms of post-1960 authoritarianism occur precisely in the previously liberal-democratic trailblazers of the southern cone). While the story involves a multiplicity of actors and events (some of external provenance: the two world wars and the depression), a highly schematic explanation can be suggested. Foilowing the Marshallian sequence, calls for civil and political rights were now seconded by social demands: for jobs, collective contracts (and the closed shop), land reform, protected tenancies, social security, state planning, and the nationalization of the means of production - many of which were in foreign hands. In short, free-market property and labour relations were systematically questioned. Beyond espousing these novel demands, some leftist spokesmen (socialist, communist, anarchist, populist)43 also declared that bourgeois democracy was a mere sham and that a superior organic or participatory democracy could be attained. The full triad of Marshallian rights - civil, political, and social - were, for the first time, on offer. How did this outflanking of the liberal tradition occur in practice? Schematically, we might identify five principal paths: social democracy; revolutionary populism; statist populism; socialist revolution; and authoritarian reaction.

3.1. Social democracy: Uruguay and Costa Rica

First, foilowing the western European social-democratic pattern, the new social agenda could be grafted on to the old liberal tradition; liberal democracy would be supplemented by state benefits; the Marshallian sequence would prevail. For this to occur there needed to be a functioning liberal tradition, coupled with a state willing and able to manage the necessary transfer payments. Per capita

42 The two countries conventionally thought to have achieved the most 'consolidated' democracies in South America, as of the 1960s, were Chile and Uruguay (see Dix, 1973, p. 294).

43 I have real doubts about 'populism' as a robust analytical category, especially when it is used to describe a specific family of movements/regimes in Latin America - rather than simply a political style which manifests itself across a great swathe of time and space (see Knight, 1998, pp. 223-48). However, it will serve as a loose - and fairly conventional - label for movements/regimes that combine (a) mass mobilization; (b) powerful popular appeal, possibly focused on (c) a charismatic leader; (d) ostensible (sometimes actual) policies of redistribution; (e) nationalism; but which (f) are not socialist or communist, nor (usually) impeccably democratic.



Alan Knight

income alone was not a sufficient condition; there had also to be some minimal

prior sociopolitical consensus which would permit such payments. In late

nineteenth-century Uruguay Blancos and Colorados converged around certain common principles of liberal civilian government, which crystallized in the 'consociational' pact of 1903-33; wool production boosted the economy, but no

'reactionary configuration' of landlords developed; elites roughly agreed on the distribution of state patronage, both among themselves and for the benefit of the mass electorate (Lopez Alves, 2000, chap. 2; Gillespie, 1992, pp. 178-80). This was something of a fair-weather phenomenon, however. Uruguayan democracy faltered in the 1930s and, following a fragile recovery in the 1940s, entered into terminal crisis in the 1960s. The 'consolidation' of democracy proved to be

reversible, notwithstanding the added buttress of social welfare. In Costa Rica, about half a century later, a similar process ensued. Here, too,

the advent of a modest welfare state, linked to a durable democracy, depended on the outcome of civil war (which in turn hinged on the unexpected death of ex-

president Leon Cortes in 1946) (Yashar, 1997, pp. 170-90). Coffee production generated both economic resources and a measure of political consensus: not because - as the tico myth suggests - coffee spawned an egalitarian yeoman farmer class or was an essentially 'democratic' crop (compare Guatemala) - but rather because it generated 'an overwhelming society-wide commitment to export agriculture and coffee culture' which, furthermore, was premised on free wage labour rather than extra-economic coercion (Gudmundson, 1995, p. 163). Favorable - but hardly 'over-determined' - preconditions conspired with fortuna to produce what, following Uruguay's final fall from grace in 1973, remained Latin America's sole stable democratic welfare state. Furthermore, over time, Costa Rican democracy acquired a kind of autonomous moral capital - a 'relative autonomy', we might say, of contingent adverse circumstances. Ticos came to define themselves in terms of their civilian and democratic culture, a definition that was all the more salient given Costa Rica's location in the cockpit of Central America.44

3.2. Revolutionary populism: Mexico and Bolivia

Costa Rica achieved this unusual, incremental outcome because a prior liberal tradition proved capable of accommodating democracy and moderate social reform. In much of Latin America outside the southern cone, however, liberal- democratic traditions were - in practice - quite weak. Social reform therefore entered the agenda before any sort of viable liberal democracy had been

established; and the outcome - in Mexico (1910-), Bolivia (1952-) and, more

tenuously, Guatemala (1945-) and Nicaragua (1979-) - was a form of

44 See Clark (1999). The 'autonomous moral capital' of Costa Rican democracy is evident in survey data: when given three choices: (i) democracy is preferable to other forms of government; (ii) it makes no difference either way; and (iii) authoritarian government is preferable, Costa Ricans score: 80%, 9%, 8%; Chileans: 50%, 28%, 17%; and Mexicans: 50%, 26%, 20% (Hewlett/MORI, 1998, p. 4).




revolutionary populism. I admit to using 'populism' with some disquiet, and in deference more to common usage than to rigorous analysis.45 By 'populist' I mean movements and regimes which were progressive, reformist, nationalist, and

(in ways that I will clarify) 'democratic'; but which were neither thoroughly liberal-democratic, nor thoroughly socialist; hence which avoided wholesale nationalizations and remained locked within a broadly capitalist economic

system. In each case, revolutionary movements overthrew regimes that were

highly authoritarian, often personalistic (even 'sultanistic'), and deeply racist (the Porfiriato, the Bolivian rosca, Ubico, Somoza). Indeed, such regimes, denying legitimate democratic challenges, could only have been overthrown by forms of mass mobilization: prolonged uprisings in Mexico and Nicaragua; a series of short popular insurrections in Bolivia; a more piecemeal series of protests and demonstrations in Guatemala. Prior liberal-democratic traditions were relatively weak and, in consequence, one of the key planks of the revolutionary-populist platform was the installation of genuinely democratic government. In each case, too, mass suffrage ensued: in Bolivia, the exiguous pre-1952 electorate was

dramatically expanded; in Mexico and Guatemala, artificial democacy gave way (temporarily) to free elections; in Nicaragua democracy eventually made possible the ouster of the revolutionary-populist (Sandinista) government itself.

In addition to such procedural/electoral/Dahlian advances, these revolutions also enhanced democracy in a broader, more informal fashion. In Mexico, for example, popular organizations - sindicatos and peasant leagues in particular -

took root and acquired genuine power. Parties of notables became mass parties, susceptible to mass pressure. Education, literacy, and 'cultural democracy' expanded; populist, nationalist, and indigenous symbols supplanted the elitist and Europhile symbols of the old regime (Vaughan, 1982, 1997). Old hierarchies of deference crumbled; landlords and the Church lost influence; and, to their disgust, upstart peasants and Indians occupied positions of power.46 With this social bouleversement came a measure of genuine social reform (the provision of Marshallian social rights): education, labour and land reform, trade union legislation, some limited social security. The fetters of capitalism were not broken, but a more open, mobile, egalitarian society emerged. Indeed, if we

adopted conventional {marxisant) terminology, we could well see these as -

whole or partial - 'bourgeois revolutions', characterised by the break-up of latifundia, the broad enfranchisement-cum-empowerment of citizens (of all colours), and the creation of a more integrated, literate, mobile, secular, productive, and nationalist population (Knight, 1990, pp. 186-9). In other words, we see, in part, the building of a Mexican - or Bolivian - 'Great Arch' (Knight, 1994, pp. 56-64).

45 'Populism' is used in roughly this sense (and involving several subcategories) in Collier and Collier (1991, especially chap. 5). Note my caution, n. 43 above.

46 Knight (1986, II, p. 517-27) sketches the 'pre-institutional' phase of this social upheaval, which is not easily captured in national overviews; a graphic, if far from typical, local example is provided by Henderson (1998). For a Bolivian example (Coroico), see McEwen (1975, p. 143ff.).



Alan Knight

Three key aspects of this transformation need to be stressed. First, the 'democratic empowerment' associated with these quasi-bourgeois, 'populist' revolutions did not involve the simple implementation of Dahlian norms. True, in some cases this occurred: most clearly in Bolivia after 1952. But in Mexico the formal democratic opening was brief; in Bolivia it was compromised by the

military coup of 1964; in Guatemala it was brutally terminated by the CIA-

supported invasion of 1954. In a broader, informal sense, however, these revolutions did 'empower' subordinate people: more briefly in Guatemala, more

durably in Bolivia and, a fortiori, Mexico, where access to politics expanded and old hierarchies were toppled. The Guatemalan counter-revolution partially turned the clock back; but the Bolivian coup of 1964 was more ambiguous (the military, for example, continued the agrarian reform); and Mexico experienced no decisive counter-revolution - indeed, the military regime of Victoriano Huerta

(Mexico's Kornilov?) ended in ignominious defeat in 1914 (Knight, 1986, II, pp. 93-4ff.). These cases confirm that a focus on purely Dahlian democracy is too narrow and formalistic. Democratic advance - the provision of access, representation, and 'empowerment' - need not depend solely on the institution of regular, free and fair elections.

However (my second point) democratic advance which depends largely on a

contingent balance of power - whereby, for example, peasants or workers are

empowered by virtue of their political and military mobilization - runs the risk of reversal. So it was in Guatemala and Bolivia, where the military seized power in 1954 and 1964 respectively.48 Or, in Mexico, where the balance tipped against popular interests more gradually, incrementally, and insidiously after 1938. In none of these cases could the achievements of the revolution be wholly overcome

(though in Guatemala the counter-revolution came close). However, when the balance tipped, the absence of clear, durable, democratic procedures proved a

major liability: the democratic deficit facilitated military rule in Bolivia and the

47 A good example of popular empowerment is given by Simpson (1937, chap.17), which describes the success story of the ejido (land reform community) of Octlan. The ejido of San Juan (chap.7) appears in a less rosy light, but, even here, Simpson notes (p. 108), 'there is a marked difference in the attitude of the ejidatario in San Juan and the peon, or day labourer. The former exhibits a sense of pride, and a spirit of independence, which is marked contrast to the servility and fatalistic acceptance of things-as-they-are on the part of the peon. These ejidatarios have a stake in the community; they own something about which they can make plans. In a word, however slow the process, these ejidatarios are on the road to becoming something new in rural Mexico - citizens'.

48 Which underlines something the Costa Ricans got right: foilowing the civil war of 1948 they abolished the regular army - and turned the chief barracks of San Jose into the national museum. (They did, however, retain the Civil Guard and proscribe the Communist Party). Defanging the military seems a fairly simple and straightforward way of ensuring civilian and (perhaps) democratic rule. Of course, it implies a relative absence of either internal or external 'threats'. After the 1952 revolution the Bolivian government came close to abolishing the army; but, as instability and working class militancy increased, the army was reconstituted, making possible the military coup of 1964.




consolidation of a corrupt, semi-authoritarian, and increasingly conservative

regime in Mexico. Thus, while populist revolutions could informally enhance

democracy and empowerment, their failure to implement democratic rules, structures, and practices made counter-revolution - whether outright or

piecemeal - eminently feasible. Third, just as these revolutions toppled narrow, authoritarian regimes, so they

occurred in relatively poor, ethnically divided societies. This posed the

revolutionary regimes formidable problems: it was not a question of

redistributing existing wealth, but of boosting development and, indeed, of

building a state and a nation - forjando patria fforging a fatherland') in the words of Mexico's Manuel Gamio (Gamio, 1916). Where Marx had

optimistically envisaged revolutionaries seizing advanced states and socializing advanced means of production, revolutionaries in Mexico, Bolivia and Nicaragua (less so Cuba) took control of brittle states and backward economies. The Mexican revolutionary regime, for all its faults and failings, made substantial

progress: growth was sustained, national integration progressed. Bolivia's MNR

certainly helped forjar patria-, but it found itself caught in the classic dilemma of reformist governments in poor - and even not-so-poor - countries: rapid redistribution fuelled inflation and foreign debt; financial orthodoxy betrayed the revolution and fractured the revolutionary coalition. Hence the 1964 coup (Mitchell, 1977). The comparison with Costa Rica is apt: the 1948 revolution not

only 'empowered'; it also eliminated the threat of the military and established durable, democratic rules; democracy became 'the only game in town'

(Przeworski, 1992, p. 28). In addition, as I have suggested, Costa Rica, though hardly rich, enjoyed a level of income and equality which made the provision of social benefits feasible, both politically and fiscally. Costa Rica could therefore

accomplish the difficult task of eliding formal democratic consolidation and

genuine social provision; in Mexico and Bolivia, revolutionary empowerment did not translate into formal democratic consolidation; and genuine social provision was limited by the relative poverty of the country, especially in the Bolivian case.

3.3. Statist populism: Argentina

Many of the changes ushered in by revolution in Mexico and Bolivia - greater political access, labour reform, social provision, national integration, the erosion

49 Again, Costa Rica is the contrasting case. In Chile, the existence of established 'democratic rules and structures' could not prevent the 1973 coup. Mexico experienced a kind of mild Thermidor after 1938, as popular reforms and movements faded and a more conservative, business-friendly, 'institutional-revolutionary' regime was consolidated. It did not promote liberal democracy (at least, not until very recently). However, it did keep the military in check (hence, no coup as in Bolivia); and it retained something of its old popular/populist character - evident in sporadic bouts of land reform and economic nationalism. As late as the 1990s the regime's reluctance to hurl tanks and helicopter gunships against the EZLN probably had something to do with its residual popular/populist self-image.



Alan Knight

of deference - had their counterparts in the major countries of South America, notably Brazil and, a fortiori, Argentina, where they were associated with

Varguismo and Peronism.50 Peronism, in particular, brought the Argentine working class both material benefits and a sense of political empowerment and inclusion (James, 1988). Indeed, the material benefits were substantial, given Argentina's relatively high level of income (compared to Mexico, Bolivia, even Costa Rica) and the public assets which had accumulated during the second world war (Ferns, 1973, pp. 147-8). Thus, while it would be stretching the term to call Peronism 'revolutionary' - Peron's rise to power did not involve a violent

'revolutionary' process, and his regime, for all its populist reform, did not achieve a major structural transformation of Argentine society - nevertheless, Peronism shared some of the characteristics of Mexico's or Bolivia's revolution. Thus, some fifty years before Tony Blair, Peronismo claimed to be pioneering a 'third

way' between liberal capitalism and Marxist socialism; and, in its stress on social

rights and popular empowerment, Peronismo went beyond hollow rhetoric. As a veteran dockworker from Rosario recalled, comparing working-class life before and after the watershed of 1943-6: 'with Peron we were all machos' (James, 1988, P- 29).

But, apart from those just mentioned, there is another significant difference which sets the Mexican or Bolivian 'revolutionary populist' projects apart from the 'statist populist' project of Peronism. Prerevolutionary Mexico and Bolivia were oligarchical/authoritarian states, whose demise, at the hands of popular revolutionaries, opened the way to substantial political mobilization and what I have termed informal (as well as some formal) democratization. The Mexican and Bolivian 'political nations' grew substantially post-1910 and post-1952 (respectively). It would be a reasonable, if crude, assessment, therefore, that these were 'progressive' or 'empowering' revolutions.5 Or, in the terms of our discussion, these revolutions enhanced both political and social rights. The case of Peronism - not to mention Varguismo - is much more ambivalent. It is not just that Peronist democracy was inherently flawed, by virtue of its mounting corruption, personalism and arbitrary abuse of power (all of which were also evident in postrevolutionary Mexico and Bolivia); rather, the difference lies in the status quo ante - the Per

alan knight - democratic and revolutionary traditions in latin america

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