Governing the City-State: Notes on the Politics of the Small Latin American Countries

One of the fundamental difficulties in the study of Latin American politics by North American scholars has been the attempt to apply the political experience of the United States (and, to a lesser extent, that of the developed countries of Europe and Asia) to that region. In attempting to interpret Latin America’s political patterns and understand her political difficulties, emphasis has been placed historically on such visible features as the instability of national governments, the lack of adequate party systems, the dysfunctional role of the military, inadequate constitutions, hierarchic social structures and a variety of deficiencies in the region’s political culture. In proceeding along these lines, analysts have been working from the implicit, although I believe unconscious, assumption that the Latin American nation-state constitutes a large, geographically dispersed polity. Until recently there has been very little effort to even study the political processes of the Latin American city, much less attempt to understand national politics in light of the region’s peculiar urban culture.