A Subject of Such Weight

2019 ◽  
pp. 34-50
Author(s):  
John M. Thompson

Chapter 2 examines how TR handled the politics of European interventions in Latin America from 1901 to 1903, especially a blockade of Venezuela spearheaded by Britain and Germany. It argues that TR’s reading of public opinion was a central factor in the evolution of his thinking about the Monroe Doctrine, in that he initially overestimated the willingness of Americans to tolerate European interventions in Latin America. The chapter documents how fierce criticism of the Venezuela blockade, most of which was directed at Germany and which caused problems for Roosevelt with the nation’s large German-American community—a constituency whose support he would need in the 1904 election—played a crucial role in the formulation of the Roosevelt Corollary.

1977 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-58
Author(s):  
Gene A. Sessions

For nearly three decades after the turn of the twentieth century, the United States took upon itself the policing of the Caribbean and Central America. Under an expanded interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine known as the Roosevelt Corollary, American policymakers justified numerous military interventions in those small republics until Monroeism became a synonym in Latin America for imperialism and expansionism. By 1930, this policy of attempted hegemony by force was a failure: Public opinion at home and abroad had opposed the “big stick” concept of hemispheric relations almost from the beginning; the interventions seldom achieved their nebulous goals.


2011 ◽  
Vol 99 (3) ◽  
pp. 17-30
Author(s):  
HIRAM BINGHAM

2021 ◽  
pp. 001041402199716
Author(s):  
Jana Morgan ◽  
Nathan J. Kelly

Although many countries meet electoral standards of democracy, often these regimes fail to promote social inclusion or meaningful representation. We argue that systems of exclusion have deleterious consequences for how people think about democracy, undermining tolerance for political dissent. Using cross-national public opinion data together with contextual measures of economic and political marginalization along ethnoracial lines, we evaluate the relationships between exclusion and political tolerance across Latin America. Over-time analysis in Bolivia further probes the mechanisms linking exclusion to intolerance. We find that tolerance of dissent is depressed where ethnoracial hierarchies are pronounced. We advance understanding of oft-unexplained society-level differences in political tolerance and emphasize the importance of the macro-structural context in shaping citizens’ commitments to basic democratic rights.


Author(s):  
James Dunkerley

This chapter examines US foreign policy in Latin America and the historical evolution of US relations with the region. It first considers the Monroe Doctrine and manifest destiny, which sought to contain European expansion and to justify that of the United States under an ethos of hemispherism, before discussing the projection of US power beyond its frontiers in the early twentieth century. It then explores the United States’ adoption of a less unilateral approach during the depression of the 1930s and an aggressively ideological approach in the wake of the Cuban Revolution. It also analyzes US policy towards the left in Central America, where armed conflict prevailed in the 1980s, and in South America, where the Washington Consensus brought an end to the anti-European aspects of the Monroe Doctrine by promoting globalization. Finally, it looks at the impact of the Cold War on US policy towards Latin America.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1866802X2096773
Author(s):  
Lucas Perelló ◽  
Patricio Navia

Studies on party system change in Latin America commonly label similar processes as constituting dealignment or realignment. To clarify the boundaries between both concepts, we distinguish between abrupt and gradual realignments. While both imply change, they differ in the number of election cycles involved. Abrupt realignments occur in a single election cycle, while gradual realignments take place in two or more. We apply this conceptualisation to Costa Rica, Latin America’s longest-running democracy, and a country where the party system has decayed without collapsing. To better identify the type of change that has taken place, we use canton-level election data from 1958 to 2018 and public opinion surveys from 1978 to 2018. The evidence contests the notion of electoral dealignment. Instead, we show that the party system experienced an abrupt realignment in the 2002 election and gradual realignment in more recent election cycles.


Author(s):  
Brian Loveman

U.S. foreign policy toward Latin America in the 19th century initially focused on excluding or limiting the military and economic influence of European powers, territorial expansion, and encouraging American commerce. These objectives were expressed in the No Transfer Principle (1811) and the Monroe Doctrine (1823). American policy was unilateralist (not isolationist); it gradually became more aggressive and interventionist as the idea of Manifest Destiny contributed to wars and military conflicts against indigenous peoples, France, Britain, Spain, and Mexico in the Western Hemisphere. Expansionist sentiments and U.S. domestic politics inspired annexationist impulses and filibuster expeditions to Mexico, Cuba, and parts of Central America. Civil war in the United States put a temporary halt to interventionism and imperial dreams in Latin America. From the 1870s until the end of the century, U.S. policy intensified efforts to establish political and military hegemony in the Western Hemisphere, including periodic naval interventions in the Caribbean and Central America, reaching even to Brazil in the 1890s. By the end of the century Secretary of State Richard Olney added the Olney Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine (“Today the United States is practically sovereign on this continent and its fiat is law upon the subjects to which it confines its interposition . . .”), and President Theodore Roosevelt contributed his own corollary in 1904 (“in the Western Hemisphere the adherence of the United States to the Monroe Doctrine may force the United States, however reluctantly, in flagrant cases of wrongdoing or impotence, to exercise an international police power”). American policy toward Latin America, at the turn of the century, explicitly justified unilateral intervention, military occupation, and transformation of sovereign states into political and economic protectorates in order to defend U.S. economic interests and an expanding concept of national security.


2014 ◽  
Vol 6 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 153-169 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shannon I. Smithey ◽  
Mary Fran T. Malone

Abstract Crime poses a formidable obstacle to democratization in many parts of the developing world. New democracies in Central America and sub-Saharan Africa face some of the highest homicide rates in the world. Politicians, citizens, and policy-makers have raised the alarm about the growing tide of criminality. Public insecurity, coupled with inefficient and often corrupt justice systems, makes democratization uncertain. Even if new democracies do not revert to dictatorship, the quality of democracy may suffer if crime continues to rise. One particularly vulnerable component of democracy is the rule of law, as public insecurity may fuel support for extra-legal justice, and a willingness to disregard the law while aggressively pursuing suspected criminals. To test these relationships, we assess the ways in which criminal victimization, as well as fear of crime, affect citizen support for the rule of law. We utilize public opinion data collected in select countries in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa through two widely used sources – the Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP) and the Afrobarometer surveys.


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