Revolution or Contribution? Rational Choice Approaches in the Study of Latin American Politics

2002 ◽  
Vol 44 (03) ◽  
pp. 1-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evelyne Huber ◽  
Michelle Dion
Keyword(s):  
Rational Choice ◽  
Latin American ◽  
American Politics ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
The State ◽  
Structural Constraints ◽  
Latin American Politics ◽  
Over Time

Abstract This article assesses the contributions of studies in the rational choice (RC) tradition to scholarly understanding of Latin American politics. It groups some representative works according to their use of RC assumptions, and also reviews some of the major works in the institutionalist tradition. It argues that works in the RC tradition have neither forced a major rethinking of established theories nor filled major lacunae, although they have illuminated some phenomena that were only partly understood. The RC approach works best for narrow questions in which power relations and structural constraints are stable, whereas its essential assumptions become untenable in questions that involve shifting power relations among social groups and the state over time.

New Thoughts on Military Intervention in Latin American Politics: The Chilean Case, 1973

1975 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 271-304 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frederick M. Nunn
Keyword(s):  
National Security ◽  
Latin American ◽  
American Politics ◽  
Military Intervention ◽  
The State ◽  
Latin American Politics ◽  
Constant Control ◽  
National Power

Every state must maintain constant control of its own development, in order to influence opportunely any situation affecting its growth. Its cultural objectives and its civilization, the increase in national power by way of augmenting the capacity of its citizens, and permanent regard for national security are the bases for harmonious progress of the state; in planning its growth it must be clearly established what is to be accomplished, always considering that every state should aspire to attain the greatest possible extension and capacity.

Elites, Elite Settlements, and Revolutionary Movements in Latin America, 1950–1980: Introduction

1994 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 543-574
Author(s):  
Timothy P. Wickham-Crowley
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
American Politics ◽  
Social Revolution ◽  
Latin American Politics ◽  
Revolutionary Movements

Social revolutions as well as revolutionary movements have recently held great interest for both sociopolitical theorists and scholars of Latin American politics. Before we can proceed with any useful analysis, however, we must distinguish between these two related but not identical phenomena. Adapting Theda Skocpol’s approach, we can define social revolutions as “rapid, basic transformations of a society’s state and class structures; and they are accompanied and in part carried through by” mass-based revolts from below, sometimes in cross-class coalitions (Skocpol 1979: 4; Wickham-Crowley 1991:152). In the absence of such basic sociopolitical transformations, I will not speak of (social) revolution or of a revolutionary outcome, only about revolutionary movements, exertions, projects, and so forth. Studies of the failures and successes of twentieth-century Latin American revolutions have now joined the ongoing theoretical debate as to whether such outcomes occur due to society- or movement-centered processes or instead due to state- or regime-centered events (Wickham-Crowley 1992).

True Crimes: Rodolfo Walsh and the Role of the Intellectual in Latin American Politics

2002 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael McCaughan
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
American Politics ◽  
Open Letter ◽  
Latin American Politics ◽  
Dirty War ◽  
Death Squad ◽  
The Us ◽  
Own Name ◽  
The Military

Rodolfo Walsh was a writer of crime novels, a tireless investigative journalist who uncovered real political crimes, an instant historian of a turbulent and violent era in Argentinian and Latin American politics. He was in Cuba in 1960, participating in setting up the first revolutionary press service in Latin America, "Prensa Latina", when a coded telex arrived in their offices by mistake. After sleepless nights and with one cryptography manual, Walsh deciphered the plans for the US invasion of Cuba being planned in Guatemala by the CIA. Walsh was active in the Montonero guerrilla in Argentina, co-ordinating information and intelligence work. In that capacity he made public the existence of ESMA, the Naval Mechanics School which was the main military torture centre. In his own name he wrote an Open Letter to the Military Junta, a year from the coup and a day before his death, denouncing the dirty war. He was gunned down in the streets of Buenos Aires by a military death squad. This is an account of Rudolfo Walsh's life. It includes extended excerpts from his varied writings.

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