Suchergebnisse

It is noteworthy that the recent spate of writings in the field of "political development" has shown a pronounced tendency to omit consideration of Latin America. Thus the "communications" and "bureaucracy" volumes in the SSRC political development series are totally innocent of Latin American data, as is an excellent recent treatment of—of all things!—the political behavior of the military in developing areas.The Latin Americanists, for their part, have largely stressed those key features of the area's politics which have long remained constant—executive predominance, military intervention, and the influence of the peculiarities of Hispanic culture. At the same time, it is clear that the social changes usually collectively termed "modernization"—urbanization, technological borrowing, and the development of mass communications grids—together with their political correlate, the expansion of the political community to include hitherto excluded social elements, are proceeding in Latin America too. Accordingly, it becomes desirable to reexamine the "statics" of Latin American politics in the light of the "dynamics" of the processes of political development and social mobilization.The present article attempts this reexamination with respect to the most characteristic feature of Latin American politics, the coup d'état and the establishment of a de facto military government.A priori, mutually contradictory theses about the relations of the military coup to social development can be constructed—and indeed the literature on the subject abounds in such contradictory theses, evidence to support each of which is always available.

Mexico's political experience over the last fifty years—since the Revolution of 1910—is highly significant, not only for the rest of Latin America, but for much of the rest of the world. For Mexico has accomplished the exceedingly difficult feat of breaking out of the vicious circle of dictatorship, misery, and revolution, and finding a way to a regime that is at once increasingly democratic, stable, and progressive. Despite a relative lack of many of the social, economic, and cultural characteristics which are often treated as prerequisites of stable democracy, Mexico seems to have solved the problem of assuring peaceful succession to leadership positions, while at the same time permitting wide participation in policy formation and allowing full civil freedom.This type of end-result is almost always the conscious goal of political leaders throughout Latin America, Africa, and Asia. While the Mexican road is hardly likely to be followed exactly elsewhere, other countries, to reach the same goal, will have to find equivalents for the solutions that Mexico has devised, for the obstacles in their paths are much the same. A study of the difficulties which Mexico has faced and how they were overcome may therefore have a generic interest, as being suggestive of some broader hypotheses about political development.

The anti-Semitism of the Nazis during the period of their struggle for power has usually been treated as a problem in soc psychol or intellectual history: it has been explained in terms of resentments & frustrations of the German people or Nazi leaders or in terms of the influence of racist authors. But there are elements of central importance which emerge only when the problem is considered from a pol'al point of view which takes account of the conditions of electoral competition in a multi-party system of Weltanschauung parties. An examination of Hitler's writings & speeches shows that he believed it necessary for the success of his movement to gain the support of workers, the lower Mc, officials, & business leaders & at the same time to develop a distinctive ideology on which a fanatical cadre could be built. With an electorate accustomed to the Weltanschauung party, he desired to make appeals to diverse SE groups to gain electoral victories without seeming merely opportunistic. In anti-Semitism he found a technique which could be used to reconcile on the ideological level the contradictions between his blatant econ appeals to groups with quite divergent econ interests, & could also provide the basis for a fanatical mass movement. It was not so much that anti-Semitism was popular in itself - some observers have maintained that on balance it constituted a liability in scaring away respectable support -- it rather gave a superficial consistency & plausibility to the inconsistent appeals of an unprincipled opportunism. AA.