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Frontmatter -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Tables -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1 The Argument: War, Polities, and the Rural Poor -- 2 Gauchos, Ranchers, and State Autonomy in Uruguay, 1811 - 1890 -- 3 A Weak Army and Restrictive Democracy: Colombia, 1810-1886 -- 4 A Stronger State and Urban Military: Argentina, 1810-1890 -- 5 Two Alternative Paths of State Making: Venezuela and Paraguay -- Conclusions -- Notes -- References -- Index

What is the future of liberal democracy? Is the "liberal" ingredient of 21st century democracy compatible with its "demos"? Are developed democracies more equalitarian and less stratified than other regimes? Or are present day democracies evolving into something different that needs a new definition? By the early 1990s liberal democracy appeared to have become the dominant system at a global scale. The hope of citizens, scholars, and observers was that the stride toward broader democratization and inclusion would continue. It did, but as this paper argues, the forms adopted by democratic regimes, especially under the fourth industrial revolution, are not necessarily democratic. Rather, liberal democracies have created a new aristocracy that includes high tech monopolies, extremely skilled professionals, and a selected intelligentsia that from social media, conglomerates, and many times Hollywood, supports this new stratified version of the democratic polity. Family dynasties, clientele networks, and mechanisms of reward and punishment reminds us of the pseudo democracies of the late 19th century. Surely the dwindling middle class in developed democracies still have some consumer power based on credit. Global markets offer many more available consumer goods than in the past, creating the illusion that all is going well. Comparatively, however, democracies are doing worse. As this paper shows, 21st century liberal democracies have concentrated wealth in fewer hands than in the recent past, have favored power centralization especially in the executive branch, have stimulated the formation of giant high-tech monopolies, and have generated more rigid forms of social stratification. Liberal democracies, therefore, are weaking, in many cases as the logical consequence of the natural evolution of the liberal doctrine, and in most cases because of profound changes at the global scale. Citizens' confidence in their elected representatives has been in the decline for a long time. The increasing influence of populist nationalism is an indicator that confidence in traditional politicians continues to deteriorate. Democracy could not be democratic without the popular vote, but it has been precisely the popular vote that has empowered populist nationalist leaders, both from the right and the left. There is not very much that democracies can do about the coming to power via the ballot box of leaders who can rework the system in their favor and, in some cases, destroy it. As the paper shows, changes in the international system of power have not been favorable to liberal democracies, adding to its burdens. They are no longer the optimal model of choice, especially in the less developed world. Finally, I claim that the broken promises of political elites that have traditionally provoked voters' apathy and loss of trust, have, In the 21st century, created new unintended consequences. They have generated illusions of entitlement and deservingness that, especially young voters, have converted into a sort anti-democratic culture that cares less for the collective and much more for themselves.

For almost two centuries substantial research in Sociology, Political Science, History and Anthropology has focused on the state, the nation, nationalism, and national identity. Despite a very remarkable amount of knowledge and intelligent theorizing a number of questions need revisiting and more encompassing comparative work is needed. Here, I offer an argument that involves three areas seldom, if ever, compared: Western Europe, South America, and North America (particularly the United States). The period spans from the sixteenth century to the 1930s but I specially focus on the epoch that starts in the 1750s. The length of the period under scrutiny allows testing correlations among variables over long periods of time. First, I revisit the concept of 'nation' and stress that nations are intellectual constructs as much as they are cultural and imagined ones. Second, I emphasize the state's conceptualizing of the nation as a key independent variable connected to the construction of national identity. Third, I bring some findings of the philosophy of language to bear upon the ways states conceptualize nations and construct their public discourse in relation to national identity. Fourth, I argue that rather than other important factors such as the cultural, ethnic, and linguistic characteristics of the national community, the construction of national identity depends upon the modernization of bureaucracies (in Max Weber's sense) and the characteristics of the civil service. I am particularly interested in the way modern bureaucracies institutionalize meaning. Finally, I suggest that the terms nation-state and national-state have contributed more to a theory of the state than to a theory of the connections between states and nations. I therefore redefine these terms and add a third concept ('state-nation') in order to better capture the relations between states and nations in the regions compared. I identify the relation between states and nations as one of codependency and I claim that different types of codependency are connected to the consolidation of different types of political regimes. During the last two and a half centuries codependency between states and nations has progressively augmented, despite the ups and downs of globalization, different types of international conflict, and changes in the global economic cycle.