Jennifer Cyr and James Mahoney
[D]ata have to be interpreted in the historical-structural context.
(Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Enzo Faletto, Dependency and
Development in Latin America, p. xiii)
In Dependency and Development in Latin America, Cardoso and Faletto formulated a new approach for studying the political economy of Latin America. They proposed that “the analysis of social life is fruitful only if it starts from the presupposition that there are relatively stable global structures.” At the same time, they insisted that “although enduring, social structures can be, and in fact are, continuously transformed.” Cardoso and Faletto characterized this approach “as both structural and historical … our methodology is historical-structural.”1
The historical-structural approach proposed by Cardoso and Faletto is distinguished by three defining features. First, the approach is designed to explain specific outcomes in particular cases. Rather than examine the average effects of variables within large populations of cases, historical-structuralism is fundamentally “case-oriented” and geared toward identifying the causes of outcomes in specific cases. Second, historical-structural work is centrally concerned with the temporal dimensions of political explanation. It is “historical” in part because it pays attention to the duration, pace, and timing of events when developing explanations. Such a temporal orientation contrasts with other approaches in political science that rely mainly or exclusively on cross-sectional data or “snapshots” in time to derive inferences. Finally, historical-structural work is macro-oriented and focuses centrally on patterned relationships among aggregate groups and societies. The “structural” dimension of the approach is embodied in its focus on the relations among groups within societies and the interrelationships among societies themselves. This kind of macro orientation differs markedly from other approaches in political science that put rationally behaving individuals at the center of the analysis.
Forty years after the publication of Dependency and Development, Cardoso contends that historical-structural work is “still useful” for analyzing political processes in Latin America.2 In this chapter, we assess his conclusion by taking stock of the literature on Latin American politics that has employed the distinctive features of historical-structuralism in recent decades. We find that this approach has indeed had an enduring influence within the field. Many of the leading works on Latin American politics implicitly or explicitly employ a historical-structural framework. Much of what we know about politics in the region can be attributed to work that uses this approach.
We discuss the uses and contributions of the historical-structural framework across two broad areas. First, we examine substantive research about Latin American politics. We find that scholars using the framework have generated major insights and knowledge, both for classic historical-structural themes and for topics that reflect the main political concerns of our times. In addition, the framework seems to hold much promise for the study of emerging topics in the field.
Second, we consider how the approach has evolved over time with respect to theory and method. We look at three topics: the temporal horizon of historical-structural work; the role of agency within the approach; and the incorporation of quantitative methods. Regarding the temporal horizon, we see that, while some historical-structural scholars continue to look back decades and even centuries in time to explain more contemporary outcomes, others take as their starting point more recent periods, such as the transition to democracy in the 1980s or the adoption of market-oriented economic policies in the 1990s. With respect to agency, we find that many authors explore the extent to which visionary leaders, everyday individuals, and social movements can alter structural paths and thus turn historical corners through “a passion for the possible.”3 Finally, although some historical-structural works continue to be purely qualitative, we certainly see a new body of mixed-method research that is partly historical-structural and partly statistical in its methodology.
Scholars of Latin America who employ historical-structural approaches raise questions about macro outcomes in specific cases. Although their goal is often to explain the particular cases under investigation, their studies also yield general knowledge about political processes. To assess the contribution of historical structuralism to this kind of knowledge generation, we examine scholarship across three broad research areas: social revolutions, democratization, and social rights and the environment. These areas include both older and newer themes, and they represent topics for which historical-structural work has had varying levels of prominence.
When Cardoso and Faletto were writing, scholars knew very little about the causes and consequences of social revolutions in Latin America, even though the Cuban Revolution was often regarded as an archetype. Since that time, a great deal has been learned, mostly from analysts using historical-structural approaches. Let us explore the knowledge that has been accumulated.
A key strand of scholarship focuses on the question of why some countries, especially Cuba (1959) and Nicaragua (1979), experienced full-blown social revolutions, whereas other seemingly similar countries did not.4 To explain this divergence, historical-structural explanations highlight the role of political regime type, class, and international structures as causal factors. In terms of regime type, historical-structural scholarship suggests that neopatrimonial regimes, in which a dictator controls the state (including the military) as a personal instrument, are especially vulnerable to social revolutionary overthrow. These regimes tend to generate broad-based opposition, and they tend to foster total state collapse when the dictator is removed. Thus, the governments of Fulgencio Batista in Cuba and Anastasio Somoza in Nicaragua were structurally vulnerable to social revolution in a way that military governments elsewhere in Latin America (e.g., in Guatemala and El Salvador) were not.
In combination with political regime type, certain kinds of class structures and international factors also promote social revolutions.5 Revolutionary oppositions that bridge class divisions are especially capable of dislodging incumbent regimes. Agricultural structure also matters: regions with sharecropping or squatting are prone to the formation of guerrilla movements, especially when socioeconomic conditions are not improving.6 Divisions within elite class groups, as existed in Cuba and Nicaragua, in turn facilitate the success of these movements once they have formed. International dependency on a superpower patron fosters successful social revolutions by handcuffing neo-patrimonial dictators when they face a crisis situation. For instance, Batista and Somoza were constrained by the United States at key moments in revolutionary dramas in ways that military regimes confronting revolutionaries elsewhere in the region were not.7
Historical-structural works have also yielded important findings about the outcomes and consequences of social revolutions.8 In line with Skocpol’s structural theory,9 revolutionary consolidation in Bolivia, Cuba, and Nicaragua yielded larger, more bureaucratic, and more mass-mobilizing states. In the years following the revolutions, these new states were more capable of reaching into society than their pre-revolutionary counterparts. Yet in part because the revolutions entailed the overthrow of U.S. patrons, the effort by revolutionaries to remake society invited economic and military intervention from the United States. This intervention, in turn, shaped the whole post-revolutionary process and buffeted the extent to which revolutionaries could actually enact far-reaching reforms without aid from another superpower patron (i.e., the USSR). In the end, revolutionaries in Bolivia and Nicaragua had limited success transforming class structures, whereas the price of economic and social transformation in Cuba was political closure and a new dependence on the Soviet Union.10
In short, the study of social revolutions is a classic topic in which scholars using a historical-structural approach have had success in concrete knowledge generation. From this work, we have the following findings: (1) democracies are nearly invulnerable to social-revolutionary overthrow; (2) neo-patrimonial regimes that lack ties to societal groups are especially vulnerable to social revolution; (3) class structures associated with sharecropping are more likely to yield guerrilla movements; (4) historical dependence on the United States makes governments more vulnerable to social revolutionary overthrow; and (5) this same dependence on the United States is likely to check the extent to which social transformation occurs.
Unlike the study of revolutions, work on democratization has been marked by a wide variety of approaches, only one of which is historical structuralism. Nevertheless, historical-structural studies have made key contributions to our substantive knowledge in this area, including the transition to democracy, the possibility of democratic consolidation, and the quality of democracy. For each topic, an exploration of preexisting conditions and pre-democratic legacies has proven useful in generating causal explanations.
Many non-historical and non-structural approaches to democratization have emphasized the ways in which political elites matter at the time of the transition to democracy. By definition, these elites are the individuals at the negotiating table, arguing over the terms of the new democracy, and their decisions shape the process of transition.11 Yet, work within the historical-structural tradition suggests that the path that leads political elites to negotiate a democratic transition is influenced by other societal forces, including the lower classes. For example, several scholars have challenged elite-centered works by showing that democracy was sometimes driven “from below.”12 In cases such as Peru (1980), Argentina (1983), and El Salvador (1994), large-scale societal mobilization explicitly aimed at destabilizing authoritarian rule and establishing democracy marked the transition. These protest movements helped create a climate of ungovernability and, once the negotiations were underway, helped the transition move forward.
To be sure, scholars within the historical-structural tradition do not reject the thesis that democratization is often negotiated in a bargaining game among elites. However, they ask questions about who those elites represent, how much leverage they have, and when they become willing to negotiate in certain ways and not others. To answer, factors such as structurally-rooted economic crises, prior authoritarian regime institutions, and historical modes of international influence often figure prominently.13 For example, economic crises, sparked by past economic decisions or growing mobilization, often provoked the negotiating games that marked the transitions. In fact, other than Chile (1990), it is hard to find Latin American cases where the transition did not unfold in a climate of economic crisis. Likewise, prior regime institutions shape the nature of the players present at the negotiating table and those active in civil society. For example, the authoritarian regime in Uruguay collaborated with the traditional political parties, relying on them for political legitimization. As a result, party leaders were central in the conversations that led to the primary elections of 1982, the Naval Club Pact of 1984, and the elections that brought a democratic government to power in 1985. Finally, factors such as a country’s historical relationship with the United States also matter for the timing and content of the transition. We can see this in cases such as Nicaragua (1990) and El Salvador (1994), where the launching of the transition and the nature of the bargaining game were interwoven with United States foreign policy and intervention.
Transitions themselves provide no guarantee that the democratic regime will be stable or effective. Historical-structural works have shed light on the conditions that are likely to lead to greater consolidation and democratic quality. A comparison of prior authoritarian regime types, for example, reveals that authoritarian legacies have varying and lasting effects on the democracies that succeed them.14 Democratic consolidation is not possible where authoritarian leaders and paramilitary forces control the countryside, as they did in Guatemala.15 Where democracies do take root, the bequeathments of authoritarian regimes often produce paradoxical results, as with the case of post-transition civil-military relations. At the time of their democratic transitions, the Chilean and Brazilian militaries were quite strong vis-à-vis the entering civil government. While this balance of power relationship made the punishment of past human rights transgressions impossible in the short term, it nonetheless allowed for a relatively peaceful transition and the increasing professionalization of the military under civilian rule. In Argentina, on the other hand, the military’s strength was greatly reduced at the time of the transition. Nevertheless, extended efforts by President Raúl Alfonsín to try the armed forces for torture and repression were derailed by a growing guerrilla movement within the military hierarchy. After almost ten years of struggle, the military was eventually granted full amnesty. Paradoxically, then, weaker militaries at the time of the transition can lead to a more painful and protracted establishment of democratic civil-military relations.16 Without looking at the structural forces in play at the time of the democratic transitions, it is difficult to make sense of such paradoxes.
Historical-structural works have also explored the roots of political competition and representation in Latin America.17 Scholars have linked different types of contemporary political party systems back to the mode in which labor was incorporated into the political system in the early 20thcentury. Where labor could feasibly be integrated into the traditional (oligarchic) political parties, as in Colombia and Uruguay, the longstanding two-party system was preserved. By contrast, when both labor and peasants were mobilized and the traditional oligarchy was not as cohesive, as in Venezuela and Mexico, the need to control both sectors led to the implementation of key urban and agrarian reforms. In the short term, these reforms helped to forge a radical populist alliance, but in the long term they led to integrative party systems dominated by one (Mexico) or two (Venezuela) parties.18
Although it is a truism to assert that political parties matter for representative democracy, historical-structural scholarship has shown that democracies are most stable, and the rule of law best respected, when partisan representation is both meaningful and diverse. For example, in strongly presidential systems, judicial autonomy comes under attack more often than not when a single party dominates the political arena. Within Argentina, the rule of law is weakly implanted precisely in provinces where the Partido Justicialista has historically controlled politics, such as San Luis. By contrast, judicial autonomy is better respected in those provinces where power is more fragmented among two or more political parties, such as Mendoza.19
Finally, a historical focus leads us to reconsider the value of key institutions and policies and their impact on democracy.20 Decentralization, for example, has been increasingly promoted as a potential cure-all for democratic woes.21 By devolving political, administrative, and fiscal power to subnational governments, which are “closer” to the citizens they represent, decentralization is supposed to increase accountability and responsiveness. This conclusion is based, however, on the assumption that rational individuals qua citizens will become more engaged in the democratic process, and more demanding of it, when it is closer to them. Some historical-structural works have found, to the contrary, that the causal arrow can go the other way: decentralization processes may be most developed where democratic initiatives have long been in place. Thus, the United States has much higher levels of decentralization and much more active local civil society organizations than other federal countries, such as Mexico and Brazil.
In all, historical-structural scholarship has drawn some important and often surprising conclusions about the well-studied area of democratization. This is true in terms of when and how transitions occur, why they may (not) consolidate, and to what extent they are effective. These conclusions often emerged by looking beyond the immediate causes emphasized in other scholarship and delving into the historical developments that led to the outcome of interest—a method for which historical-structuralism is eminently qualified.
Finally, historical structuralism has begun to examine the circumstances under which the struggle for different social and environmental rights can be successful. The pursuit of greater freedoms and the protection of the environment have become important concerns for many citizens in Latin America. While this is a relatively new area for scholarship, historical-structural works have made contributions.
Scholars working in this tradition have found, for example, that the achievement of specific women’s rights does not necessarily correlate positively with democratization.22 Historical-structural works instead emphasize the relationship among aggregate groups in society, such as the church and state, to make sense of cross-national variations. Thus, the legalization of divorce has occurred when historically strong ties between the church and the state are temporarily severed due to conflicts over human rights abuses, economic policy, and authoritarianism more generally. Somewhat surprisingly, divorce became legal in Brazil during the military dictatorship of General Ernesto Geisel. In Argentina, by contrast, legalization occurred after the democratic transition. The Radical government was able to push through the reform by confronting the church over its tacit support of the previous military regime.23
Since the early 1990s, indigenous movements have emerged to resist and reform economic and political regimes that they perceive as exclusive and unjust. Yet, success in these pursuits has varied greatly. Historical-structural works suggest reasons why this is the case.24 For example, indigenous movements in Bolivia were able to successfully integrate into an influential political party, Movimiento al Socialismo. In Peru, on the other hand, efforts by indigenous movements to become electorally competitive have failed. Historical-structural factors can explain this difference: Bolivia’s Movimiento al Socialismo emerged in an environment where permissive electoral laws and a decentralized political system were present at the time that the traditional political party system entered into decline. These conditions were lacking in Peru when the traditional party system declined, posing large obstacles to the formation of an effective indigenous political party. 25 In other words, where the timing of particular institutional and structural factors coincided, indigenous-based social movements were able to translate their demands into a more formal mechanism for change.
Finally, while the fight for environmental protection in Latin America has been driven in large part by international non-governmental organizations, local communities in countries like Brazil and Ecuador have been important actors as well.26 A basic structural hypothesis would posit a positive relationship between the strength and cohesion of local groups and the success of campaigns against environmentally damaging projects. Thus, whereas efforts to protect the Ecuadorian Amazon from harmful oil drilling practices were successful thanks to strong local organizations, the campaign against the government’s Polonoroeste development project in Rondônia, Brazil, had less immediate impact. As local grassroots groups in Brazil gained strength, however, they were able to fight more effectively for their own interests and shape the project in ways that were positive both to the community and the environment.27
In sum, looking at social rights from a historical-structural perspective suggests that, while the attainment of certain social and environmental rights has been a relatively recent phenomenon in Latin America, the struggle to achieve them is often the result of longer-term processes, including the growing strength of the social movements advocating for such rights and/or the emergence of a fortuitous structural and institutional environment. Today’s contemporary successes and failures often cannot be adequately explained without taking into consideration that broader historical trajectory.
Overall, knowledge accumulation in the areas of revolution, democratization, and social rights and the environment has benefited from works that adopt a historical-structural perspective. In all three areas, we have important general findings have been derived from works aimed at identifying the causes of outcomes in specific cases. These findings emphasize historical processes and the structural relationships among different aggregate groups. Undoubtedly, historical-structuralism has proven itself capable of reaching solid conclusions about the nature of Latin American politics.
As an approach to explanation, historical-structuralism places emphasis on temporal processes and structural causes and tends to adopt a qualitative orientation to analysis. Although historical structuralism continues to adopt these emphases, recent years have seen it combine with other theoretical and methodological approaches. In this section, we explore the ways in which historical-structural works have employed: (1) new modes of temporal analysis, (2) frameworks for integrating agency and structure, and (3) mixed method research designs that combine qualitative and quantitative methods.
One of historical-structuralism’s principal claims is that the causes of outcomes often have their roots decades and sometimes even centuries in the past. In recent years, this basic idea has been developed more formally through frameworks designed for temporal analysis. At the same time, as the pace of political change in the region has seemingly accelerated, the timeline between cause and effect in historical-structural works has been shortened.
Important historical-structural findings concern the role of timing and sequencing. For example, the (relative) lack of external warfare in the years following Latin American independence hindered the development of a strong and autonomous state in the twentieth century. When post-independence wars did occur, they tended to take place before an institutional or administrative state core had been developed. Thus, rather than promote additional state development, warfare eroded extant state structures—wars served to unmake the Latin American state.28 The key difference with Europe concerns timing and sequence: wars in Europe happened after individual states had attained a certain level of administrative and institutional capacity, enabling them to extend bureaucratization and taxation.29
While temporal processes matter as a rule for historical-structuralism, adopters of this approach also identify the effects that specific types of temporal processes have on political development. Take, for example, the use of critical junctures and path dependence. In studies that utilize these concepts,30 historical-structural scholars call attention to crucial actor choices that establish certain directions of change and foreclose others in a way that shapes long-term trajectories of development.31 For example, the dominant political regimes of 20th-century Central America have been treated as legacies of different patterns of liberal reform undertaken during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when political elites made choices about how to modernize the state and agriculture. Harsh military-authoritarian regimes emerged in countries, such as Guatemala and El Salvador, where liberal reformers built up the army and pursued rapid agrarian commercialization. By contrast, where reforms were pursued more gradually, as in Costa Rica, the resulting political dynamics allowed for the inclusion of previously excluded sectors and the eventual establishment of a stable democratic regime.32
Historical-structuralism has revealed that the outcomes of temporal processes can also be cumulative in nature. Mexican business groups, for example, grew in political and organizational strength thanks to an extended over-time series of friendly overtures that the single-party regime made to business. The Argentine and Brazilian business sectors were less lucky, however. Long-term state efforts in these two countries to exclude business groups from policymaking resulted in a weakly organized business sector overall.33 Thus, variations in the organizational strength of Latin American business associations are rooted in part in the cumulative effects of long-term interactions between state and business.
While temporal processes such as path dependence and cumulative causes by their very nature imply the longue durée, other historical-structural scholars shorten the timeline of causality and examine the effects of more recent events.34 These works focus on the short-to medium-term consequences of major economic and political decisions, such as the relatively recent return to democracy in the region or the adoption of neoliberal economic reforms. Historical-structural scholarship emphasizes how the effects of recent market-oriented reforms can vary, even within regions of the same country. The class dynamics of coffee production in the Mexican states of Puebla and Oaxaca, for example, have influenced the kinds of re-regulatory projects that the central state implemented. Whereas the state could exclude the weak and thus politically disengaged small producers in Puebla from their policy framework, they were forced to address and eventually include into their framework Oaxaca’s stronger small producers.35 This is an example of how the historically determined strength of aggregate economic actors shapes contemporary policy-making decisions at the subnational level.
Finally, emerging political dynamics have been put in sharp relief through a historical perspective. For example, the emergence of associational networks as a new basis for expressing interests and influencing politics in contemporary Latin America is best understood against the backdrop of the decline of union-party alliances, which previously were the main vehicles for interest aggregation and articulation. Through the comparison of these two different interest regimes—associational networks and union-party alliances—one can better understand the possibilities and impossibilities for representing popular interests following the era of market-oriented reforms and democratization.36 If the timing were different, that is, if the changes in interest aggregation occurred before the adoption of market-oriented reforms, we would expect the challenges to popular representation, and the very nature of that representation, to be different. Both the fact and the timing of their emergence matter for the theoretical conclusions drawn.
Historical-structural works view structural factors, such as the nature of class relations, as providing certain opportunities and setting certain constraints for purposive and goal-seeking agents. While this structural framework is privileged, scholars have pursued various strategies to allow space for individuals and groups to set, shape, and change political trajectories. In doing so, they offer different and innovative ways of integrating agency into historical-structuralism.
Some historical-structural works combine agency with structure by constructing explanations that systematically move from more structural variables to more agency-centered ones. In effect, the researcher starts with structural factors and works to explain an outcome on the basis of these factors. Once the explanatory power of structural factors has been exhausted, however, the researcher examines factors associated with human agency, such as (un)skilled political leadership. A classic example is Linz and Stepan’s edited project on The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes.37 In that work, contributors explore the role of political leadership in explaining regime breakdown without denying the importance of structure. For example, in his explanation of the breakdown of democracy in Brazil in 1964, Stepan concludes that structural factors (e.g., withdrawal of foreign aid) were decisively important, but still left a “small margin of maneuverability” in which leadership could play a role. Stepan focuses especially on the poor choices and behaviors of President João Goulart, arguing that, “Combined with the structural weaknesses in the regime, Goulart’s political acts, strategies and styles paved the way for the final breakdown.”38
The role of actor choice is also often emphasized in critical juncture explanations. These studies are distinctive in that they focus on actor choices during key historical moments. Thus, whereas Linz and Stepan emphasize agency in the moments immediately before an outcome of interest, critical juncture studies may call attention to agency during temporally distant episodes.39 Likewise, whereas Linz and Stepan view agency as a factor that enters into play only after structure has done its explanatory work, critical juncture studies see agent choices as creating structural conditions that set long-run paths of development and that deeply constrain subsequent agency and choice.
More recently, historical-structural scholarship has focused on the kinds of agents that make up aggregate actors, such as the state and social movements, when explaining outcomes. For example, consider Evan’s argument about “embedded autonomy” as a source of economic growth in the developing world.40 On the one hand, he treats embedded autonomy as a structural relationship between the state and society—i.e., embedded autonomy exists when the state is autonomous from but still connected to key groups in society. But, on the other hand, his account and other works suggest that these structural relationships are often forged by movements and leaders who exhibit political agency.41 If one applies this framework to the case of Costa Rica, for instance, the ability of governments to deliver social welfare benefits in the rural sector and reduce inequality since the mid-20th century seems linked to the state’s relative autonomy from any powerful landlord class. Yet this state autonomy is rooted in the social movements and political leaders that emerged in the periods immediately before and after the Civil War of 1948. The actions of the communist and anti-communist political parties, Presidents Rafael Angel Calderón Guardia and José Figueres Ferrer, and various social movements seem critical to explaining how state autonomy was achieved in the first place and why state actors have taken advantage of increased autonomy to promote broad-based developmental goals.42
Agency is also emphasized in broadly historical-structural works on social movements in Latin America. For example, women and historically excluded ethnic groups have participated in contemporary revolutionary movements, such as that of the Zapatistas in Chiapas, at higher rates than earlier ones, as with the 1950s guerrilla movement in Cuba. In turn, their participation has had important effects on the objectives of these movements and the results they have achieved. In Mexico, authorities have been forced to show greater respect for gender and indigenous rights because of the composition of the Chiapas revolutionary movement. On the other hand, the opportunity for these groups to act in Chiapas only became possible as a result of the (structural) social and economic changes that took place in the years following the Cuban Revolution.43 Thus, we arrive at a vision of structural conditions defining the possibilities for actor choice, and actor choices in turn shaping new structural outcomes. This dialectical interplay between structure and agency seems common in many historical-structural works, both old and new.
Historical-structural works have generally been qualitative in nature. Focusing on large-scale outcomes in a small number of cases, the framework typically uses historical narrative and process tracing rather than regression analysis and statistics to evaluate causal arguments. Yet, as more and more good quantitative data become available, historical-structural scholars are finding creative ways to integrate it into their research on Latin American politics. The result is a new strand of mixed-method research that joins statistical analysis with the historical-structural approach.
Work on the effects of policy decisions for different sectors of the economy and society illustrate this new mixed-method research. Historical-structural analysis has demonstrated, for example, that the stability of free market democracy in Chile was achieved by undercutting democratic participation in the rural sectors. The implementation of market reforms disarticulated the peasantry, making their support easier to corral by conservative elites in elections and keeping rural potentates secure under democracy. While a historical-structural approach is used to explain this process of stabilization via rural disarticulation, new quantitative data on elections, unionization, and political activity provide numerical support for the qualitative argument advanced. Taken together, these findings suggest convincingly that market-oriented reforms both helped sustain formal democracy by giving rural elites electoral security and eroded substantive democracy by undercutting and atomizing the peasantry.44 The combination of the historical-structural approach and statistical analysis in both examples serves to strengthen the theoretical argument by triangulating the evidence proffered.
Research on social policy has also featured mixed methods, combining regression analysis with case studies that use a historical-structural approach. For example, the extent to which public pension systems have been fully replaced by private ones varies quite a lot, ranging from cases of nearly full privatization (e.g., Chile, Mexico, Bolivia), to the maintenance of mostly or fully public systems (e.g., Brazil, Ecuador, Venezuela), to various hybrid combinations (e.g., Peru, Colombia, Argentina, Uruguay, Costa Rica). Statistical tests account for some of this variation through variables such as the extent of pension spending and the degree to which the ruling party controls the legislature. Historical-structural case studies expand upon these findings by tracing the longer-run causal path leading to pension reform. This more qualitative approach suggests that aggressive pension privatization is rooted in a sequence of serious domestic capital shortages, substantial influence from the World Bank and pro-free market economists, and reforms promoted by a well-disciplined party that controlled the presidency and legislature.45 These economic, ideational, and political factors have varying levels of prominence at different stages in the reform process, a conclusion that could only be drawn by paying attention to timing and sequence.
Mixed-method scholarship in a more cross-regional vein has compared social-welfare models in Latin America, East Asia, and Eastern Europe. Quantitative data illustrate well the major differences in spending across and within these three regions. The inability of statistical analysis to uncover unambiguous causal results, however, motivates a more historical-structural approach that emphasizes critical realignment periods. Differences in the way in which governments positioned themselves vis-à-vis leftist parties and labor during the first half of the 20th century can go a long way to explaining Latin America’s focus on social provisions for formal workers, East Asia’s emphasis on education, and Eastern Europe’s universal social entitlements. 46
As these examples demonstrate, historical-structural and statistical analyses have been used in tandem in an effort to triangulate methods and thus increase leverage for valid explanation. Whereas large-N statistics allow authors to find (theoretically-grounded) associations in areas such as social welfare policy, historical-structural analyses allow the authors to delineate the causal processes and mechanisms that underpin these sequences. By integrating quantitative analysis into their historical-structural works, several authors have been able to generalize their argument to a large number of cases, even as they provide detailed information about the mechanisms that connect cause and effect in particular historical cases.
Forty years since the original publication of Dependencia y desarrollo, the tradition of historical-structuralism remains alive and well in the study of Latin American politics. The approach continues to animate work and generate major substantive findings on a wide range of topics, including classic themes such as social revolutions as well as contemporary issues such as democratization and social rights. It retains the core features that have distinguished the approach from its inception: a concern with developing explanations of specific outcomes in particular cases, a focus on historical processes and sequences, and an emphasis on the structural relationships among aggregate groups.
Despite the continued relevance of historical-structuralism, the use of the framework has not remained a static enterprise. Its theoretical and methodological emphases have evolved over time. Contemporary scholars have devised new ways of incorporating agency into the historical analysis, as with critical juncture studies that emphasize the long-run importance of key actor choices. Likewise, with the rise of statistical analysis and the increasing availability of quantitative data sets, scholars have been more apt to combine historical structuralism with quantitative data analysis, thus yielding mixed-methods studies that expand the overall number of cases examined while still emphasizing the causal mechanisms at play in particular cases.
In our view, these trends point toward the resilience of historical-structuralism even as the region continues to evolve politically and as the methodological tools at our disposal multiply. The approach continues to offer a powerful basis for addressing both longstanding questions and the most pressing contemporary issues. Cardoso and Faletto could hardly have hoped for more when they first proposed their historical-structural approach to the study of Latin American politics.
1 Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Enzo Faletto, Dependency and Development in Latin America, trans. Marjory Mattingly Urquidi (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), pp. ix–x. Originally published as Dependencia y desarrallo en América Latina (Mexico: Siglo Veintiuno Editores, 1969).
2 Fernando Henrique Cardoso, “New Paths: Globalization in Historical Perspective,” Studies in Comparative International Development vol. 44 (2009), p. 315.
3 Albert Hirschman, A Bias for Hope (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971), p. 27. As cited by Cardoso and Faletto, Dependency and Development, p. xi.
4 John Foran, Taking Power: On the Origins of Third World Revolutions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Jeff Goodwin, No Other Way Out: States and Revolutionary Movements, 1945–1991 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Timothy P. Wickham-Crowley, Guerrillas and Revolution in Latin America: A Comparative Study of Insurgents and Regimes Since 1956 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992).
5 In addition to the work cited in the previous footnote, see Susan Eckstein, ed., Power and Popular Protest: Latin American Social Movements (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001); Jeffery M. Paige, Coffee and Power: Revolution and the Rise of Democracy in Central America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997).
6 Wickham-Crowley, Guerrillas and Revolution, chap. 6.
7 Foran, Taking Power.
8 Susan Eckstein, “The Impact of Revolution on Social Welfare in Latin America,” Theory and Society 11 (1982): 43–94; John Foran and Jeff Goodwin, “Revolutionary Outcomes in Iran and Nicaragua: Coalitional Fragmentation, War, and the Limits of Social Transformation,” Theory and Society 22 (1993): 209–47.
9 Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979).
10 Richard R. Fagen, Carmen Diana Deere, and José Luis Coraggio, eds., Transition and Development: Problems of Third World Socialism (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1986); Cole Blasier, The Hovering Giant: U.S. Responses to Revolutionary Change in Latin America, 1910–1985 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1985).
11 Two well-known works centered on Latin America that adopt this perspective are Guillermo O’Donnell and Philippe Schmitter, Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Tentative Conclusions about Uncertain Democracies (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986); and John Higley and Richard Gunther, eds., Elites and Democratic Consolidation: Latin America and Southern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). See also Robert A. Dahl, Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971); and Adam Przeworski, Democracy and the Market: Political and Economic Reforms in Eastern Europe and Latin America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
12 Dietrich Ruechemeyer, Evelyne Huber Stephens, and John D. Stephens, Capitalist Development and Democracy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992); Ruth Berins Collier, Paths Toward Democracy: The Working Class and Elites in Western Europe and South America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); and Elisabeth Jean Wood, Forging Democracy from Below: Insurgent Transitions in South Africa and El Salvador (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
13 In addition to the works cited in the note above, see Stephan Haggard and Robert R. Kaufman, The Political Economy of Democratic Transitions (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995); Juan J. Linz and Alfred Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996); Paige, Coffee and Power; and Deborah J. Yashar, Demanding Democracy: Reform and Reaction in Costa Rica and Guatemala, 1870s–1950s (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997).
14 Alfred Stepan, Rethinking Military Politics: Brazil and the Southern Cone (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988); Katherine Hite and Paola Cesarini, eds., Authoritarian Legacies and Democracy in Latin America and Southern Cone (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2004); Juan J. Linz and Alfred Stepan, Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation; and Deborah Yashar, Demanding Democracy.
15 Yashar, Demanding Democracy.
16 Stepan, Rethinking Military Politics, chap 6. See also Anthony Pereira, Political (In)justice: Authoritarianism and the Rule of Law in Brazil, Chile and Argentina (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005).
17 Ruth Berins Collier and David Collier, Shaping the Political Arena: Critical Junctures, the Labor Movement, and Regime Dynamics in Latin America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991); Edward L. Gibson, Class and Conservative Parties: Argentina in Comparative Perspectives (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996); Kenneth Roberts, Deepening Democracy? The Modern Left and Social Movements in Chile and Peru (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998); and Rebecca Bill Chávez, The Rule of Law in Nascent Democracies: Judicial Politics in Argentina (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004).
18 Collier and Collier, Shaping the Political Arena.
19 Bill Chávez, The Rule of Law in Nascent Democracies.
20 Aníbal Pérez-Liñán, Presidential Impeachment and the New Political Instability in Latin America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Robert H. Wilson, Peter M. Ward, Peter K. Pink, and Victoria E. Rodríguez, eds., Governance in the Americas: Decentralization, Democracy, and Subnational Government in Brazil, Mexico, and the USA (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2008).
21 George E. Peterson, Decentralization in Latin America: Learning through Experience (Washington, DC: World Bank Publications, 1997), p. 1.
22 See, especially, Mala Htun, Sex and the State: Abortion, Divorce, and the Family Under Latin American Dictatorships and Democracies (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003). Other works that address feminism more generally include Karen Kampwirth, Women and Guerrilla Movements: Nicaragua, El Salvador, Chiapas, Cuba (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002) and Karen Kampwirth, Feminism and the Legacy of Revolution: Nicaragua, El Salvador, Chiapas (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2004).
23 Htun, Sex and the State, chap 4.
24 Deborah Yashar, Contesting Citizenship in Latin America: The Rise of Indigenous Movements and the Post-Liberal Challenge (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Donna Lee Van Cott, The Friendly Liquidation of the Past: The Politics of Diversity in Latin America (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2000); Donna Lee Van Cott, From Movements to Parties in Latin America: The Evolution of the Ethnic Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
25 Van Cott, From Movements to Parties in Latin America.
26 Maria Guadalupe Moog Rodrigues, Global Environmentalism and Local Politics: Transnational Advocacy Networks in Brazil, Ecuador, and India (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004); Katherine Hochstetler and Margaret E. Keck, Greening Brazil: Environmental Activism in State and Society (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007).
27 Moog Rodrigues, Global Environmentalism and Local Politics.
28 Miguel Angel Centeno, Blood and Debt: War and the Nation-State in Latin America (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002).
29 Charles Tilly, Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990–1992 (Cambridge, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 1992).
30 The analysis of critical junctures and path dependence often go together. This is because choices and events at key moments in time (i.e., critical junctures) tend to have an (often unintended) impact on the extent to which future choices and events are possible. See Paul Pierson, Politics in Time: History, Institutions, and Social Analysis (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004).
31 Collier and Collier, Shaping the Political Arena; James Mahoney, The Legacies of Liberalism: Path Dependence and Political Regimes in Central America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 2001); Pierson, Politics in Time.
32 James Mahoney, The Legacies of Liberalism.
33 Ben Ross Schneider, Business Politics and the State in Twentieth-Century Latin America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
34 Kenneth Roberts, Deepening Democracy? The Modern Left and Social Movements in Chile and Peru (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988); Victoria Maria Murillo, Labor Unions, Partisan Coalitions, and Market Reforms in Latin America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Katrina Burgess, Parties and Unions in the New Global Economy (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004); Marcus J. Kurtz, Free Market Democracy and the Chilean and Mexican Countryside (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); and Sybil Rhodes, Social Movements and Free-Market Capitalism in Latin America: Telecommunications, Privatization, and the Rise of Consumer Protest (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006).
35 Richard Snyder, Politics after Neoliberalism: Reregulation in Mexico (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
36 Ruth Berins Collier and Samuel Handlin, eds., Reorganizing Popular Politics: Participation and the New Interest Regime in Latin America (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009).
37 Juan J. Linz and Alfred Stepan, eds., The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978).
38 Alfred Stepan, “Political Leadership and Regime Breakdown: Brazil,” in Linz and Stepan, eds., The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes, p. 133.
39 Collier and Collier, Shaping the Political Arena; Mahoney, The Legacies of Liberalism.
40 Peter B. Evans, Embedded Autonomy: States and Industrial Transformation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995).
41 Atul Kohli, State-Directed Development: Political Power and Industrialization in the Global Periphery (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
42 Yashar, Demanding Democracy.
43 Kampwirth, Women and Guerrilla Movements.
44 Marcus J. Kurtz, Free Market Democracy and the Chilean and Mexican Countryside (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
45 Raúl L. Madrid, Retiring the State: The Politics of Pension Privatization in Latin America and Beyond (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003). See also Sarah M. Brooks, Social Protection and the Market in Latin America: The Transformation of Social Security Institutions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
46 Stephen Haggard and Robert R. Kaufman, Development, Democracy, and Welfare States: Latin America, East Asia, and Eastern Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008).