Democracy

On September 24, 1809, the canon of the Catholic Church in Santa Fé de Bogotá gave an oration in the city's cathedral at the request of the Spanish viceroy. As he prayed for "public peace," his attention became centered on questions of "legitimacy." He noted the spread of the "idol of liberty" in "pestilent writings" by "monsters [who] inspire rebellion among all the peoples." Against these ideas, Canon José Domingo Duquesne de Madrid reminded his audience that they owed "obedience and submission" to the "legitimate powers"; those who resisted these powers were resisting the will of God. Five months later, on February 22, 1810, the archbishop of Buenos Aires issued a pastoral letter with a similar message: The authority to command the peoples did not originate in the human will; contrary to what the "libertines" imagined, it "emanated from the supreme authority of God" (Duquesne de Madrid 1809; Carta Pastoral 1810).

The oration in Bogotá and the pastoral letter in Buenos Aires were reaffirmations of Spanish monarchical rule and its final source: the divine rights of the king. Yet, paradoxically, both texts were clear expressions of a deep concern among civilian and religious authorities regarding the emergence of alternative sources of legitimacy. Whom, and why, do people obey?

Of course, these questions already had been at the center of political theoretical discussion for a long time, but they suddenly permeated the political reality of the Hispanic world following the Napoleonic invasion of Spain in 1808. The vacuum of power left by the forced abdication of King Ferdinand VII (1784–1833) set in motion a process that finally led to the independence of Spanish America under a new legitimizing principle: the sovereignty of the people. At the core of this process was the crucial issue of "representation," which was addressed from the start by resorting to elections, first in 1809 and soon followed by a series of electoral contests, which, given their unprecedented nature and dimensions, were—according to François-Xavier Guerra and Danielle Demelas-Bohy—"the revolution itself" (Demélas-Bohy and Guerra 1996, p. 34).

Talk of "new democracies" in Latin America is part of the contemporary vocabulary when referring in particular to the processes of regime transition from the military dictatorships of the period 1960 to 1970. These are, however, old creatures, whose origins date back to the early decades of the nineteenth century. Indeed, inasmuch as there was a visible "first 'long' wave of democratization" in the world since the 1820s (to use Samuel Huntington's phrase), most Latin American countries were from their beginnings part of this "wave." Since then, however, each country has taken a singular, individual path, and none of them has seen democratic developments take place in a linear, progressive way (Huntington 1991).

It is nowadays common to state that democracy is one of those "essentially contested concepts," concepts whose use "inevitably involves endless disputes about their proper use on the part of their users" (Gallie 1955–1956, p. 169; see also Whitehead 2002 and Crick 2002). But what came to be known as "modern democracy" in the early twenty-first century is identified with the merge of two different and often contradictory traditions—liberalism (understood as limited power) and democracy proper (the rule of the majority)—especially after World War II. Thus, modern democracies are also known as "liberal democracies" or "representative democracies," terms that will be used indistinctively in this essay (Bobbio 1990; Dunn 1995; Maier 1995; Urbinati 2006).

THE TERM DEMOCRACY

It seems that there is no history of the word democracy in Latin America like the account Pierre Rosanvallon has written for France (Rosanvallon 1995). Since the early nineteenth century the expression was certainly used by contemporaries in the region, albeit with the ambivalent connotations the term had elsewhere: The word was linked to Jacobin extremism following the French Revolution; it regained favor in the United States only with the founding of Jackson's Democratic Party in the late 1820s; and it became truly dominant in the political discourse of the West after the 1848 European revolutions (Maier 1995; Rosanvallon 1995).

During the first decades of Latin American independence, other words were probably favored over democracy—particularly republic, representative government, and popular government. Yet, contemporaries, even those who became suspicious of democracy, acknowledged the diffusion of "democratic ideas," as the Argentine Bernardo Monteagudo did, reflecting on his experiences in Peru in 1823 (Monteagudo 1916). Intellectuals and nation-builders often were aware of the tensions between liberalism and democracy (which, indeed, have persevered to the present). Some of them were also aware of the need to conciliate their principles. In 1833 Andrés Bello praised the newly reformed Chilean constitution for combining "a vigorous government with the complete enjoyment of well-ordered freedom": It gave "the government strength to defend itself against the attacks of insubordination produced by the excesses of democracy," and gave both the nation and individuals "resources to preserve them from despotism" (Bello 1997 [1833], pp. 254-255). In his Dogma socialista (1838) the Argentine Esteban Echeverría defined the two components of democracy: equality and freedom. Democracy was "the essence of all republican governments," the "government of the majorities," based on the "sovereignty of the people." But, Echeverría noted, people's sovereignty had limits, posed by "the individual, its conscience, its property, its life and its freedom" (Echeverría 1988 [1837], pp. 154-155). The extent to which the ideas and practices of democracy were originally understood in the region, and how they developed from the independence period, still remained understudied, in spite of some significant historiographical advances. In 1845 Domingo Faustino Sarmiento observed that there was a need for an Alexis de Tocqueville in South America—for someone who, knowledgeable in the social theories, could explain "the democracy brought about by the Revolution of 1810, the equality, whose dogma has penetrated even the lower levels of society" (Sarmiento 1976 [1845], p. 15; my own translation).

Although the evolution of the term democracy in Latin America had much in common with its history elsewhere in the Western world, here the focus is on those institutions and practices linked to the development of modern democracy in Latin America, particularly, though not exclusively, on those key aspects of democratization identified by Robert Dahl: inclusiveness and public contestation (Dahl 1971, p. 4). Hence the emphasis on the evolution of the suffrage and political parties, with the aim of exploring the complex, long saga for free and fair competitive elections in Latin America. Democracies are not just about elections; but as Richard S. Katz observes, "elections are the defining institutions of modern democracies" (Katz 1997, p. 3). According to Pierre Rosanvallon, "elections amount to the most condensed and potent form of civic engagement." For this reason, he adds, "the history of democracy … has for a long time simply been identified as a process of concentrating the political field of which the long struggle for universal suffrage has been both the means and the symbol" (Rosanvallon 2006, p. 236).

The following discussion adopts and adapts Huntington's idea of the three democratic "waves." This is done mostly to give some chronological order to a narrative of very disparate movements and to place the Latin American experience in a world context, rather than to suggest that democracy has come, reversed, and returned at the same pace throughout the region in the last two centuries.

THE FIRST "LONG DEMOCRATIC WAVE" IN LATIN AMERICA

The first world democratic "wave" in the 1820s was prefigured by what happened in Spanish America a decade or so earlier.

Between 1809 and 1814 there were at least five significant electoral processes in the American territories under Spanish control: for representatives to the Spanish Junta Central (1809); for deputies to the extraordinary Cortes (1810–1812); and for deputies to the ordinary Cortes, and members of municipal councils and provincial deputations (1812–1814). In addition, elections also took place in several provinces that declared their independence from Spain. Striking features of these movements were their abruptness and their inclusiveness: They showed the sudden evolution from absolutist rule to representative government based on almost universal male suffrage, particularly after the 1812 Cádiz constitution—some of the provinces adopted an even wider suffrage, like Cartagena in 1810 (Helg 2004, p. 129; Lasso 2007, p. 69; Rodríguez, 2000, p. 114. These were precocious exercises amidst extraordinarily circumstances.

On January 22, 1809, the Junta Central—which had been set up the previous September by deputies from the insurrectionary juntas throughout Spain to govern on behalf of the deposed king—called for the election of American representatives to that body. Widely publicized, the decree sparked an intense controversy about the nature of the Spanish territories in the Americas and their rights of representation, while opening up a process of mobilization that had few antecedents in the region: "from the Spring of 1809 to the Winter of 1810, from Sonora (Mexico) to Chile, all Spanish America lived according to the rhythm of this first experience of general elections" (Démelas-Bohy and Guerra 1996, p. 40; see also Guerra 1992; Haddick 1958; Benson 2004; Breña 2006). The elections were confined to the cities, though they were held in about a hundred locations. In some places—for example, Valladolid in New Spain (Mexico) and Cordoba in the River Plate—they evolved into seriously contested events, where anonymous leaflets contributed to the emergence of a public sphere with modern undertones.

The Cádiz Constitution (1812)

The elections for deputies to the Junta Central were held under a restrictive system whose modalities of representation belonged to the ancien régime, but the Cádiz constitution in 1812 adopted a much wider and inclusive definition of the electorate.

As the instrucción to "facilitate" the elections in Guatemala explained, the notion of citizenship defined by the Cádiz constitution incorporated "the white, American or European: the Indian: the mestiso [person of mixed Indian and Spanish descent]." Although those "originating from Africa" were excluded in principle, they could qualify as citizens if they fulfilled certain conditions, such as servicing the "patria," or "distinguishing themselves by their talents, application and conduct." The "exercise of the rights of citizenship" was "suspended" in the cases of those under "judicial interdiction," of those in bankruptcy, and of domestic servants and vagrants (Instrucción 1812, pp. 5-9). Yet, there were no immediate literacy requirements for voting (they were to be applied only after 1830), nor were there income requirements. With the exceptions noted above, any male more than twenty-five years old and born in the Spanish dominions was a citizen, and thus entitled to vote in the first tier of a complex system of indirect elections.

It would be anachronistic to expect full universal suffrage in the region at that time; what is significant is how close the Cádiz constitution came to providing to universal male suffrage (Rodríguez 2005b and 2006). As José Antonio Aguilar has shown, the fact that elections were indirect should not detract from their modern nature either (Aguilar 1998, pp. 423-457; Aguilar 2000).

The Cádiz constitution did not remain a dead letter, in spite of its short life. Its text was received with festivities in América—in Lima, for example, people swore allegiance to the constitution with "splendor and pomp" during the celebrations that lasted from the first to the sixth of October 1812. It encouraged the publication of newspapers such as the Verdadero Peruano—a weekly journal specially founded to accompany the electoral process that followed, with pages devoted to related material, including an "Oda con motivo de la elección popular" written by the pardo (person of mixed African and Spanish ancestry) citizen José Manuel Valdes (Verdadero Peruano 1812, 1813). And of course it called for elections at various levels for the local ayuntamientos, provincial deputies and representative to the Cortes. Elections under the 1812 constitution did not take place everywhere, given the civil war conditions in much of the Hispanic world, but wherever they were held—in New Spain, Peru, Guatemala and Ecuador—they often proved to be significant events, for the intensity of the competition, the participation of voters from a wide range of social actors, and, often, their uncertainties (Rodríguez 2005a and 2006; Benson 1946; Chiaramonti 2005; Guedea 1991; Peralta Ruiz 1996 and 2005; Chust 2006; Chust and Serrano 2006; Morelli 2005; Dym 2006).

These initial processes of electoral mobilization were temporarily interrupted by Ferdinand's return to power in 1814, but their consequences were long-lasting. Above all, they severely undermined the legitimacy of colonial rule, thus paving the way for representative forms of government. The Cádiz constitution was reinstalled in 1820 after a liberal rebellion in Spain. By then, a few countries already had gained independence, but in those that still were under Spanish rule—such as Mexico, Guatemala, and Cuba—the return of the constitution motivated further electioneering. A liberal revolution also broke out in Portugal in 1820, provoking "the first colony-wide election in Brazil"—to select deputies to the Portuguese Cortes, under a "strictly limited suffrage"—which took place the following year (Bethell 1994, p. 3).

It is difficult to identify common patterns of political development from those early years of democracy. The representative governments of some of the new nations were rooted in the Cádiz constitution, but all the emerging countries had quite different experiences of fighting against Spanish forces or dealing with their own internal conflicts. And once they became independent, they all followed different paths.

Evolution of Voting Rights

A wide suffrage—a visible legacy of the Cádiz charter—prevailed in some countries and regions during the 1820s—in the province of Buenos Aires, or in Mexico after the 1824 constitution (Ternavasio 2002; Guardino 1996; Warren 2001). Restrictions to the vote that were introduced generally during the following decade varied and seemed to have kept a spirit of inclusiveness. Literacy requirements, for example, were set in New Granada, Peru, and Chile, but their applications were postponed for a few years, under the assumption that the lack of literacy was a colonial deficit to be remedied by the republics (Posada-Carbó 2003, p. 322). Income restrictions also were introduced, but sometimes the sum required was not that large; in other instances the wording of the restriction was vague, thus allowing for a flexible implementation. Domestic servants and dependent rural laborers were still explicitly excluded from suffrage in the 1832 constitution of New Granada, as in many other constitutions of the period.

A renewed drive to expand the suffrage took place in the mid-nineteenth century: In 1853 Colombia and Argentina fully adopted universal male suffrage, a measure also taken by Mexico and Venezuela in 1857 (Bushnell 1968 and 1972; Negretto and Aguilar 2000) Following in the footsteps of Cádiz, these also were precocious developments by world standards. However, none of the institutional advances became landmarks of democratic consolidation. In Mexico and Venezuela they soon were overshadowed by war and dictatorship. In Colombia universal male suffrage was partly reversed in 1863, when the electoral regime was decentralized—although some states kept it, others reintroduced voting restrictions. Voting restrictions became the norm for national elections after 1886, but universal male suffrage was adopted for the elections of all city councils and departmental assemblies. The measure was never reversed in Argentina, but a later set of reforms, known as the Saenz Peña Law (1912)—which introduced a permanent register of electors, minority representation, and compulsory and secret voting—marked the effective expansion of male suffrage there.

Other countries also expanded the vote, though without fully embracing universal male suffrage. Peru came close to it after 1861, but returned to a restrictive regime in 1896. Ecuador relaxed its income requirements in 1861 but kept literacy restrictions, and in 1869, restricted voting to Catholics. Catholicism was a condition to vote in Brazil under the 1824 constitution, which also excluded slaves and imposed income requirements that were relatively modest, allowing for an extensive suffrage for some decades. In 1881 the Saraiva Law removed the income qualifications and allowed non-Catholics to vote, but introduced literacy requirements, drastically curtailing the suffrage: 80 percent of the adult male population lost the right to vote.

Such changes in the suffrage—expansion followed by restrictions time and again—are not specific to Latin American countries. Similar movements can be detected clearly in the history of European countries such as France, or in the ways the United States excluded blacks from the franchise at the end of the nineteenth century (Warren 2001, pp. 158,159; see also Keyssar 2000). Linear democratic developments towards universal suffrage, as in Great Britain, were more the exception than the norm. The closest to such an exception in Latin America was in Chile, where the expansion of the suffrage followed a gradualist path after adoption of the constitution of 1833, which set income and literacy restrictions. But the income restrictions were modest, and the literacy requirement was enforced with some flexibility. As J. Samuel Valenzuela has observed, income levels were never raised in later years, and they were "swept aside" by a 1874 reform that stated that it was presumed by law that all literates had the required income to vote (Valenzuela 1985 and 1996).

Unlike the precocious though interrupted enfranchisement of men, Latin America was relatively slow in giving the vote to women. The only country to embrace women's suffrage nationwide during the "first long wave of democratization" was Ecuador, and this was not until 1929 (Markoff 2003; Maza Valenzuela 1998). There had been a few earlier instances when women were formally given voting rights, but they were confined to particular regions and there is no evidence regarding their implementation. The earliest case seems to have been in the Colombian province of Vélez in 1853, when the provincial constitution provided the right of suffrage to all citizens "without distinction of sex." Similarly, women were entitled to vote in San Juan (Argentina) in 1862. These look like isolated and unsuccessful experiences; so were the attempts by women to register to vote in Chile in 1875, following vague legislation passed in 1874 (Maza Valenzuela 1995, p. 141). There were other provinces that also gave voting rights to women, but much later, in the 1920s: Yucatán, San Luis Potosí, and Chiapas, in Mexico, and Rio Grande do Norte in Brazil. The main organization to fight for women's suffrage in Brazil, the Federacao Brasileira pelo Progesso Femenino, was established in 1922 (Hahner 1979).

The final acceptance of universal male suffrage was generally a post-1930 conquest, except in Argentina and Mexico, where the constitutional provisions of the 1850s were never reversed, and in Uruguay, where it was adopted in 1916. In Costa Rica the vagueness of the restrictions introduced in the 1871 constitution "meant that, by the early twentieth century, all men at least twenty years old were registered to vote" (Lehoucq and Molina 2002, p. 41).

In spite of the "accidental" evolution of the suffrage, the institutional developments described above were not democratically insignificant: They not only reflected the early acceptance of popular sovereignty as an undisputed legitimacy principle, but also encouraged extraordinary levels of electoral popular politics (which, until recently, have been neglected by historians) (Annino 1995; Posada-Carbó 1997b; Sábato 1999). With the available information it is not possible to trace the movement of the electorates in a systematic fashion. Yet, some indicators show that electoral participation was often intense, with important variations in time and place, and according to the type of electoral contest and degree of competition.

There was a massive irruption of the electorate in most Spanish American countries from the early years of their independence through the 1830s. Some of the accounts of the elections under the Cádiz constitution reveal a picture of community involvement. Electoral participation continued to be high in Mexico City after independence: According to Richard Warren, "voter turnout for municipal elections of the late 1820s and early 1830s fluctuated in the range of 25 to 70 percent" (Warren 2001, p. 164). He also estimates that in 1829 to 1831, turnout "hovered around 27 percent" of the city's male population. Mexico City was perhaps not representative of all of Mexico, but as the capital of the country its importance should not be undervalued. The figures also suggest that in some areas there were extraordinarily high rates of participation by the world standards of the time. Electoral mobilization seems to have slowed down during the following decades in some countries as a result of new voting restrictions. In other countries—as in Argentina under the dictatorship of Juan Manuel de Rosas—elections simply lost significance except for their symbolic function.

Participation after Mid-Century

There was a second surge of extensive mass participation in the mid-nineteenth century, after some countries adopted universal male suffrage, or lowered voting requirements. In Colombia 210,000 people—40 percent of the electorate—voted in the presidential election of 1856. This was an extraordinarily high rate by world standards, as David Bushnell has shown, and even more when transport and communication difficulties are considered (Bushnell 1971). The electorate in Chile was around 30,000 people by the 1850s, but this figure more than tripled following the 1874 electoral reform. During that decade the largest electorate was in Brazil: One million people voted in the 1872 elections (11% of the total population), a rate higher than Italy (2%), Holland (2.5%), Portugal (9%), and Great Britain (7%). (Murilo de Carvalho 1995, p. 25; see also Graham 1990)

Although the voting populations of some countries shrank during the last quarter of the nineteenth century, there was a renewed general expansion of the electorate in the first three decades of the twentieth century. This was perhaps most dramatic in Argentina after 1912, and in Uruguay, where the electorate grew almost seven-fold between 1906 and 1930. In Colombia—as a result of the 1910 reforms that lowered the income requirements for voting at national elections—the electorate grew at a faster pace than the general population did in those same years. More than 800,000 voted in the presidential election of 1930, or about 48 percent of the adult male population (Posada-Carbó 1997a; Barrán 1996).

These successive "waves" of expansion and contraction must have produced substantial variation in the social composition of the electorate. But almost from the start, elections were not confined to the elites, as many historians long assumed.

Charles R. Berry might have exaggerated when he wrote that during the Mexican elections of 1810 to 1822, "the enfranchised populace participated enthusiastically, taking their obligations as citizens seriously" (Berry 1976, p. 41), but people from all classes and ethnic backgrounds voted in those early contests. The involvement of the popular sectors in electioneering persevered throughout the century, and was more intense of course during periods of suffrage expansion. Following the Peruvian electoral reforms of 1847 to 1849, "political participation increased among a wide cross section of Peruvians: tradesmen, teachers, journalists, professionals, small shopkeepers and villagers" (Peloso 1996, pp. 194-195). Artisans figured prominently in electoral campaigns in Peru, Chile, and Colombia (Sowell 1992).

There has been very little systematic research on the social composition of voters over time, but the available studies confirm the general picture of a socially diverse electorate where the popular element was often dominant, as in Buenos Aires, and in São Paulo, where low-income and illiterate voters—including those from rural districts—formed a large proportion of the electorate (Alonso 1996; Kline 1995). Closer examinations may reveal substantial variations in the electorate's social composition over time, as for example in Chile between 1863 and 1878: As the proportion of "property owners and capitalists," "professional, merchants, and other middle class sectors," and "public and private employees" declined, that of "artisans," "farmers," "miners," and "labourers" increased during those years (Valenzuela 1985, p. 118). During the first decades of the twentieth century, following urbanization and industrial development, the participation of the popular sectors in electoral politics became even more prominent. Even when suffrage restrictions remained, as in the Bolivian elections of 1904, parties had to court the artisan vote (Irurozqui 2000). The founder of the Chilean Communist Party claimed that more than 60 percent of the Chilean electorate in the 1920s was made up of people who either were members of the Workers Federation or were somewhat linked it (Valenzuela 1998, p. 285). Undoubtedly this is an exaggeration of an interested party, but nonetheless it shows awareness of a new social landscape.

The development of labor unions often went hand in hand with the organization of socialist parties, sometimes with the explicit aim of gaining representation in congresses, state assemblies, and city councils. There were significant inroads for social democrats in Chilean representative politics. In other countries, however, they faced the resistance of fellow socialists who favored revolution over electioneering, or even more challenging, the competition of well-established parties with traditional links with the laboring classes. A good illustration of this was offered by the union leader Ignacio Torres Giraldo (1892–1968) in his account of the politics of the Colombian labor movement during the 1910s and 1920s (Torres Giraldo, n.d). The Liberal return to power in the presidential elections of 1930 owed a great deal to the support the party received from urban labor.

Many historians and social scientists have dismissed as insignificant the early experiences with a wide suffrage—even universal male suffrage—and the evidence of popular participation in electoral politics. In this view, Latin American elections before 1930 (especially in the nineteenth century) generally have been perceived as mere theatrical events, where voters were controlled by governments and elites through fraud, clientelism, bribery, and coercion. The regimes resulting from those elections have thus been labeled regimes of "democratic fiction" (Guerra 1994; see also Graham 1990 and Escalante Gonzalbo 1993).

Electoral Competition and the Formation of Political Parties

There were dictatorial regimes—such as Porfirio Díaz's in Mexico—where voters were regularly paraded at the polls in elections that were democratically meaningless. The politics of influence—be it by governments, the clergy, landowners, or politicians—were part and parcel of electioneering. Fraud and violence also were constant reminders of the shortcomings of democracy in the region. But these were far from typical of Latin America. As Alan Knight has observed regarding Francisco Madero's reform movement in revolutionary Mexico: "In no country were the constitutional practices admired by Madero and his fellow reformers rapidly implanted: they grew up gradually, often developing out of earlier 'corrupt' practices, associated with 'artificial' or 'limited' democracy and characterized by boss-rule, networks of patronage and machine politics" (Knight 1986, p. 412).

What needs to be acknowledged more fully is that the politics of influence or the existence of fraud and violence did not preclude democratic developments, which—it should be stressed once again—occurred with important variations over time and place, and often following what Hilda Sabato has referred to as a "zigzag path" (Sabato 2001; see also Deas 1973; Posada-Carbó 1994 and 2000b). Above all, scholars need to reconsider some of the stereotypes that tend to undermine the significance of elections during this period, and the extent to which elections reflected competitive politics—the realm of democratic aspirations and, indeed, achievements.

Electoral corruption coexisted with the development of competitive politics, and fraud did not always determine the results at the ballot box, as Lehoucq and Molina have demonstrated for Costa Rica. Moreover, an exclusive focus on corrupt methods draws attention from the constant efforts in some countries to develop a fairer competitive field. As early as the 1830s there was a body of experts on voting regulations in Colombia to challenge the results at the polls and foster a culture of electoral litigation. The adoption of the secret ballot was a late development, as it was also in Europe and in the United States. Chile established voting booths in 1890, more than two decades before France, where it was mandated in 1913 (Valenzuela 1998 and Markoff 1999).

Electoral competition went hand in glove with the formation of political parties. As in the earlier phases of other Western democracies, in Latin America the terms party and opposition had a pejorative sense well into the nineteenth century. Yet, as early as 1844 some figures such as Domingo Faustino Sarmiento defended their legitimacy, and the legitimacy of opposition parties contesting elections (Sarmiento 2001, pp. 63-85). Electoral clubs, much in evidence during the 1820s, again sprang up in Argentina after the fall of Rosas in 1852. Indeed, political organizations to fight elections emerged almost in tandem with the adoption of suffrage throughout the continent. Pipiolos ("novices") and pelucones ("big wigs") were the nicknames in Chile for the Liberal and Conservative Parties, two of the four parties (together with the National and Radical) that formed Chile's first party system, during the administration of President Manuel Montt Torres (1851–1861) (Collier pp. 49-50; Valenzuela 1995). The Colombian Conservative and Liberal Parties, which also originated from earlier factions organized around the struggle for power, were established in 1849 to 1850. They, too, struggled for power in Mexico, but the Conservatives disappeared after 1863, whereas the Liberal Party was somewhat transformed under the Porfirio Díaz regime (Hale 1989).

Of course, party developments varied from country to country, and not all parties evolved into durable machines. There were no consolidated national parties in Brazil; instead, parties tended to be state-based, such as the Paulista Republican Party, organized in 1873, or the Democratic Party of São Paulo, established in 1926. The first national civilian party in Peru was founded in 1871 (McEvoy 1997; Muecke 2004). Argentine parties were also latecomers, and often had short lives. The Partido Autonomista Nacional was set up in 1880 but barely outlived his major leader, General Julio Argentino Roca. In contrast, the Unión Cívica Radical—established in 1891—became one of the two most important Argentine parties of the twentieth century (Alonso 2000). A significant number of parties founded during this period either ceased to exist or survived with diminished roles after 1930. The Blanco and Colorado in Uruguay, and the Liberals and Conservatives in Colombia, were exceptional for their influence in shaping their nations' party systems in the twentieth century. Nonetheless, there were other long-lasting parties that originated during this period, including the Cuban and Chilean and Communist Parties and the Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana (APRA), established in 1922.

The development of durable and competitive party systems was a slow, complex, and frustrating process. Party systems were more likely to evolve in countries that managed to hold regular elections because they helped to anchor social roots within the electorate. In the absence of strong electoral authorities, however, party competition unsurprisingly turned into violent conflict. Yet, civil war was no impediment to the evolution of competitive electoral politics between Blancos and Colorados in Uruguay, particularly after 1919, when elections were held almost annually (Barrán 1996, p. 52).

These reconsiderations by no means ignore the extent to which suffrage practices and political competition were still distant from the democratic ideal. Where in the world was that "ideal" in the nineteenth century? Indeed, a proper understanding of how democracy evolved in Latin America ought to reexamine the subject from a wider, comparative perspective. Furthermore, a detailed historical revision reveals a complex picture that cannot be framed by caudillismo—the common view of Latin American politics identified with personal, tyrannical rule that was popularized in the English-speaking world by Mary Mann's translation of Sarmiento's Facundo in 1868 (Jaksic 2007, pp. 306-308). Neither can it be framed within the usual history of permanent stagnation and failure.

Attempts at building constitutional regimes did meet with enormous difficulties from the start, and all countries subsequently suffered periods of instability and repression. Such setbacks should not be surprising. At the time of independence, republican liberal constitutionalism was a rarity in the world. As José Antonio Aguilar has noted, the emerging Latin American nations were "voluntary guinea pigs" in adopting a set of novel institutions considered to be appropriate for representative government—popular elections, separation of powers, individual rights, freedom of the press—but whose effectiveness was largely unknown: "Latin America represents the great post-revolutionary constitutional experiment" (Aguilar 2000, p. 24; see especially pp. 15-56). The menu of institutions chosen, the timing and circumstances of their adoption—without a proper state apparatus in place for their implementation—coupled with the lack of experience, help to explain why early attempts at democratization were frustrated (Valenzuela 2006).

The long-term consequences of those early experiences have not been assessed completely. An evident legacy, amply recognized in recent historiography, was the incorporation of popular sectors into electoral politics. Less studied has been the roles played by congresses and other representative assemblies since these nations' independence. Congresses might have been just rubber-stamping bodies under conspicuous dictators, but their main function is "often overlooked" (Kinsbruner 1994, p. 119). They were most visible in imperial Brazil, in Chile during the crisis leading to the 1891 civil war and the subsequent parliamentary period, and under the federal regimes adopted in various nations. They also figured prominently in the politics of countries usually identified with caudillo rule, such as nineteenth-century Peru. Congresses represented provincial interests and served as constraints on the power of executives, even under centralist constitutions, as in Chile after 1833 or in Colombia under the Conservative hegemony (1886–1930).

Role of the Press and Civil Society

In addition to congresses, another key actor in the early phases of Latin American democratization was the press, whose role also has been neglected by historians. The press flourished unprecedentedly during the first decades of independence. Repeated instances of repression, political instability, and undeveloped markets made for a bumpy ride for the consolidation of newspapers. "The history of the Mexican press is a narrative of failure," noted Walter McCaleb in 1920, following the destructive effects of the revolution (McCaleb 1920, p. 443). More often than not, newspapers had a short life, but some lasted for a number of significant years, even decades, and a few of those established during this period have survived to the present—notably El Mercurio (1827) in Chile, El Comercio (1839) in Peru, La Nación (1862) in Argentina, O Estado de Sao Paulo (1875) and Jornal do Brasil (1891) in Brazil, and El Espectador (1885) and El Tiempo (1911) in Colombia (Posada-Carbó 2007b; see also Soto 2004 and Alonso 2003). Regardless of their life spans, the history of newspapers is inextricably linked to the processes of democratization because their very existence is determined by a basic liberal principle: freedom of the press. Overall, newspapers were instrumental to most electoral campaigns: They publicized the candidates' profiles and platforms; they discussed the issues at stake; they informed about electoral regulations and procedures; and they helped to shape a fundamental aspect of modern democracies—public opinion, a term that was already in common usage in the press by the 1830s.

"Newspapers … were embedded in and constitutive of democratic life," Carlos Forment acknowledged in a stimulating attempt to revalue the "democratic tradition" of Latin America during the nineteenth century (Forment 2003, p. xviii). Newspapers were part of that terrain of associative practices through which Latin Americans became "democratic citizens," also exemplified by the more than seven thousand voluntary groups that formed in Mexico, Peru, Cuba, and Argentina throughout the century. But Forment presents a disjunctive picture of public life: Although "civil society" was the domain of "democratic-minded" Latin Americans, "political society" was the realm of authoritarians. Such generalized disjuncture is difficult to accept because it not only idealizes the former and demonizes the latter, but also assumes that there were no links between the two. Early artisan societies were set up with the encouragement and support of political leaders, and often with the purpose of contesting elections—consider those established by the pelucones in Chile in 1829, and by the progresistas in New Granada in 1836. Mutual societies such as the Argentinian Sociedad Tipográfica Bonaerense, founded in 1865, included politicians from its beginning, and "cultivated a special relation" with the political world: Its first president was a newspaper editor, the founder of La Tribuna, and later a government minister and senator (Sabato 1998, pp. 55-57). Rather than contradicting it, Forment's revisionist work serves to complement the narrative presented here, thus adding more elements—those from civil society—to underline that "the democratic tradition in Latin America is far more robust than most scholars have claimed" (Forment 2003, p. xi).

Moments of Democratization

As already suggested, this "democratic tradition" originating from independence did not develop in a linear, gradual way. Although all countries followed different paths, it is possible to identify two major "moments" of democratization during the first half of the nineteenth century: the early decades of independence, and the mid-nineteenth century, when developments were influenced to some extent by the 1848 European revolutions. The European revolutions had significant repercussions in Latin America, most visibly in Chile, Colombia, Peru, and Pernambuco (Brazil), but also indirectly and later in Argentina and Mexico. As Guy Thomson notes, "the revolutions of 1848 renewed and extended Latin America's democratic vocabulary and republican symbolism" (Thomson 2002, p. 7). Such "moments" of democratization also had deep practical consequences besides the massive enfranchisement of popular sectors. The abolition of slavery, which began during the independence period—with Chile abolishing it altogether in 1823—was finally accomplished in the 1850s, except in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Brazil. These "moments" of democratization also brought important reforms, some of them fostering social mobility and elite rotation, as exemplified by the career of Benito Juárez in Mexico. The drastic liberal reforms in Colombia during the 1840s and 1860s might not have produced all their desired effects, but there were a few democratic advancements (Posada-Carbó 2002). As José María Samper lamented in 1861, "the European world has made more efforts to study our volcanoes than our society … it has much more learning about how quinine bark is cut, or how hides are salted in Buenos Aires, than about the vitality of our infant democracy" (quoted in Deas 1985, pp. 537-538).

A third "moment" of democratization—this time more gradual and prolonged—took place from the 1880s to 1930, when liberal constitutional rule made significant inroads. This occurred, for example, in Brazil since the 1891 constitution, in Chile under the so-called "República parlamentaria" (1891–1925), and in Colombia after 1910. Electoral reforms made it possible for some political parties to achieve power via the ballot box, as did the Argentine Radicals, who won the presidency in 1916. During this period, under the influence of José Batlle y Ordóñez, Uruguayan democracy first embraced the welfare state. Some attempts at opening the political system ended in disaster, the most extreme example of which was Francisco Madero's anti-reelection campaign in 1910, which sparked the Mexican Revolution. With a few exceptions, however, this third moment came to an end with a succession of breakdowns after 1929—a democratic reversal similar to that which was already taking place in Europe.

THE SECOND WAVE: DEMOCRACY IN AN ILLIBERAL AGE

As the above narrative suggests, there was no easily identifiable "first democratic wave" in Latin America, but rather a mixed set of developments in different directions varying from country to country, though there were various "moments" of democratization that acquired a regional dimension. References to the "second wave" are at least as problematic. In Huntington's classification, this second global democratizing movement took place in 1943 to 1962; some Latin American scholars date it to 1956 to 1962 (Huntington 1991, p. 16; Hagopian and Mainwaring 2005, pp. 18-19).

A glance at some individual cases reveals the difficulties in fitting their experiences into such patterns. It is true that from 1929 to 1933 democracy in the region was in retreat following a succession of coups d'état. However, Costa Rica and Colombia avoided the trend—in the latter, power changed hands via democratic election in 1930, a landmark in the country's history (Posada-Carbó 2000a, pp. 35-47). In 1932 constitutional rule returned in Chile, where a military coup (as in Uruguay), "rather than leading to sharp breaks [with their] political evolution, represented serious but passing setbacks" (Hartlyn and Valenzuela 1995, p. 138). Indeed, as totalitarian and dictatorial regimes expanded in Europe in the 1930s and 1940s, the democratic perspectives in some Latin American countries did not look so dark. This was not the case, however, in Brazil under the authoritarian Estado Novo ("new state") inaugurated by Getúlio Dornelles Vargas in 1937, or in Argentina under Juan Domingo Perón's rule. But confronted with the horrors of Europe, the leading Colombian liberal statesman Alberto Lleras Camargo (1906–1990) optimistically claimed in the early 1940s that the future of world democracy was in the Americas.

After World War II, democracy did expand in the region. From 1945 to 1964, according to José Murilo de Carvalho, Brazil historically enjoyed its first "democratic experience" (Murilho de Carvalho 1995, pp. 95, 97). Venezuela, having emerged from the long dictatorial regime of Juan Vicente Gómez (1909–1935), underwent a period of political opening in the 1940s. Later significant developments encouraged Milton Eisenhower to report in 1959 to the president of the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953–1961), that dictatorships in Latin America had been "steadily" declining since 1933. J. Fred Rippy, critically commenting on Eisenhower's statement, skeptically observed that "with few exceptions, newsmen of every media of information (in the United States) have conveyed the idea that the general trend south of our border is toward democracy and more democracy" (Rippy 1960, p. 99). Rippy questioned the assumption that the recent downfall of tyrants signaled an "advance toward democracy" in the region. Four years later, the 1964 military coup in Brazil proved him right. Though the democratic regimes in Chile and Uruguay survived more than a decade beyond the end year of Huntington's second "wave," they did break down in 1973. "Those were the darkest of days," Fernando Enrique Cardoso recalled in his memoirs, "not just for us [Brazilians], but for all of Latin America. Like dominoes, democracies were collapsing everywhere: Uruguay, Chile, Argentina" (Cardoso 2006, p. 115).

Not everywhere. Costa Rica had been on the path towards a consolidated modern democracy since 1948. Democracy had flourished in Venezuela since 1958, and Colombia had returned to constitutional rule after the brief dictatorship of General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla (1953–1957). There was no regime breakdown in Mexico, though the long dominant rule by the PRI (Partido Revolucionario Institucional) brought into question the country's democratic credentials. Yet, in 1957 Russell Fitzgibbon argued that in spite of being "vitiated by the absence of genuine party competition, Mexico should be classed as a 'democratic country' [because] the democracy which is lacking in inter-party competition may in part be supplied by the intraparty operation of the PRI" (Fitzgibbon 1957, pp. 18-19).

Suffrage Reform

Too much emphasis on the so-called "second wave" leaves out significant democratic developments that took place before and after the short "second wave." By and large, however, these developments occurred amidst a hostile ideological atmosphere. Arguably, there were conflicting views of democracy at play, but with a few exceptions, the guiding principles of political liberalism at best took second stage, and subsequently some of the major values of modern democracy lost currency (see Posada Carbo 2007a and 2008).

Nonetheless, beginning in the 1930s there was a significant expansion of the suffrage and, unlike those of earlier periods, few of these renewed constitutional achievements have been removed from the legal texts.

Universal male suffrage returned to Colombia (1936) and Venezuela (1947), and was officially adopted by Costa Rica in 1949. Literary restrictions were kept in some countries including Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru, Brazil, and Chile, though in Chile the 1874 electoral reform and the high literacy rates had made such restrictions redundant by the time they were finally abolished in 1970. This was also the period of incorporation of women into the political body. Country after country adopted female suffrage: Brazil and Uruguay in 1932, Cuba in 1934, El Salvador in 1939, Dominican Republic in 1942, Guatemala in 1945, Argentina and Venezuela in 1947, Costa Rica and Chile in 1949 (in Chile women had been granted the right to vote in municipal elections in 1935), Bolivia in 1952, Colombia and Honduras in 1955, and Haiti in 1958 (Brandenburg 1958, p. 212).

The electorate subsequently grew, even in countries that kept suffrage restrictions. Compulsory voting—adopted in Argentina, Uruguay, Costa Rica, Chile, Brazil, and Venezuela—might in some cases explain higher rates of electoral participation, but not in every case, as enforcement was not always strong. At any rate, the electorates grew more quickly than the general populations did in Argentina, Peru, Venezuela, Chile, and Brazil. By 1964 more than fourteen million people voted in Brazil, a massive expansion from the 1.8 million who went to the polls back in 1930. The numbers seemed modest in Bolivia, yet its electorate doubled between 1940 and 1951, when about 200,000 people voted (Murilo de Carvalho 1995, p. 108; Whitehead 2002, p. 316). Although members of the laboring classes in some countries had been mobilized during the earlier period, the overall Latin American electorate acquired a new profile following this expansion.

The Growth of Parties

Wherever parties had developed strong social roots in the past, they often were successful in incorporating the respective expanding electorates, though in most cases they faced the challenges of new parties and populist figures. Some of the new parties were the results of merges, such as the Chilean Partido Socialista (founded in 1933), or of internal splits—the Chilean Partido Demócrata Cristiano, set up in 1957, grew out of factions from the Conservatives. Christian democratic parties were established during this period and became leading actors in the politics of Costa Rica and Venezuela. Catholics in Mexico sponsored the foundation of the Partido de Acción Nacional (PAN). The Mexican Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), originally known as Partido Nacional Revolucionario in 1929, consolidated as a party that was "almost unbelievably well organized": "No other political group in Latin America … can equal it in the completeness and effectiveness of its organization" (Fitzgibbon 1957, p. 19). Brazil saw the emergence of national political parties for the first time under the republic, such as the Uniao Democrática Nacional (UDN) and the Partido Social Democrático (PSD) (Bethell 1994, p. 9). Innovations in party politics were perhaps more significant in countries that had had dictatorships and thus required new organizations almost from scratch. This was the case in Venezuela, where Acción Democrática was established in 1946 and soon was followed by the Christian democratic party Comité de Organización Electoral Independiente (COPEI). These developments were interpreted positively by contemporary political scientists such as Fitzgibbon: "Party progress is erratic but there is ample evidence in many directions that parties are becoming more mature and sophisticated, more responsive and responsible, and a more significant part of the broad political landscape" (Fitzgibbon 1957, p. 21).

The extent to which party developments led to free and fair electoral contests during the 1940s to the 1960s varied from country to country. There were significant electoral reforms including the establishment of new electoral courts, and electoral rules to allow for minority representation and encourage party competition, as in Uruguay, Costa Rica, and Chile (McDonald 1967, p. 702; Brandenburg 1958, p. 217). Costa Rica's electoral code of 1946, adopted in a revised version by the 1949 National Constituent Assembly, is considered a landmark because it "contributed to the development of one of the most stable democratic regimes in the world" (Lehoucq 1995, pp. 24, 42). Contemporary foreign observers acknowledged important electoral developments, because some electoral contests were perceived as being relatively free and fair, including the presidential elections in Peru in 1956; in Uruguay in 1946 and 1950; in Venezuela in 1947; in Costa Rica in 1953; in Chile in 1946 and 1952; and in Ecuador's Galo Plaza in 1948, where the victor four years later became "the first popularly elected president in more than twenty-five years to complete his full term in office." But electoral irregularities persevered in most countries. Control of voters was made easier by preregistration arrangements and the general practice of parties and candidates printing their own ballots, though the state-printed ballot was introduced in Chile in 1958 (Brandenburg 1958, pp. 214-215; 218-220).

According to the surveys conducted by Fitzgibbon (and others) between 1945 and 1955, the nature of elections seriously hampered the quality of Latin America democracy, as did other factors that "were thought to be in a bad way": civilian supremacy over the military, freedom of party organization, and the state of local government. What impressed the "specialists" about the democratic progress during those years—and indeed encouraged their optimism about the future of democracy—were the improvements in education, the standard of living, and the status of social legislation (Fitzgibbon 1956, pp. 71-72). Whether or not the level of socioeconomic development should be a precondition for democratization is still a matter of scholarly debate today, but the frustrating experiences of the mid-twentieth century illustrate the difficulties of establishing any simple correlation. "The clearest … threat to civil liberty [in Latin America]," Germán Arciniegas wrote, "is that which has developed in the country with the lowest rate of illiteracy—Argentina" (1953, p. 10).

Military and Populist Regimes

Arciniegas, a Colombian liberal intellectual who lived in exile in the United States from 1942 to 1960, left a testimony of what he referred to as a "vast conspiracy against democracy, liberty, and respect for human rights"—an increasing movement away from representative government that was placing Latin America outside the "democratic orbit" (Arciniegas 1953; 1996 [1956], p. 18). His rallying cry was not just against military dictatorship but also against the rising populist regimes, which he labeled "neo-caudillism"; Perón and his party were the object of his harshest criticism. Arciniegas reflected on the dilemmas those regimes posed to democracy: "the caudillos … have started out with the backing of groups of people, sometimes with a real majority of popular support. Invariably their programmes have carried a glimmer of the democratic ideal." Demagoguery was an effective weapon, but "once the spellbinders have won power, their promises have gone up in smoke, leaving only the bitter bread of dictatorship" (Arciniegas 1953, pp. xv, 7, 384; 1996 [1956], p. 21). What was to Ariciniegas an "arbitrary use of words" was to populists a problem of definitions. Indeed, some foreign contemporary scholars were of the view that, in contrast to (U.S.) Americans, the average Latin American was "thinking more in terms of social and economic than of political democracy" (Fitzgibbon 1967, p. 130). However, Arciniegas supported the alternative notion of "representative, democratic government," a system that "would become a stimulus and challenge" for the alleviation of social problems, as they could be "trashed out in the press, in the legislative chambers, in the streets and the homes" (Arciniegas 1953, p. 7).

As noted above, representative democracy seemed to flourish at the end of the 1950s. According to Mainwaring and Pérez Liñán, there were twelve democracies and "semi-democracies" in the region by 1961—a significant expansion since 1955. This was a "short wave." The impact of the Cuban Revolution (1959) was devastating. Added to the antidemocratic attitudes in traditional circles was now a devaluation of the suffrage by those who embraced guerrilla violence, further polarizing the struggle for power. After the military coups in Brazil and Bolivia in 1964, the breaking down of democracies seemed to be the rule for the next decade, in Argentina in 1966, Peru in 1968, Ecuador in 1970, Chile and Uruguay in 1973, and Argentina again in 1976—this was the "zenith of authoritarianism in Latin America" (Mainwaring 2000, p. 146).

The fact that democratic regimes survived in the 1970s in Costa Rica, Colombia, and Venezuela has often been obscured—firstly, by the dominant ideological climate of the time, which tended to despise liberal democracy as just "formal" or "bourgeois"; secondly, by the restrictive nature of the consociational pacts upon which those regimes were based, particularly in Colombia and Venezuela; thirdly, by the lack of recognition of their significance in relation to the rest of the continent; and finally, by their classification as "anomalies" in a region associated with an authoritarian tradition, where liberal democracy could find only an "inhospitable soil" (Peeler 1985, p. 134).

After the Pacto de Punto Fijo in 1958, Venezuela demonstrated that an authoritarian past was no impediment to democratic developments. The setbacks experienced since 1989 should not detract from the accomplishments of Venezuelan democracy during the second half of the twentieth century. For a start, a democratic system was established where there were limited democratic antecedents. Although Rómulo Betancourt became known as the "father of democracy," and other personalities played prominent roles, political parties were the major actors in the regime (Caballero 2004, p. 149). Party competition, though effectively confined to Acción Democrática (AD) and Comité de Organización Electoral Independiente (COPEI), became the rule for the peaceful transfer of power through regular electoral contests. The 1968 election was a "decisive turning point" as COPEI, hitherto in opposition, reached the presidency through the ballot box. Similar power turnovers took place in 1973, 1978, and 1983 (Levine 1989, p. 260). Parties were "broadly representative of society," and each had a large body of members (Coppedge 2003, p. 172). Freedom of the press flourished, together with other rights associated with free elections. Economic and social indicators also improved during the 1960s and 1970s. There were serious shortcomings, mostly related to corruption and clientelism, and the economy was severely hit in the 1980s when oil revenues declined. Yet, at the end of the decade, in spite of the unfolding crisis, Daniel Levine acknowledged that Venezuelan democracy had been remarkably successful: In less than three decades, the country had "built strong institutions, tamed the military, and combined high popular participation with social and political stability" (Levine 1989, p. 265; also Coppedge 2003, p. 172).

These democratic achievements are better appreciated in a comparative context, during a period when authoritarian rule was widespread not only in Latin America but also elsewhere, including in southern Europe. By 1974 only about forty countries in the world could be classified as "more or less democratic," and Venezuela, together with Colombia, and Costa Rica was among them (Huntington 1991, pp. 14-21; Diamond 1996, p. 20). A similar comparative perspective serves to highlight the significance of democratic survival in Colombia during the National Front (1958–1974). There are no doubts about Costa Rica's democratic credentials after 1949: Competitive elections were guaranteed by the establishment of the Supreme Election Tribunal, "a virtual fourth branch of the state." Its role became crucial in the evolution of a political system where free and fair elections prevailed, giving way to "an entrenched pattern of power alternation" every four years between 1958 and 1970 (Casas-Zamora 2005, pp. 63, 66).

Aside from these three countries, Latin American democracy was barely surviving by the late 1970s, but the electoral legacies of many nations may have contributed to the demise of some authoritarian regimes (Drake and Silva 1986, pp. 1-7). Elections were crucial in undermining military regimes and thus encouraging democratization; examples of this include the referendums of 1980 in Uruguay and 1988 in Chile, which inflicted serious defeats on their respective military rulers. The military junta in Brazil, which had been in power since 1964, allowed for an electoral opening. In the 1974 elections the "official opposition party" won a substantial number of seats in the Senate, and afterwards elections were the major vehicle through which Brazilians made the transition to democracy (Mainwaring 1999, pp. 83-87; Lamounier 1989, pp. 112-117). "Participating within the system, and using it to our own advantage, was the surest path to democratic change," recalled Fernando Henrique Cardoso (2006, p. 131). Cardoso himself, a member of the opposition, agreed to be a candidate for the Senate in 1978, and became a senator in 1983. "How can you participate in this fraud?" demanded his friends, who still believed that "Congress was just a farcical theater that the military tolerated in order to pretend Brazil was still a democracy" (Cardoso 2006, p. 147). Yet, the opposition persevered, and two years later its candidate, Tancredo Neves, was elected president by the Electoral College. On January 15, 1985, a billboard in Brasilia announced the new regime: "Good morning democracy."

CONTEMPORARY DEMOCRACIES OF THE THIRD WAVE: PERSPECTIVES AND CHALLENGES

By 1989 the "third wave" of democracy had reached most Latin American countries (with the exception of Cuba and Haiti). This wave started in 1978 when the opposition Dominican Revolutionary Party won power through the ballot box. As in the past, the third wave of democratization has not been a uniform process across all nations of the region.

Peru's successful general strike in 1977 has been singled out as the "most important event in triggering the … democratic transition of 1980" (Collier 1999, p. 118). In Argentina the "triggering event" was the military's defeat in the 1982 Falklands/Malvinas War, which led to the collapse of the regime. Collier argues that any evaluation of Argentine democratization also should take account of the labor movement for its roles in undermining the authority of the military and in negotiating during the interim government that preceded the election of President Raúl Alfonsín in 1983 (Collier 1999, pp. 119-126; Foweraker 2004). Indeed, the extent to which these processes were affected by labor mobilization or by "elite settlements" (such as Uruguay's Naval Club Pact [1984] between the military and the leaders of the major parties) is a subject of academic debate. None of these processes were just "elite affairs." The leaders of the parties in conflict, along with key foreign powers, organizations, and individuals, were instrumental in negotiating a settlement that brought to an end the civil war in El Salvador in 1992, but such "pacted democratization" involved a wider social universe.

Whether the result of regime collapse, elite pacts, or any other modality, democratization in Latin America generally has expanded since the 1970s, and in this "third wave," it "has been far more extensive, involving far more countries, and has lasted for longer than any previous waves of democracy in Latin America" (Mainwaring and Pérez-Liñán 2005, p. 15). As the process unfolded, very few predicted that it would be long-lasting. "The dice are probably loaded in favour of repeated iterations and shaky and relatively short-lived democracy and ever-uglier authoritarian rule," Guillermo O'Donnell wrote in 1986. Although he tried to convey a message of moderate optimism, O'Donnell also considered that the "prospects for political democracy in Latin America" were "not very favorable" (O'Donnell 1993, p. 14). Three years later, in 1989, Larry Diamond and Juan Linz were also of the view that "the prospect of new democratic breakdowns in Latin America during the 1990s cannot be dismissed" (Diamond and Linz 1989, p. 52).

There were many reasons for pessimism, including fresh memories of the recent authoritarian experiences, the generally poor economic performance in the 1980s, and the continuing social problems of the region. Serious setbacks in the 1990s provided clear warnings against complacency. Threats to democratic stability were already visible in Venezuela during the Caracazo in 1989, and were made explicit during the failed military insurrections of 1992. In that year, in his infamous autogolpe (self-coup), President Alberto Fujimori closed down Peru's Congress. A year later, in 1993, the Guatemalan president Jorge Serrano Elías attempted a similar antidemocratic putsch, but failed and was forced to resign. These and other presidential crises (there were fourteen "interrupted presidents" in ten different countries between 1985 and 2004) added to a discouraging picture. According to Arturo Valenzuela, presidential failure was "among the reasons why democracy's future now hangs in the balance across a huge swath of the Western Hemisphere" (Valenzuela 2004, p. 18).

Current shortcomings are many and, once again, differ from place to place. The debate about the state of democracy in Latin America to some extent echoes earlier discussions in that often it focuses more on its socioeconomic performance than on political conditions. Poor social indicators (e.g., levels of poverty and inequality) are singled out as the major barriers to democratic development. From a liberal democratic perspective, however, the problems faced by representative institutions are of special concern. As the 2004 United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) report observed, "the crisis surrounding political parties in Latin America is one of the greatest threats to democracy in the region" (p. 37). The belief that some countries did not seem to be "on the path toward becoming representative democracies" led O'Donnell to coin the expression "delegative democracies" to refer to regimes where presidents, backed by the majority of voters, govern with few constitutional constraints (O'Donnell 1994). The "crisis of representation" has been particularly acute in the Andes (Mainwaring, Bejarano, and Pizarro Leongómez 2006).

Nonetheless, in spite of severe problems, what should be underlined is the perseverance of democracy in the last decades. As Marta Lagos pointed out in 2003, "public support for democracy has shown surprising resilience. Overall, the reaction of Latin American citizens to failures of economic and political performance has been one of dissatisfaction with the way in which democracy is working …, but not an abandonment of faith in democracy itself" (Lagos 2003, p. 163). Perhaps no other country exemplifies this better than Argentina since 1983, which has survived crisis after crisis (Levitsky 2005). Throughout the region, the ballot box is the means for transfer of power. Elections are regularly conducted and generally represent fairly genuine electoral competition. There were seventy national elections in Latin America between 1990 and 2002, and "in most instances where irregularities were observed they did not appear to have had a determining impact on the outcome of the polls" (United Nations Development Programme 2004, p. 35).

Mainwaring and Pérez-Liñán have noted that since 1978 Latin American democracies have been "more able to withstand polarized party systems" and "more likely to survive despite a vastly worst economic record after 1978" (2005, p. 38). In their view, this durability is due more to political than to socioeconomic factors. In what seems the most comprehensive survey of key variables, they conclude that "it is implausible that higher levels of development, changes in class structure, or better economic performance could account for the vastly greater durability of democracy" in the last three decades (2005, p. 32). Instead, they attribute this success to a more favorable regional environment conducive to democracy, conditioned by a process of diffusion (i.e., "what happens in one country affects another"; idem, p. 58) and by the role played by international actors, including in particular the United States and the Organization of American States, which in 2001 adopted a Democratic Charter to respond to unconstitutional alterations of constitutional regimes. They also pay special attention to changes in attitudes towards democracy.

These changes, though difficult to accurately assess, are particularly significant. Hostility towards liberal democracy had not just been confined to right-wing quarters; it also dominated left-wing intellectual and political circles, where revolutionary violence was favored over electioneering. Jorge Castañeda pointed out that "much of the left wrongly dismissed representative democracy for many years as a sham: a bureaucratic, corrupt device invented by local elites and foreign agents to trick the Latin masses into tolerating forms of government and domination contrary to their interests" (1993, p. 327). The end of the cold war eased ideological tensions, and the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Berlin Wall encouraged reconsideration of long-held beliefs. In his Utopia Unarmed, Castañeda described this reconciliation of the Left with liberal democracy as paradoxically motivated by the harsh experiences of living under dictatorship (Castañeda 1993; Mainwaring 2000, pp. 178-182; O'Donnell 1993, pp. 15-16; see also Posada-Carbó 2008). There were exceptions, notably in Cuba, and Marxist-inspired guerrilla warfare survived in Colombia.

Accepting some of its most basic tenets did not mean fully embracing representative democracy. By the early 1990s it seemed that it was becoming "more difficult to elaborate an alternative ideology to democracy [that raised] enthusiasm among the population," but conflicting views of democracy soon resurfaced (Nohlen 1995, p. 23). The common expression "competitive elections are not a sufficient condition for democracy" is often repeated to signal dissatisfaction with what liberal democracy can offer, undermining the pivotal significance of democratic procedures. Demand grew for "participatory democracy" instead, and this phrase was incorporated into many Latin American constitutions. ("Participatory democracy" calls for "direct participation of citizens in the regulation of key institutions of society; and making party official accountable to membership" [Held 1996, p. 271]). This provided a new conceptual framework, as well as a rhetorical device, for a revived populism. When signing the "democratic clause" in Canada in 2001, Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez said, after raising his hand: "We sign this but we have to reserve our vote from representative democracy, we believe in participatory democracy" (Chávez and Harnecker 2005, p. 107; see also Kornblit 2005, p. 136).

The challenges of a populist revival and the threats it poses to the prospects of liberal democracy should not be underestimated. Its revival has so far been limited, but instances of populist revivals capture international attention, feeding old Latin American stereotypes while obscuring the reformist democratic experiences of countries such as Brazil, Mexico, Uruguay, and especially Chile under the Concertación governments since 1990 (Angell 2007).

In a period of thirteen months during 2005 to 2006, Latin Americans voted "with an intensity never seen since the transition to democracy in the region": Eleven countries went to the polls to elect their respective presidents (Malamud 2007). The results painted a heterogeneous picture, both in terms of the politics of the various governments and the quality of their democratic institutions.

As the last "wave" of democratization in Latin America enters its third decade, questions of democratic performance have attracted increased attention from scholars. How have the democratically elected governments dealt with the acute socioeconomic problems of the region?: "Quite badly," with some exceptions, was Guillermo O'Donnell's assessment (2001, p. 601). Nonetheless, O'Donnell warned against condemning the existing democratic regimes for their deficits in social and civil rights: These "political democracies," as he called them, "are not a fake." Their significance should not be dismissed as "purely formal"—the establishment of "political democracies" had been a "huge achievement," opening the avenue for further democratization (2001, pp. 599-609).

Such prolonged "waves" of democracy in the region, and above all the revaluation of "political democracy," should motivate historical reconsiderations of democracy in Latin America. The military regimes and dictatorships after the 1960s often prompted modern scholars to propagate the idea that Latin American societies had a "secular disposition" towards "authoritarian regimes" (Véliz 1980, p. 3). Some even suggested that the "use of the 'democratic' label" for Latin America, "implies not just political and economic imperialism but cultural imperialism as well" (Wiarda 1980, p. 18).

References to "new democracies" in Latin America ignore a rich history that dates back to the early nineteenth century. "Democracy," Margaret Lavinia Anderson points out, "is never a destination, a resting place" (2000, p. 437); "Democratic successes are never irreversible," notes Sean Wilentz (2005, p. xix). There is a long story of representative democracy in the region worthy of further study. If changing attitudes towards democracy partly explain its more recent fate, a fuller appreciation of that story may provide a better prospect for this "unfinished journey" (Dunn 1995).

See alsoBatlle y Ordóñez, José; Caudillismo, Caudillo; Chávez, Hugo; Corruption; Cortes of Cádiz; Delegative Democracy; Echeverría, Esteban; Estado Novo; Falklands/Malvinas War; Ferdinand VII of Spain; Fujimori, Alberto Keinya; Gómez, Juan Vicente; Juárez, Benito; Junta: Spanish America; Liberalism; Lleras Camargo, Alberto; Madero, Francisco Indalecio; Mercurio, El; Mexico, Wars and Revolutions: Mexican Revolution; Nación, La (Buenos Aires); Organization of American States (OAS); Pardo; Perón, Juan Domingo; Rojas Pinilla, Gustavo; Sáenz Peña Law; Sarmiento, Domingo Faustino; Serrano Elías, Jorge Antonio; Slavery: Abolition; Vargas, Getúlio Dornelles; Women.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Aguilar, José Antonio. "La nación en ausencia: Primeras formas de representación em Mexico." Política y gobierno 5, no. 2 (Segundo Semestre 1998): 423-457.

Aguilar, José Antonio. En pos de la quimera. Reflexiones sobre el experimento Atlántico. México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2000.

Alonso, Paula. "Voting in Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1912." In Elections before Democracy. The History Of Elections In Europe And Latin America, ed. Eduardo Posada-Carbó Londons and Basingstoke: Macmillan and Institute of Latin American Studies, 1996.

Alonso, Paula. Between Revolution and the Ballot Box: The Origins of the Argentina Radical Party in the 1890s. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Alonso, Paula, ed. Construcciones impresas: Panfletos, diarios y revistas en la formación de los estados nacionales en América Latina, 1820–1920. Buenos Aires: Fondo ee Cultura Económica, 2003.

Anderson, Margaret Lavinia. Practicing Democracy: Elections and Political Culture in Imperial Germany. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000.

Annino, Antonio, ed. Historia de las elecciones en Iberoamérica, siglo XIX. Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1995.

Angell, Alan. Democracy after Pinochet: Politics, Parties, and Elections in Chile. London: Institute for the Study of the Americas, 2007.

Arciniegas, Germán. The State of Latin America. London: Cassell, 1953.

Arciniegas, Germán. Entre la libertad y el miedo. (1956). Bogotá: Planeta, 1996.

Barrán, José Pedro. "La democracia política y el Uruguay battlista: Un diálogo difícil, 1903–1933." In Los caminos de la democracia. Alternativas y prácticas políticas, 1900–1943, ed. Julio Melón Pirro and Elisa Tastoriza. Buenos Aires: Biblios, 1996.

Bello, Andrés. "Reforms to the Constitution." (1833). In Selected Writings of Andrés Bello, ed. Iván Jaksic. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Benson, Nettie Lee. "The Contested Mexican Election of 1812." Hispanic American Historical Review 26 (1946): 336-350.

Benson, Nettie Lee. "The Elections of 1809: Transforming Political Culture in New Spain." Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos 20, no. 1 (Winter 2004): 1-20.

Berry, Charles R. "The Election of the Mexican Deputies to the Spanish Cortes, 1810–1822." In Mexico and the Spanish Cortes, 1810–1822, ed. Natalie Lee Benson. Austin and London: University of Texas Press, 1976.

Bethell, Leslie. "On Democracy in Brazil: Past and Present." Occasional paper no. 7. London: Institute of Latin American Studies, 1994.

Bobbio, Norberto. Liberalism and Democracy. London and New York: Verso, 1990.

Brandenburg, Frank R. "Political Parties and Elections." In Government and Politics in Latin America, ed. Harold E. Davis. New York: Ronald Press, 1958.

Breña, Roberto. El primer liberalismo español y los procesos de emancipación de América, 1808–1824. Una revisión historiográfica del liberalismo hispánico. México: El Colegio de México, 2006.

Bushnell, David. "El sufragio en la Argentina y en Colombia hasta 1853." Revista del Instituto de Historia del Derecho 19 (1968): 11-29.

Bushnell, David. "Voter Participation in the Colombian Election of 1856." Hispanic American Historical Review 51 (May 1971).

Bushnell, David. "La evolución del derecho del sufragio en Venezuela." Boletín Histórico 29 (May 1972): 189-206.

Caballero, Manuel. Las crisis de la Venezuela contemporánea, 1903–1992. Caracas: Alfadil Ediciones, 2004.

Cardoso, Fernando Henrique. The Accidental President of Brazil: A Memoir. New York: Public Affairs, 2006.

Carta Pastoral del Ilmo. Sr Arzobispo de la Plata sobre obediencia y sumisión que se debe a las potestades legítimas. Buenos Aires: Real Imprenta de los Niños Espósitos, 1810.

Casas-Zamora, Kevin. Paying for Democracy: Political Finance and State Funding for Parties. Colchester, U.K.: European Consortium for Political Research Press, 2005.

Castañeda, Jorge. Utopia Unarmed: The Latin American Left After the Cold War. New York: Alfred Knopf, 1993.

Chávez, Hugo, and Marta Harnecker. Understanding the Venezuelan Revolution: Hugo Chávez Talks to Marta Harnecker. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2005.

Chiaramonti, Gabriella. Ciudadanía y representación en el Perú, 1808–1860. Los itinerarios de la soberanía. Lima: Universidad Nacional de San Marcos, 2005.

Chust, Manuel, ed. Doceañismos, constituciones e independencias. La constitución de 1812 y América. Madrid: Mapfre, 2006.

Chust, Manuel, and José A. Serrano. "Guerra, revolución y liberalismo en México, 1808–1835." In Bastillas, cetros y blasones. La independencia en Iberoamérica, edited by Ivana Frasquet. Madrid: Mapfre, 2006.

Collier, Simon, and William F. Sater. A History of Chile, 1808–1994. Cambridge, U.K., and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

Collier, Ruth Berins. Paths toward Democracy: The Working Class and Elites in Western Europe and South America. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Coppedge, Michael. "Venezuela: Popular Sovereignty Versus Liberal Democracy." In Constructing Democratic Governance in Latin America, ed. Jorge Domínguez and Michael Shifter. Baltimore and London: John Hopkins University Press, 2003.

Crick, Bernard. Democracy: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Dahl, Robert. Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition. New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 1971.

Deas, Malcolm, "Algunas notas sobre el caciquismo en Colombia." Revista de Occidente 127 (1973).

Deas, Malcolm. "Venezuela, Colombia, and Ecuador." In The Cambridge History of Latin America, vol. 3, ed. Leslie Bethell. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1985.

Demélas-Bohy, Marie-Danielle, and François-Xavier Guerra. "The Hispanic Revolutions: The Adoption of Modern Forms of Representation in Spain and America, 1808–1810." In Elections before Democracy: The History of Elections in Europe and Latin America, ed. Eduardo Posada-Carbó. London: Macmillan, 1996.

Diamond, Larry. "Is the Third Wave Over?" Journal of Democracy 7, no. 3 (1996): 20-37.

Diamond, Larry, and Juan J. Linz. "Introduction: Politics, Society, and Democracy in Latin America." In Democracy in Developing Countries: Latin America, ed. Larry Diamond, Juan J. Linz, and Seymour Martin Lipset. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1989).

Drake, Paul, and Eduardo Silva, eds. Elections and Democratization in Latin America, 1980–1985. San Diego: University of California Press, 1986.

Dunn, John, ed. Democracy: The Unfinished Journey, 508 bc to ad 1993. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Duquesne de Madrid, José Domingo. Oración por la tranquilidad pública, pronunciada en la Santa Iglesia Catedral Metropolitana de esta muy noble y leal ciudad de Santa Fe de Bogotá. Bogotá: Imprenta Real, 1809.

Duquesne de Madrid, José Domingo. Carta Pastoral del Ilmo. Sr Arzobispo de la Plata sobre obediencia y sumisión que se debe a las potestades legítimas. Buenos Aires: Real Imprenta de los Niños Espósitos, 1810.

Dym, Jordana. "'Our Pueblos, Fractions with No Central Unity': Municipal Sovereignty in Central America, 1808–1821." Hispanic American Historical Review 86, no. 3 (2006): 431-466.

Echeverría, Esteban. Dogma socialista. (1837). Buenos Aires: Hyspamerica, 1988.

Escalante Gonzalbo, Fernando. Ciudadanos imaginarios. Mexico City: El Colegio de Mexico, 1993.

Fitzgibbon, Russell H. "How Democratic Is Latin America?" Inter-American Economic Affairs 9, no. 4 (1956): 65-77.

Fitzgibbon, Russell H. "The Party Potpourri in Latin America." Western Political Journal 10, no. 1 (1957): 3-22.

Fitzgibbon, Russell H. "Measuring Democratic Change in Latin America." Journal of Politics 29, no. 1 (February 1967): 129-166.

Foweraker, Joe. "Transformation, Transition, Consolidation: Democratization in Latin America." In The Blackwell Companion To Political Sociology, ed. Kate Nash and Alan Scott. Malden, MA, and Oxford, U.K.: Blackwell, 2004.

Forment, Carlos. Democracy in Latin America, 1760–1900, Vol. I: Civic Selfhood and Public Life in Mexico and Peru. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.

Gallie, W. B. "Essentially Contested Concepts." Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 56 (1955–1956): 167-198.

Graham, Richard. Patronage and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Brazil. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1990.

Guardino, Peter. Peasants, Politics, and the Formation of Mexico's National State. Guerrero, 1800–1877. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996.

Guedea, Virginia. "Las primeras elecciones populares en la ciudad de México, 1812–1813." Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos 7, no. 1 (Winter 1991): 1-28.

Guerra, François-Xavier. Modernidad e independencias. Madrid: Editorial Mapfre, 1992.

Guerra, François-Xavier. "The Spanish American Tradition of Representation and Its European Roots." Journal of Latin American Studies 26, no. 1 (February 1994): 1-35.

Haddick, Jack. "The Deliberative Juntas of 1808: A Crisis in the Development of Mexican Democracy." In Essays on Mexican History, ed. Thomas Cotner and Carlos Castañeda. Austin: Texas University Press, 1958.

Hagopian, Frances, and Scott Mainwaring, eds. The Third Wave of Democratization: Advances and Setbacks. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Hahner, June E. "The Beginnings of the Women's Suffrage Movement in Brazil." Signs: Journal of Women on Culture and Society 5, no. 1 (1979): 200-204.

Hale, Charles. The Transformation of Liberalism in Late Nineteenth-Century Mexico. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989.

Hartlyn, Jonathan, and Arturo Valenzuela. "Democracy in Latin America since 1930." In The Cambridge History of Latin America, vol. 6, ed. Leslie Bethell. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Held, David. Models of Democracy. Cambridge, U.K.: Polity Press, 1996.

Helg, Aline. Liberty and Equality in Caribbean Colombia, 1770–1835. Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 2004.

Huntington, Samuel P. The Third Wave: Democratization in the Twentieth Century. Norman and London: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991.

Instrucción formada de orden de la Junta Preparatoria para facilitar las elecciones de diputados y oficios consejiles. Guatemala, 1812. John Carter Brown Library, Providence, RI. B812J95i.

Irurozqui, Marta. "A bala, piedra y palo." La construcción de la ciudadanía política en Bolivia, 1826–1952. Sevilla: Diputación de Sevilla, 2000.

Jaksic, Iván. Ven conmigo a la España lejana: Los intelectuales norteamericanos ante el mundo hispano, 1820–1880. Santiago: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2007.

Katz, Richard S. Democracy and Elections. New York and Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Kinsbruner, Jay. Independence in Spanish America. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1994.

Keyssar, Alexander. The Right to Vote. The Contested History of Democracy in the United States. New York: Basic Books, 2000.

Kline, Herbert. "Participación política en Brasil en el siglo XIX: Los votantes de San Pablo en 1880." In Historia de las elecciones en Iberoamérica, siglo XIX, ed. Antonio Annino Buenos Aires: Fonde de Cultura Económica, 1995.

Knight, Alan. The Mexican Revolution: Porfirians, Liberals, and Peasants, vol. 1. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1986.

Kornblit, Myriam. "Elections before Democracy." Journal of Democracy 16, no. 1 (January 2005): 124-137.

Lagos, Marta. "A Road with No Return?: Latin America's Lost Illusions." Journal of Democracy 24, no. 2 (April 2003): 163-173.

Lasso, Marixa. Myths of Harmony: Race and Republicanism during the Age of Revolution: Colombia, 1795–1831. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007.

Lamounier, Bolívar. "Brazil: Inequality against Democracy." In Democracy in Developing Countries Latin America, ed. Larry Diamond, Juan J. Linz, and Seymour Martin Lipset. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1989.

Lehoucq, Fabrice E. "Institutional Change and Political Conflict: Evaluating Alternative Explanations of Electoral Reform in Costa Rica." Electoral Studies 14, no. 1 (1995): 23-45.

Lehoucq, Fabrice E., and Iván Molina. "Political Competition and Electoral Fraud." Journal of Interdisciplinary History 30, no. 2 (Autumn 1999): 199-234.

Lehoucq, Fabrice E., and Iván Molina. Stuffing the Ballot Box: Fraud, Electoral Reform, and Democratization in Costa Rica. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Levine, Daniel. "Venezuela: The Nature, Sources, and Prospects of Democracy." In Democracy in Developing Countries: Latin America, ed. Larry Diamond, Juan J. Linz, and Seymour Martin Lipset. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1989.

Levitsky, Steven, "Argentina: Democratic Survival amidst Economic Failure." In The Third Wave of Democratization in Latin America: Advances and Setbacks, ed. Frances Hagopian and Scott Mainwaring Cambridge, U.K., and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Maier, Charles S. "Democracy since the French Revolution." In Democracy: The Unfinished Journey, 508 bc to ad 1993, ed. John Dunn. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Mainwaring, Scott. Rethinking Party Systems in the Third Wave of Democratization: The Case of Brasil. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999.

Mainwaring, Scott. "La capacidad de sobrevivencia democrática en América Latina." In Democracia: Discusiones y nuevas aproximaciones, ed. Ernesto López and Scott Mainwaring. Buenos Aires: Universidad Nacional de Quilmes, 2000.

Mainwaring, Scott, Ana María Bejarano, and Eduardo Pizarro Leongómez, eds. The Crisis of Democratic Representation in the Andes. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006.

Mainwaring, Scott, and Aníbal Pérez-Liñán. "Latin American Democratization Since 1978: Democratic Transitions, Breakdowns, and Erosions." In The Third Wave of Democratization: Advances and Setbacks, ed. Frances Hagopian and Scott Mainwaring. Cambridge, U.K., and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Malamud, Carlos. "El Anuario Iberoamericano 2007 del Instituto Real Elcano y la Agencia EFE." Available from http://www.ojosdepapel.com.

Markoff, John. "Where and When Was Democracy Invented?" Comparative Studies in Society and History 41, no. 4 (October 1999): 660-690.

Markoff, John. "Margins, Centers, and Democracy: The Paradigmatic History of Women's Suffrage." Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 29, no. 1 (2003): 85-116.

Maza Valenzuela, Erika. "Catolicismo, anticlericalismo y extensión del sufragio a la mujer en Chile." Estudios Públicos 58 (Autumn 1995): 137-197.

Maza Valenzuela, Erika. "Liberales, radicales y la ciudadnía de la mujer en Chile, 1872–1930." Estudios Públicos 69 (1998): xx.

McCaleb, Walter. "The Press of Mexico." Hispanic American Historical Review 3, no. 3 (1920).

McDonald, Ronald H. "Electoral Systems, Party Representation, and Political Change in Latin America." Western Political Quarterly 20 (1967): 694-708.

McEvoy, Carmen. La utopía republicana: Ideales y realidades en la formación política peruana, 1871–1919. Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú 1997.

Monteagudo, Bernardo. Escritos políticos. Buenos Aires: La cultura Argentina, 1916.

Morelli, Federica. Territorio o nación. Reforma y disolución del espacio imperial en Ecuador, 1765–1830. Madrid: Centro de Estudios Constitucionales, 2005.

Muecke, Ulrich. Political Culture in Nineteenth-Century Peru: The Rise of the Partido Civil. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004.

Murilo de Carvalho, José. Desenvolvimiento de la ciudadanía en Brasil. México: El Colegio de México, 1995.

Negretto, Gabriel, L., and José Antionio Aguilar-Rivera. "Rethinking the Legacy of the Liberal State in Latin America: The Cases of Argentina (1853–1916) and Mexico (1857–1910)." Journal of Latin American Studies, 32, no. 2 (2000): 361-397.

Nohlen, Dieter, ed. Democracia y neocrítica en América Latina. En defensa de la transición. Frankfurt am Main: Iberamoaericana, 1995.

O'Donnell, Guillermo. "Introduction to the Latin American Cases." In Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Latin America, ed. Guillermo O'Donnell, Philippe C. Schmitter, and Laurence Whitehead. Baltimore and London: John Hopkins University Press, 1993.

O'Donnell, Guillermo. "Delegative Democracy." Journal of Democracy 5, no. 1 (1994): 55-69.

O'Donnell, Guillermo. "Reflections on Contemporary South American Democracies." Journal of Latin American Studies 33, no. 3 (August 2001): 599-609.

Peeler, John. Latin American Democracies: Colombia, Costa Rica, Venezuela. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985.

Peloso, Vincent. "Liberals, Electoral Reform, and the Popular Vote in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Peru." In Liberals, Politics, and Power: State Formation in Nineteenth-Century Latin America, ed. Vincent Peloso and Barbara Tenenbaum. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1996.

Peralta Ruiz, Victor. "Elecciones, constitucionalismo y revolución en el Cusco, 1809–1815." Revista de Indias 56, no. 206 (1996): 99-131.

Peralta Ruiz, Victor. "Los inicios del sistema representativo en Perú: Ayuntamientos constitucionales y diputaciones provinciales, 1812–1815." In La mirada esquiva. Reflexiones históricas sobre la interacción del estado y la ciudadanía en los Andes (Bolivia, Ecuador y Perú). Siglo XIX, ed. by Marta Irurozqui. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 2005.

Posada-Carbó, Eduardo. "Elections and Civil Wars in Nineteenth-Century Colombia: The Presidential Campaign of 1875." Journal of Latin American Studies 26, no. 3 (1994): 621-649.

Posada-Carbó, Eduardo. "Limits of Power: Elections under the Conservative Hegemony in Colombia, 1886–1930." Hispanic American Historical Review, 77, no. 2 (1997a): 245-279.

Posada-Carbó, Eduardo, ed. Elections before Democracy. The History of Elections in Europe and Latin America. London and Basingstoke: Macmillan/Institute of Latin American Studies, 1997b.

Posada-Carbó, Eduardo. "Las elecciones presidenciales de Colombia en 1930." Revista de Estudios Sociales 7 (September 2000a): 35-47.

Posada-Carbó, Eduardo. "Electoral Juggling: A Comparative History of the Corruption of the Suffrage in Latin America, 1830–1930." Journal of Latin American Studies 32: (2000b): 611-644.

Posada-Carbó, Eduardo. "New Granada and the European Revolutions of 1848." In The European Revolutions of 1848 and the Americas, ed. Guy Thomson. London: Institute of Latin American Studies, 2002.

Posada-Carbó, Eduardo. "El estado Republicano y el proceso ee incorporación: Las elecciones en el mundo andino, 1830–1880. In Historia de América Andina, vol. 5: Creación de las repúblicas y formación de las naciones, ed. Juan Maiguashca. Quito: Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar, 2003.

Posada-Carbó, Eduardo. "Democracia, liberalismo y procesos electorales en América Latina since 1930." In Historia General de América Latina, vol. 8, ed. Marco Palacios. Madrid: Trota/UNESCO, 2007a.

Posada-Carbó, Eduardo. "Prensa y opinión pública en Latinoamérica, 1870–1930." In Historia General de América Latina, vol. 7, ed, Enrique Ayala and Eduardo Posada-Carbó. Madrid: Trota/UNESCO, 2007b.

Posada-Carbó, Eduardo. Democracy, Parties and Political Finances in Latin America. Working Paper, Helen Kellogg Institute. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame, 2008.

Rippy, J. Fred. "Dictatorship and Democracy in Latin America." Inter-American Economic Affairs 14, no. 1 (1960).

Rodríguez O, Jaime. E. "The Emancipation of America." American Historical Review, 105, no. 1 (2000): 131-152.

Rodríguez O, Jaime E. "Ciudadanos de la nación española: Los indígenas y las elecciones constitucionales en el régimen de Quito." In La mirada esquiva, La mirada esquiva. Reflexiones históricas sobre la interacción del estado y la ciudadanía en los Andes (Bolivia, Ecuador y Perú). Siglo XIX, ed. Marta Irurozqui. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 2005a.

Rodríguez O, Jaime E. La ciudadanía y la constitución de Cádiz. Zacatecas, Mexico: Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas, 2005b.

Rodríguez O, Jaime E. "La ciudadanía y la constitución de Cádiz." In Bastillas, cetros y blasones. La independencia en Iberoamérica, ed. Ivana Frasquet. Madrid: Mapfre, 2006.

Rosanvallon, Pierre. "The History of the Word 'Democracy' in France." Journal of Democracy 6, no. 4 (1995): 140-154.

Rosanvallon, Pierre. Democracy Past and Future. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006.

Sábato, Hilda. ed. Ciudadanía política y formación de las naciones: Perspectivas históricas de América Latina. México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1999.

Sabato, Hilda. La política en las calles. Entre el voto y la movilización. Buenos Aires, 1862–1880. Buenos Aires: Sidamericana, 1998.

Sabato, Hilda. "On Political Citizenship in Nineteenth-Century Latin America." American Historical Review 106, no. 4 (October 2001): 1290–1315.

Sarmiento, Domingo Faustino. Facundo. (1845). Buenos Aires: Losada, 1976.

Sarmiento, Domingo Faustino. Obras completas. Buenos Aires: Universidad Nacional de la Matanza, 2001.

Soto, Angel, ed. Entre tintas y plumas: Historia de la prensa Chilena del Siglo XIX. Santiago: Universidad de Los Andes, 2004.

Sowell, David. The Early Colombian Labor Movement. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992.

Ternavasio, Marcela. La revolución del voto. Política y elecciones en Buenos Aires, 1810–1852. Buenos Aires, Siglo Veintinuo, 2002.

Thomson, Guy, ed. The European Revolutions of 1848 in the Americas. London: Institute of Latin American Studies, 2002.

Torres Giraldo, Ignacio. Los inconformes: Historia de la rebeldía de las masas en Colombia. Bogotá: Editorial Latina, vols. 3 and 4, n.d.

United Nations Development Programme, ed. Democracy in Latin America: Towards a Citizens' Democracy. New York: Author, 2004.

Urbinati, Nadia. Representative Democracy. Principles and Genealogy. Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 2006.

Valenzuela, Arturo. "Latin American Presidencies Interrupted." Journal of Democracy 15, no. 4 (October 2004): 5-19.

Valenzuela, J. Samuel. Democratización vía reforma. La expansión del sufragio en Chile. Buenos Aires: Ides, 1985.

Valenzuela, J. Samuel. "Orígenes y transformaciones del sistema de partidos en Chile." Estudios Públicos 58 (Autumn 1995): 5-78.

Valenzuela, J. Samuel. "Building Aspects of Democracy before Democracy: Electoral Practices in Nineteenth-Century Chile." In Elections before Democracy: The History of Elections in Europe and Latin America, ed. Eduardo Posada-Carbó. London: Macmillan and Institute of Latin American Studies, 1996.

Valenzuela, J. Samuel. "La ley electoral de 1890 y la democratización del régimen político chileno." Estudios Públicos 71 (Winter 1998): 265-296.

Valenzuela, J. Samuel. "Caudillismo, democracia, y la excepcionalidad chilena en América Hispana." Revista de Occidente 305 (October 2006): 11-28.

Véliz, Claudio. The Centralist Tradition of Latin America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980.

Verdadero Peruano. Lima, October 8, 1812; February 25, 1813. John Carter Brown Library, Providence, RI. BC812V383p.

Warren, Richard. Vagrants and Citizens: Politics and the Masses in Mexico City From Colony to Republic. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 2001.

Whitehead, Laurence. Democratization: Theory and Experience. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Wiarda, Howard J., ed. The Continuing Struggle for Democracy in Latin America. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1980.

Wilentz, Sean. The Rise of American Democracy. New York: W.W. Norton, 2005.

                                  Eduardo Posada-CarbÓ