Varieties of Liberalism in Central America

Varieties of Liberalism in Central America PDF Author: Forrest D. Colburn
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 029278256X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 137

Get Book Here

Book Description
Why do some countries progress while others stagnate? Why does adversity strengthen some countries and weaken others? Indeed, in this era of unprecedented movement of people, goods, and ideas, just what constitutes a nation-state? Forrest Colburn and Arturo Cruz suggest how fundamental these questions are through an exploration of the evolution of Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica over the last quarter of a century, a period of intriguing, often confounding, paradoxes in Central America's development. Offering an elegant defense of empiricism, Colburn and Cruz explore the roles of geography and political choice in constructing nations and states. Countries are shown to be unique: there are a daunting number of variables. There is causality, but not the kind that can be revealed in the laboratory or on the blackboard. Liberalism—today defined as democracy and unfettered markets—may be in vogue, but it has no inherent determinants. Democracy and market economies, when welded to the messy realities of individual countries, are compatible with many different outcomes. The world is more pluralistic in both causes and effects than either academic theories or political rhetoric suggest.

Varieties of Liberalism in Central America

Varieties of Liberalism in Central America PDF Author: Forrest D. Colburn
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 029278256X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 137

Get Book Here

Book Description
Why do some countries progress while others stagnate? Why does adversity strengthen some countries and weaken others? Indeed, in this era of unprecedented movement of people, goods, and ideas, just what constitutes a nation-state? Forrest Colburn and Arturo Cruz suggest how fundamental these questions are through an exploration of the evolution of Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica over the last quarter of a century, a period of intriguing, often confounding, paradoxes in Central America's development. Offering an elegant defense of empiricism, Colburn and Cruz explore the roles of geography and political choice in constructing nations and states. Countries are shown to be unique: there are a daunting number of variables. There is causality, but not the kind that can be revealed in the laboratory or on the blackboard. Liberalism—today defined as democracy and unfettered markets—may be in vogue, but it has no inherent determinants. Democracy and market economies, when welded to the messy realities of individual countries, are compatible with many different outcomes. The world is more pluralistic in both causes and effects than either academic theories or political rhetoric suggest.

The Legacies of Liberalism

The Legacies of Liberalism PDF Author: James Mahoney
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 9780801865527
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 428

Get Book Here

Book Description
Winner of the Barrington Moore Jr. Prize for the Best Book in Comparative and Historical Sociology from the American Sociological AssociationWinner of the Best Book Award in the Comparative Democratization Section from the American Political Science Association Despite their many similarities, Central American countries during the twentieth century were characterized by remarkably different political regimes. In a comparative analysis of Guatemala, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Honduras, and Nicaragua, James Mahoney argues that these political differences were legacies of the nineteenth-century liberal reform period. Presenting a theory of "path dependence," Mahoney shows how choices made at crucial turning points in Central American history established certain directions of change and foreclosed others to shape long-term development. By the middle of the twentieth century, three types of political regimes characterized the five nations considered in this study: military-authoritarian (Guatemala, El Salvador), liberal democratic (Costa Rica), and traditional dictatorial (Honduras, Nicaragua). As Mahoney shows, each type is the end point of choices regarding state and agrarian development made by these countries early in the nineteenth century. Applying his conclusions to present-day attempts at market creation in a neoliberal era, Mahoney warns that overzealous pursuit of market creation can have severely negative long-term political consequences. The Legacies of Liberalism presents new insight into the role of leadership in political development, the place of domestic politics in the analysis of foreign intervention, and the role of the state in the creation of early capitalism. The book offers a general theoretical framework that will be of broad interest to scholars of comparative politics and political development, and its overall argument will stir debate among historians of particular Central American countries.

Central America, 1821-1871

Central America, 1821-1871 PDF Author: Lowell Gudmundson
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
ISBN: 0817307656
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 167

Get Book Here

Book Description
Two interrelated essays dealing with the economic, social, and political changes that took place in Central America Central America and its ill-fated federation (1824-1839) are often viewed as the archetype of the “anarchy” of early independent Spanish America. This book consists of two interralted essays dealing with the economic, social, and political changes that took place in Central America, changes that let to both Liberal regime consolidation and export agricultural development after the middle of the last century. The authors provide a challenging reinterpretation of Central American history and the most detailed analysis available in English of this most heterogeneous and obscure of societies. It avoids the dichotomous (Costa Rica versus the rest of Central America) and the centralist (Guatemala as the standard or model) treatments dominant in the existing literature and is required reading for anyone with an interest in 19th century Latin America.

Central America, 1821-1871

Central America, 1821-1871 PDF Author: Lowell Gudmundson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Central America
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description


Liberals, Politics, and Power

Liberals, Politics, and Power PDF Author: Vincent C. Peloso
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 9780820318004
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 324

Get Book Here

Book Description
Looking at the Latin American liberal project during the century of postindependence, this collection of original essays draws attention to an underappreciated dilemma confronting liberals: idealistic visions and fiscal restraints. Liberals, Politics, and Power focuses on the inventiveness of nineteenth-century Latin Americans who applied liberal ideology to the founding and maintenance of new states. The impact of liberalism in Latin America, the contributors show, is best understood against the larger backdrop of struggles that pitted regional demands against the pressures of foreign finance, a powerful church against a decentralized state, and aristocratic desire to retain privilege against rising demands for social mobility. Moving beyond the traditional historiographical division between Eurocentric and dependency theories, the essays attempt to account for a uniquely Latin American liberal ideology and politics by exploring the political dynamics of such countries as Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, and Peru. Contributors discuss liberal efforts to build a viable legal order through elections and to implement a means of public finance that could fund the states' operations. Essays that span the entire century address issues such as the emergence of caudillos, the role of artisans, and popular participation in elections in light of fiscal, and other, impediments to progress. In their introduction, Vincent C. Peloso and Barbara A. Tenenbaum provide a hemispheric overview of liberalism that illustrates its similarities across Latin America. By exploring the liberal constitutional and economic order lying beneath apparently dictatorial states, this pathbreaking volume underlines the importance of fiscal policy in the fashioning of state power. Liberals, Politics, and Power serves not only as a guide to the liberal principles and practices that governed state formation in nineteenth-century Latin America but also as a means to evaluate the complex relationship between ideas and practical politics.

Origins of Liberal Dictatorship in Central America

Origins of Liberal Dictatorship in Central America PDF Author: Wayne M. Clegern
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 192

Get Book Here

Book Description
If Guatemala's revolution of 1871 has been regarded as the transition point from conservatism to liberalism and to modernized institutions as well, Clegern argues that the seeds of liberalism lay in the previous regimes of Rafael Carreras (1840-1865), the most powerful conservative dictatorship in 19th-century Central America, and especially in that of his successor, Vicente Cerna (1865-1871). Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Liberalism at Its Limits

Liberalism at Its Limits PDF Author: Ileana Rodríguez
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Pre
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 252

Get Book Here

Book Description
Looks to the criminality and violence of Latin America to assess the discord between liberalism in theory and practice, and thus how liberalism might be exhausted in relation to local conditions not reconcilable to its core tenants.

The Meaning of Liberalism in Latin America

The Meaning of Liberalism in Latin America PDF Author: Ivan Jaksic
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Argentina
Languages : en
Pages : 94

Get Book Here

Book Description


Dominant Elites in Latin America

Dominant Elites in Latin America PDF Author: Liisa L. North
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319532553
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 254

Get Book Here

Book Description
This volume examines the ways in which the socio-economic elites of the region have transformed and expanded the material bases of their power from the inception of neo-liberal policies in the 1970s through to the so-called progressive ‘pink tide’ governments of the past two decades. The six case study chapters—on Chile, Brazil, Ecuador, Colombia, El Salvador, and Guatemala—variously explore how state policies and even United Nations peace-keeping missions have enhanced elite control of land and agricultural exports, banks and insurance companies, wholesale and import commerce, industrial activities, and alliances with foreign capital. Chapters also pay attention to the ways in which violence has been deployed to maintain elite power, and how international forces feed into sustaining historic and contemporary configurations of power.

Guiding the Invisible Hand

Guiding the Invisible Hand PDF Author: Joseph Love
Publisher: Praeger
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 248

Get Book Here

Book Description
This unprecedented collection combines economic, political, and intellectual history in its analysis of economic liberalism in Latin America. The volume demonstrates the unique and varied features of Latin American liberalism from its formative period up to 1940 and discusses its relation to state formation. The essays range from a continent-wide comparison to an in-depth local study, from tariff and industrialization policies of central states to the selective liberal convictions of traditional estate owners. The contributors consider the social bases of economic liberalism in the region and their relation to imperialism and to economic dependency. Questions of the strength and the staying power of economic liberalism are considered. In addition, the late appearance of serious alternative policies are treated.