Toward Consensus in Interpreting

Latin American Politics:

Developmentalism, Dependency,
and "The Latin American Tradition"
Howard J. Wiarda

ince the early 1960s, three main schools of thought or models have been domi-
S nant in research and writing on Latin American politics. These are: (l) the
developmentalist school, largely emerging out of North American, positivistic com-
parative politics and the United States foreign aid program; (2) the dependency
school, mainly a product of Latin American intellectuals of a Marxist and social-
democratic (with many variations) persuasions; and (3) what may be called the
"Latin-American-tradition" school of historians and political scientists, which
mainly focused on political-cultural and socio-political variables and was, like
these other approaches, expressed in a variety of terms: "monism," "corporatism,"
"organic statism," the "authoritarian tradition" (See Dealy 1974; Wiarda 1981,
1996; Stepan 1978; and Palmer 1980).
While these three paradigms and their advocates have often vied with each other
over the years, frequently engaging in ideological arguments and rivalries, com-
peting for foundation and academic attention and graduate student loyalties, the
struggles sometimes distorting and straw-manning each others' positions, there
have been relatively few efforts to find common ground, to look for common or at
least parallel themes or--most importantly--to seek out useful elements in all
three approaches as a way of either bridging the gaps between them or of elaborat-
ing a general theory of Latin American political change encompassing useful ele-
ments from each (Martz and Meyers 1983; Bell 1958).
But now the world--and Latin America--has changed dramatically. The Berlin
Wall has fallen; the Soviet Union has disintegrated; the Cold War is over. Democ-
racy, as an idea, has triumphed and so, to a lesser degree, has the idea of open
markets. The older models---Cuba and Nicaragua on the left, the "authoritarian-
corporatist" and "bureaucratic-authoritarian" regimes on the right--have all proved

Howard J. Wiarda is the Leonard J. Horwitz Professor of Iberian and Latin American Studies and Professor of
Political Science at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, Amherst, Massachusetts, 01003. He is also a
Senior Associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C.
Wiarda 51

less than successful or been superseded (Malloy 1977; O'Donnell 1973). Mean-
while, Latin America is far more developed (literate, urban, more industrialized,
more middle class) than it was thirty years ago, the United States is also a very
different country, and the world has turned. With all these immense transforma-
tions both globally and locally, it behooves us once again to reexamine these older
models, to sort out what is useful in them and what can be discarded, and either to
find elements of useful reconciliation between them or to move on to some new
and innovative model. We suspect that many political scientists and students of
Latin America are already doing precisely what is called for in this article, but it
may nonetheless be useful to review these materials and assess where we stand.

The DevelopmentalistApproach
A number of influences, both scholarly and practical, led to the rising popular-
ity of the developmentalist approach in the late 1950s to early 1960s. The schol-
arly influences included the rise of such cross-disciplinary approaches as cultural
anthropology (Adams 1960; Wagley 1968) and political sociology (Lipset 1959)
that seemed particularly appropriate for studying developing nations; the behav-
ioral approach in political science and the systems approach more generally in
comparative politics and the social sciences (Easton 1953); the greater focus within
political science on such informal processes of politics as political socialization,
interest aggregation, and decision-making that similarly seemed especially relevant
for new or emerging nations (Macridis 1955; Eulau 1963); and the explosion of a
large number of new nations onto the world stage in 1959-61 and the sheer re-
search joy and excitement of having newly available a large number of previously
unexamined countries or "living laboratories" to study. The more practical reasons
influencing a new generation of scholars to study developing nations included
modern jet travel that put almost any area of the globe within one day's reach;
better research facilities, statistical techniques, sampling methods, etc., both in the
United States and in the countries studied; and, correspondingly, a rising U.S.
policy interest in fashioning a non-communist model of development--and the
travel grants and research centers to help facilitate that goal--to counter the al-
ready existing Marxist-Leninist one (Milliken and Rostow 1957; Escobar 1995;
Geudzier 1985).
Four social science disciplines were instrumental in shaping academic thinking
about development. In economics, Karl Polanyi (1944), Everett yon Hagen (1962),
Robert Heilbroner (1963), and W.W. Rostow (1960) wrote pioneering works about
economic development which were nevertheless hindered by the fact that the models
they used derived exclusively from the Western European and United States' expe-
riences with growth and often had limited relevance for today's new or emerging
nations. The contributions of sociology were also significant in the study of devel-
opment, on the one hand using the pattern variables of Talcott Parsons (1951)
(ascriptive -> merit, particularism -> universalism, functionally diffuse -> func-
tionally specific) to describe the dichotomies between developing and developed
countries; and on the other utilizing the work of S.M. Lipset (1959) and Karl Deutsch
(1961) to show the relations between social and economic indicators (literacy,
urbanization, and levels of economic development) and possibilities for democ-
52 Studies in Comparative International Development/ Summer 1999

racy and political development. Cultural anthropology made an especially impor-

tant contribution to development studies, not only because cultural anthropolo-
gists were often the first to study non-Western societies but also because they
studied them non-ethnocentrically, on their own terms, and in their own cultural
and institutional setting. However, because their work focused on particular soci-
eties and was not comparative nor offered universal models, it was often rejected
by some scholars of development who were looking for a global framework that
would have foreign policy applicability.
Our main focus in this article, of course, is political science and the approach
called "political development." Here the pathbreaking volume was The Politics of
the Developing Areas (1960) edited and with a long introduction by Gabriel Al-
mond and with contributions by five area specialists (James S. Coleman on Africa,
Lucian W. Pye on Southeast Asia, Myron Weiner on South Asia, Dankwart A.
Rustow on the Middle East, and George Blanksten on Latin America). This book
and the subsequent spin-offs, elaborations, and more detailed studies generated from
it by the Social Science Research Council Committee in Comparative Politics (SSRC/
CCP) headed by Almond, dominated the field for most of the decade of the 1960s.
First, Almond accepted the emphasis on process, informal actors, and genuine com-
parison set forth by the "Young Turks" in comparative politics in the 1950s (see Macridis
1955); second, Almond adopted the "systems approach" (see Easton 1953) (input ->
government decision-making -> output) then gaining currency in the political science
field. Third, Almond took Parsons's pattern variables and applied them to the political
differences between developing (ascriptive, particularistic, functionally diffuse) and
developed (merit, universalism, functionally specific) nations.
Fourth, because all political systems had to perform the same functions, Al-
mond reasoned, he set forth a functional model of political activity that presum-
ably would be universally valid----even though Almond later admitted that at the
time he had never visited a developing country and his approach was mainly ab-
stract and theoretical rather than grounded in empirical analysis. On the input side
Almond listed four functions:

1. Political socialization--how people learn about or are inculcated with political

values--"political culture."
2. Interest articulation--how interests are articulated and set forth (interest groups,
clans, etc.).
3. Interest aggregation--how interests are brought together (mainly through political
parties).
4. Political communications--how interests are conveyed to decision-makers, through
modern communications or other, more traditional methods.

On the output side Almond found three more functions:

5. Rule-making--making the law.

6. Rule-execution--administering the law.
7. Rule-adjudication---deciding conflicts over the law.

These output functions have a striking resemblance to the American three-part

division of power into legislative, executive, and judicial.
Wiarda 53

Almond's formulation was attractive for a number of reasons: it provided a

"systems" approach, it sounded culturally unbiased and "scientific," it aspired to
have universal validity and, in addition, it appeared to be morally good (who could
oppose "development"?). Armed with Almond's categories a whole generation of
young scholars went off to Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East in the
1960s to find and study "development"
Meanwhile, in the aftermath of the pioneering Politics of the Developing Areas,
a host of complementary and more specialized studies emerged during the 1960s
focused on distinct aspects of development. These included studies of political
culture and development, communications and development, political parties and
development, education and development, socialization and development, bureau-
cracy and development, labor and development, armies and development, religion
and development, and so on) The 1960s witnessed not just a proliferation of de-
velopment studies on a wide range of subject areas but also the emergence of the
study of development and modernization as the leading paradigm in the compara-
tive politics field.
While these elaborations of the original developmentalist concept were going
forward, the first wave of young scholars who had carried developmentalism's
conceptual banners with them overseas were returning with their doctoral disser-
tations tucked under their arms. What they found often bore little resemblance to
the categories advanced by Almond and the SSRC/CCP. Instead of inevitable and
universal "development" and "modernization," they often found disorganization,
social and political chaos, class and ethnic conflict, civil war, U.S. intervention,
patronage, corruption, coups d'etat, special privileges, repression, oligarchic rule,
authoritarianism, political violence, and the like. Whether returning from Africa,
Asia, Latin America, or the Middle East, these young scholars often found that the
development categories advanced in the early literature had little relevance for
their studies. Eventually their criticisms went beyond the argument that the model
"didn't fit" in "my" country to a generalized critique of the entire developmentalist
approach. 2
There were many criticisms of the developmentalist approach--so many and so
devastating that during the 1970s and 1980s developmentalism went into eclipse.
These included the criticisms that it was biased, ethnocentric, and based too strongly
on the U.S. and European experiences; that it ignored the role of international
forces (multinational corporations, world market forces, Cold War rivalries, and
the like); that it raised misleading and false expectations in many developing areas
beyond the capacity of governments to fulfill them; that it, inadvertently, wreaked
havoc on many developing countries by undermining traditional institutions be-
fore the newer and presumably more modern ones had taken root; and that it was
part of a U.S. Cold War strategy to keep the developing nations underdeveloped.
Many critics argued that the timing, sequences, and stages for today's developing
nations were entirely different from those of the earlier European and U.S. devel-
opers on whose experience the general model was based. Others argued that rather
than going hand in hand, economic and social modernization could prove disrup-
tive of political development (Huntington 1968); still others pointed to the vast
differences between Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East and sug-
gested no one single model could fit such disparate historical, cultural, and
54 Studies in Comparative International Development / Summer 1999

sociopolitical regions. It was like comparing apples, oranges, pears, and kiwi, they
said. The critics also indicated the misplaced dichotomies of "traditional" and
"modern," arguing that in most countries modern institutions do not automatically
replace traditional practices but usually continue to overlap and coexist with them
(Bendix 1967). Both the logic and methodology of the developmentalist paradigm
were critiqued, so much so that by the 1970s the model had gone into decline.
Meanwhile, "on the ground," other real-world events were driving the stake
further into the heart of the developmentalist approach. The Vietnam War, the as-
sassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert E Kennedy, the burning and devas-
tation of America's inner cities, and Watergate all combined to discredit the
American "model" and the U.S. efforts to export it abroad. Meanwhile, within the
developing areas a wave of military coups from the mid-1960s and into the 1970s
seemed to sound the death knell for developmentalism. For the developmentalist
assumption, including thanks to Rostow and several other scholars who helped
design the U.S. foreign aid program, was that international (mainly U.S.) eco-
nomic assistance and pump priming would lead to greater education, prosperity,
and a middle class in the developing nations, which in turn would lead to modern-
ization and democracy. But the waves of coups indicated that what was supposed
to correlate was not, in fact, correlating, that some social and economic develop-
ment was occurring hut it was leading in many cases to authoritarianism and bloody
military rule, not democracy. The triumph of "authoritarian-corporatism" and "bu-
reaucratic-authoritarianism" seemed to indicate that all the developmentalist
assumptions were wrong. Hence, during the 1970s and 1980s a variety of other
approaches, outlined below, came to supplant developmentalism.
In the 1990s, a somewhat revamped theory of development made something of
a comeback. We discuss these themes later in the analysis in greater detail but,
because they are also relevant to the discussion here, we introduce them briefly.
The newer version of developmentalism found great receptivity in policy circles
(from which, really, in terms of the Rostovian assumptions underlying the Ameri-
can foreign aid program, it had never disappeared) and in academic circles in the
form of the renewed focus on "transitions to democracy." This perspective was
expressed most clearly in the so-called "Washington consensus" of the early 1990s
on democracy, open markets and free trade that grew out of Presidents Bush and
Clinton's Latin America policy, and in the institutions established to implement
the policy such as the National Endowment for Democracy, political party insti-
tutes dedicated to democratic development, agencies to monitor and reform elec-
toral machinery, and the like. Once again, the presumption was that economic
development (now in the form of open markets and a hemispheric free trade agree-
ment) would help create greater affluence and a larger middle class that in turn
would produce democracy and stability, the primary goal of U.S. foreign policy.
But whereas in the 1970s and early 1980s when, under authoritarianism, these
correlations were not correlating at all, by 1990 the correlations looked better and
better. That is, much of Latin America had pulled out of its earlier economic dol-
drums and was showing positive growth; such social indicators in many countries
as literacy, life expectancy, urbanization, per capita income, and communications
were significantly higher than they had been in the 1960s; and democracy (in
various forms) seemed to be advancing. The close correlations between economic,
Wiarda 55

social, and political developments made the developmentalist approach look con-
siderably better in the post-Cold War era than it had in the two previous decades.
The development literature of the 1960s still offers rich insights into such topics
as political socialization, communications, bureaucracies, political parties, armed
forces, political culture, and the processes of economic and sociopolitical change.
It is a shame in the author's view that so much of this rich literature is ignored
today simply because parts of the analysis were flawed, several of the assump-
tions of developmentalist were faulty and ethnocentric, and the correlations be-
tween socio-economic modernization and political development failed to correlate
in the short run. The question, then, is can the useful aspects and insights of
developmentalism be salvaged and if the problem areas listed earlier can be re-
solved. Or are the problem areas so fundamental that they rule out the possibility
of salvaging anything from the theory? This remains an open question; it is an
issue to which we return later in the discussion.

DependencyTheory
Dependency theory emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s both as a guide in
its own right to thought and praxis on Latin America, and as a reaction to the
prevailing development theory. Dependency theory suggested, in contrast to
developmentalism, that rather than United States and Latin America's develop-
ment going forward complementarily and in harmony, the development of the in-
dustrialized countries had occurred at the cost of, and often on the backs of, the
developing nations. Development and underdevelopment are thus two sides of the
same coin, with the development of the industrialized countries a product of the
underdevelopment of the Third World. Moreover, it was argued that the develop-
ing nations of Latin America remained dependent (hence the name) on the al-
ready-developed countries and were often the victims of global forces (multinational
corporations, world markets, foreign embassies, and military interventions) which
the developing countries were powerless to control and were often detrimental
to them. 3
The critiques by dependency theorists of the reigning developmentalist para-
digm were often parallel to those offered in the preceding section. First,
developmentalism focused exclusively on domestic social, economic, and politi-
cal trends, but the dependency school pointed out that it was obviously ridiculous
to ignore the impact of international market and political forces on development or
on the developing nations. Second, development theory ignored the influence on
development processes of foreign embassies, large corporations, international
religious groups, and international lending agencies such as the World Bank or
International Monetary Fund, whose role was not always neutral or benign. Third,
the dependency literature argued that developmentalism concentrated too heavily
or even exclusively on political factors while ignoring the influence of crucial
economic, class, and social forces. And fourth, developmentalism ignored the of-
ten close links forged between international forces (banks, companies, military
missions) and local actors (the bourgeoisie, local militaries, etc.) (Evans 1979).
All of these critiques of developmentalism were telling; they paralleled other, less
ideological criticisms of developmentalism (Wiarda 1991).
56 Studies in Comparative International Development / Summer 1999

But the dependency approach often went farther than offering a critique of
developmentalism; it had a long pedigree and body of theory of its own, often
grounded in Marxian categories. That is, writers in the dependency school tended
to emphasize class analysis as distinct from the focus on the autonomy of political
variables as found in the developmentalist school. The dependency approach also
tended to he much more critical of the United States and often employed such
terms as "colonialism" and "imperialism" to describe the relations between the
developed and the developing worlds, in contrast to developmentalism which saw
no necessary or inherent conflict between the two and whose theorists often worked
closely with the U.S. government. Dependency analysis, based on Marxian ideas,
also tended to emphasize economic over political forces in development, histori-
cal materialism, the working out of dialectical processes, and class struggle. In
these ways, the dependency school's critique of developmentalism and presenta-
tion of an alternative to it were both methodological and ideological.
Dependency analysis had grown out of several earlier schools of thought. Among
the most important influences on dependency theorizing was Paul Baran's The
Political Economy of Growth (1957), an early Marxian statement of economic
development. Another important influence was Argentine economist Rafil Prebisch
and the United Nations'-funded Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLA;
when the Caribbean states were added, it became ECLAC). Prebisch observed that
as between the industrialized nations of the North and the primary-products or raw
materials exporters of the South, the terms of trade advantage since the 1920s had
strongly favored the former; he, therefore, proposed that Latin America build its
own industries protected from fierce outside competition by high tariff barriers
and thereby substitute its own home-made industrial products for expensive im-
ported goods, which then became known as the Import Substitution Industrializa-
tion (ISI) strategy. Other influences on dependency theory included the reaction
against the many false starts of developmentalism (Levinson and de Onis 1970),
U.S. military intervention in the Dominican Republic in 1965, the Vietnam War,
and the crises of American cities, race relations, and society more generally of the
late 1960s, early 1970s. Perhaps it should not be unexpected that the various ills
and malaises of the times would also be reflected in the fields of comparative
politics and development studies.
Dependency theory came in a variety of forms and iterations; not all of them
were Marxian. On the far left, Andre Funder Frank presented a Marxist, even Marx-
ist-Leninist, view of dependency in his book on Capitalism and Underdevelop-
ment in Latin America (1967). Following Baran's earlier analysis, Frank offered a
critique of American development theory, employed two historical case studies
(Chile, Brazil) to argue his points, tried to argue that Latin America had no feudal
past but was capitalistic right from the beginning of the Spanish conquest in the
sixteenth century, and, therefore, that capitalism was the cause of underdevelop-
ment in Latin America. But Frank's work was flawed by numerous factual errors
and misinterpretations, his main point that Latin America lacked a feudal past and
was capitalistic from the beginning was viewed as ludicrous by serious historians,
and the author, himself, later repudiated his own work on the subject (Frank, per-
sonal conversation).
A more moderate position was offered by Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Enzo
Wiarda 57

Faletto (1979). Still within a Marxist tradition and advocating a socialist position,
Cardoso and Faletto emphasized the historical and changeable nature of politics,
economics, and society, provided a more voluntaristic perspective as compared
with Frank's rigid determinism, and emphasized multiple actors (military, the state,
as well as classes) in the processes of development. Nevertheless, the two authors
also emphasized that the economic ambitions of leading capitalist economies formed
a capitalist periphery (thus, "dependency"), with increased disparity of income
among wage earners and the absence of a just or egalitarian society. The work of
Peter Evans (1979) is close to and represents a further extension of the Cardoso-
Faletto argument; it shows the close connection between foreign investment, the
state, and the Latin American bourgeoisie. Another elaboration on this branch of
dependency theory came from Carlene Edie's writings in the 1980s showing the
role of the international lending agencies (World Bank, IME etc.) in reinforcing
dependency (see Edie 1991).
A third school of dependency writings, more pragmatic, centrist, and non-ideo-
logical, is represented by Theodore Moran (1974). Moran focused on the role of
large American corporations operating in Latin America, specifically Kennecott
Copper of Chile. Moran argued that, of course, Kennecott played a large role in
Chile; it would be foolish to suggest otherwise or to ignore--as developmentalism
had done--the presence of such large multinational companies (MNC). Moreover,
Moran was quite realistic about the resources (political as we as economic) a large
MNC like Kennecott could mobilize and its ability to maneuver in and manipulate
the Chilean political system. But Moran approached these issues pragmatically
and without the ideological baggage of most other dependency writers. Further-
more, he showed that once an MNC is ensconced and has made considerable invest-
ments in a country, that same country itself acquires considerable bargaining power,
through taxation, threats of nationalization, etc., over the company. That produces not
the simplistic, one-way pattern of influence suggested by other dependency writers but
a two-way or bargaining model of influence. Such a bargaining model in turn leads
to notions not just of dependence but also of interdependence, even while due
recognition is given to the fact that interdependence may still be uneven.
The author's own early case study work of the mid-1960s focused on the Do-
minican Republic, is close to the pragmatic, politically-focused Moran approach
and even used the term "dependency" (Wiarda 1975). In addition to analyzing the
major domestic actors in Dominican politics (military, economic elites, Church,
middle class, media, students, labor, peasants), this study included a chapter on
U.S. Embassy machinations, in all their myriad manifestations (political section,
commercial section, CIA, USIA, military missions, Peace Corps, labor attachr,
AID, etc.). That was followed by another chapter on the various other international
actors seeking to influence Dominican policy outcomes--the UN, OAS, Vatican,
other embassies, IMF, IDB, etc.--measured in terms of both their political influ-
ence and their degree of independence from U.S. hegemony. The analysis showed
that the weight of political forces in the Dominican Republic was imbalanced to-
ward the conservative side and that when the weight of the various international
actors was also factored in, the political system became even more imbalanced.
That sounds like dependency analysis but, closer to the Moran perspective, with-
out the later ideological overtones of dependency.
58 Studies in Comparative International Development / Summer 1999

But this same research also pointed toward the parallel theme of interdepen-
dence. Indeed, Dominican history as well as that of the other Latin American coun-
tries is riddled with stories of how they manipulate the United States just as the
U.S. manipulates them. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Domini-
can politicians repeatedly sought to mobilize U.S. (and other foreign) interests--
including requesting outside military intervention--for their own political purposes.
In 1947, in another case of complex interdependence, dictator Rafael Trujillo na-
tionalized the lands of the South Puerto Rico Sugar Company, one of the biggest
multinationals in all Latin America, and got away with it! Additionally, numerous
Dominican politicians during the Cold War-era learned to manipulate the U.S.
Embassy by using the "Communist" red herring. And longtime caudillo Joaqufn
Balaguer was enormously clever at giving the Americans "something to do" (fam-
ily planning or agrarian reform) while he kept control of the really important agen-
das (the armed forces, the economy, patronage, elite groups). While the relations
between the United States and Latin America has often been depicted as that be-
tween a shark and a school of sardines, 4 it is also the case that clever "sardines"
have the capacity to drive the shark absolutely crazy--witness Fidel Castro for the
last forty-one years.
In thinking about both developmentalism and dependency, one can understand
why both these approaches would be attractive to different groups of scholars and/
or policy advocates for different reasons. Developmentalism saw the main causes
of underdevelopment as domestic, internal to the developing nations themselves--
lack of political parties, interest groups, effective government, etc. That focus placed
the onus of underdevelopment on the developing countries, thus absolving the
United States and other outside actors of any responsibility. Dependency theory, in
contrast, laid most of the responsibility for underdevelopment at the doorstep of
the already developed nations. That focus would prove enormously attractive to
intellectuals in the developing nations who could thus blame most of their prob-
lems on outside actors (mainly the United States) while ignoring domestic respon-
sibility; it was also an approach attractive to those preinclined on ideological grounds
to blame most of the world's troubles on "colonialism" and "imperialism." But, in
fact, neither of these more ideological approaches is entirely accurate, nor should
we allow ideological blinders to cloud our understanding of development-related
problems. At the same time, it seems so obvious as to be beyond dispute that both
domestic and international forces must be understood and taken into account if we
are to understand development.
Of course there is dependency (as well as interdependence) in the world. Of
course it was wrong for the developmentalist school to concentrate on domestic
forces and ignore equally important international ones. Of course, the U.S. Em-
bassy (and other nations), to say nothing of the Vatican, multinationals, the World
Bank, the IMF, UN, OAS, IDB, et al., muck around in the internal affairs of other
nations. And, of course, big, powerful, wealthy nations tend to dominate smaller
ones that lie close to them or within their perceived "sphere of influence." But why
can't we analyze all this undogmatically, pragmatically, and without all the ideo-
logical hang-ups of the major schools of dependency theory? For much of depen-
dency theory, not unlike developmentalism, is utopian, excessively politicized (as
distinct from serving as a useful tool of analysis), and often based on a faith or
Wiarda 59

belief system whose truth or falsity is not always verifiable by the usual canons of
scholarly inquiry. Why must dependency theory carry with it so many unproved
assumptions, and ideological baggage? Cannot we distinguish between dependency
as a fact of life (for good or ill) and dependencia as an ideological position (see
Smith 1991; Packenham 1992)? One does not, after all, need necessarily to be a
Marxist to recognize power relations, the importance of class structure and con-
flict as an explanatory tool, the powerful influence of capitalism as driving social
change, and the influence of MNCs, the World Bank, and foreign embassies in
other nations. In other words, can we disaggregate dependency, separate out its
useful from its not so useful aspects, rid it of its politicized overtones, and use
dependency as we would other tools of analysis: pragmatically, where it sheds
light on the questions at issue, and meanwhile combine dependency with other
useful approaches in a more complex, multifaceted mode of analysis? Such a syn-
thesis is both possible and useful: moreover, these should be purely pragmatic
matters and not ideological ones.

The "Latin American Tradition" Approach

The Latin American Tradition (LAT) approach finds expression in a consider-

able variety of terms. David Scott Palmer (1940) focuses on Peru's "authoritarian
tradition." Glen Dealy (1974) writes of Latin American "monism." Claudio Veliz
(1980) has a beautifully-crafted book subtitled "the centralist tradition." Alfred
Stepan (1978) calls his formulation of the same themes "organic statism," while
Richard M. Morse's (1989) essays stress the lasting impact of Roman-Thomistic-
Suarezian-neoscholastic-Rousseauian influences in Latin American History. The
author's own writings have focused on the "corporatist tradition," implying not just a
particular and often ephemeral structure of interest representation but a much longer
and deeper historical-cultural pattern of socio-political organization (Wiarda).
Although the terms are often different, the meaning that each of these scholars
convey is remarkable parallel. They wish to suggest that the Latin American socio-
political tradition by way of feudal, medieval Spain and Portugal is unique and
distinctive. Latin American development has particular features of its own. It is a
product of the Middle Ages, of a particular politics, sociology, and world view. It
fails to correspond exactly to the "grand," presumably universal (at least in the
eyes of their own advocates) models advanced by either the developmentalist ap-
proach or the familiar Marxian categories. Because of its particular history, reli-
gion, culture, law, education, scholasticism, Thomism, the Reconquista and other
features, Latin America exhibits some peculiar features that are particularly its
own. In short, the "Latin American Tradition" (LAT) approach urges scholars to
pay serious attention to what has become known as "political culture" to help
comprehend those aspects of Latin America that fail to conform to other global
theories.
We should be clear what this approach is not. First, political culture studies
should not be associated with the "national character" studies, which gave rise to
often unacceptable stereotypes. Instead, to the greatest extent possible, newer po-
litical culture studies are based on public opinion and attitude surveys and are
far more systematic and careful (see Inglehart 1990; Putnam et al. 1993). Second,
60 Studies in Comparative International Development / Summer 1999

no one sophisticated in the LAT approach seeks to elevate political culture to the
position of being the sole and virtually only explanation for the peculiarities of
Latin American development (Harrison 1985, 1997a, 1997b). Rather, the LAT ap-
proach acknowledges the utility of employing developmental factors, class analy-
sis, and institutional variables in combination with political cultural factors in a
complex multi-causal analysis.
A third disclaimer involves the charge of cultural stereotyping, even "racism."
For one thing, we need to recognize that, for good or ill, cultural behavior does
become imbedded in institutions which often go on for generations, and we need
to deal with these facts realistically. For another, we need to acknowledge that
LAT studies (or at least the good ones) deal in tendency statements; to use a politi-
cal culture approach is emphatically not to say that all members of a group exhibit
certain traits. For example, if we say that voters in Latin America tend to vote for
strong leaders, that along with a preference for democracy there is also a prefer-
ence for strong government, that should emphatically not be thought of as involv-
ing stereotyping and certainly not racism.
Nor is political culture a "catch-all" category of explanations when we don't
know how else to explain things. Anyone who has ever traveled in Latin America
(or Spain, Portugal, France, Germany, Russia, China, Japan, India, Pakistan, Egypt,
Nigeria, or just about any other country) knows instinctively that he/she is not in
Grand Rapids. The sights, sounds, smells, music, food, as well as political behav-
ior are often very different. Political culture seeks to capture these differences
systematically, to assess their importance, to weave them together with other ex-
planatory variables, and thus to better understand the country or culture-area we
are studying. It seems obvious to anyone who studies Latin American develop-
ment that political culture is not the sole explanatory variable and should not be
elevated to an explanatory position it does not have; on the other hand, it is impos-
sible to conceive of anyone fully understanding Latin America on its own terms
without taking history, the Iberian heritage, Hispanic Catholicism, and other ele-
ments of the political culture into account.
Political culture approaches acknowledge that change can occur, that political
culture is dynamic and not immutable. Further, that there may be two or more
(elite, mass, Hispanic, black, Indian, military, religious) political cultures within a
given society whose precepts and the relative balance between them may vary over
time. In addition, the more sophisticated political culture studies recognize that
the dominance of any one political culture over another is related to larger power
and class relationship over time, that political culture may be and often is manipu-
lated for political purposes (for example, dictator Francisco Franco's efforts in
Spain to emphasize that he was the only inculcation of Spanish Catholicism, the
obligation to obedience, etc.), and that political culture and its meaning(s) is al-
ways a contested concept (Belanger 1993). These comments suggest obviously the
need for care and sensitivity in utilizing political culture explanations, but cer-
tainly not for the abandonment of important insights gleaned from serious politi-
cal culture studies.
The elements of Latin American political culture are familiar in the literature
and can be briefly summarized here. The better studies suggest that Latin America
has a long history of organic-statism, corporatism, religiosity, elitism,
Wiarda 61

patrimonialism, and authoritarianism that is often pervasive. The political system

tends historically (all this is now changing) to be hierarchical and top-down, its
economic system mercantilist and statist, its society strongly class/caste based, its
legal system based on civil law and similarly top-down, its religion absolutist, and
its educational system deductive. Latin America tends to emphasize group or corporate
rights over individual rights, unity and monism over diversity and pluralism, strong
central government over checks and balances. While some of these historic character-
istics are undoubtedly changing as social change proceeds and democratization occurs,
the persistence of many of them often in new forms (guided or "Rousseauian" democ-
racy) carries important implications, for example, for the success of efforts at con-
solidating democracy or improvement of human rights (Wiarda 1990).
The persistence of many "traditional" values and institutions in Latin America
(as in China, Japan, India, the Islamic countires, and Africa), even in the face
of m o d e r n i z a t i o n , c h a l l e n g e s n u m e r o u s a s s u m p t i o n s of both the
developmentalist and the Marxian schools. Under developmentalism, for ex-
ample, economic development gives rise to social change which supposedly
stimulates the growth of liberal, pluralist, stable, middle class, peaceful de-
mocracies; but while there has been an emergence of formal democracies in
Latin America and the human rights situation is better, one cannot be certain
that all those other adjectives universally or inevitably are adequate to explain
the current situation in the area. Nor is class analysis or the vague and impre-
cise "correlation of forces" sufficient to explain political dynamics there. The
class structure of Latin America is undoubtedly changing, but it is not certain
that the elite groups are cracking or being overwhelmed from below in the
process, or that the middle class is consolidated or acts with anything resem-
bling class solidarity, or that lower class revolutionary fervor is gathering mo-
mentum. The Marxian categories would seem to be useful in explaining some
aspects of Latin A m e r i c a ' s t r a n s i t i o n away f r o m f e u d a l i s m , j u s t as
developmentalism helps explain some aspects of Latin American moderniza-
tion. These are necessary but not sufficient factors; however, they explain some
things but not all. At the point where the utility of these main paradigms leaves
off or they begin to lose their explanatory power, other explanations and mod-
els must be sought--some of which involve political culture or the Latin Ameri-
can Tradition.
The LAT approach was mainly the product of historians, cultural anthro-
pologists, and others with a strong background in Latin American history or
field work, or who had studied Iberia as well as Latin America and the huge,
all-pervasive, and lasting imprint the former left on the latter. The LAT ap-
proach tended to emerge as a reaction to the two other great paradigms,
developmentalism and the Marxian dependency approach, and to the inadequa-
cies, incompleteness, ethnocentrism, and oversights perceived in these other
approaches. At the same time, it was not the purpose of the LAT approach to
substitute itself wholistically or eschatologically for these other approaches in
a "true believer" manner but to fill in the gaps that developmentalism and
Marxism failed to fill, to build history, religion, ideas, values, law, political
culture and behavior back into the explanatory equation, and to reemphasize
the complex multicausality of these large developmental processes. 5
62 Studies in Comparative International Development / Summer 1999

Developmentalism Revived

While the developmentalist paradigm was strongly criticized in the 1970s and
all but disappeared during the 1980s, in the 1990s developmentalism experienced
a considerable revival. Gabriel A. Almond (1980) remained all along a staunch
political science defender of the approach which he had been instrumental in found-
ing; in Latin American affairs, developmentalism was most strongly expressed in
the so-called "Washington consensus" on free trade, open markets, and democra-
tization. To old Latin America hands, the Washington consensus seemed remark-
ably parallel to the Alliance of Progress of the 1960s--itself a product of the
developmentalist approach. It is perhaps no coincidence that those who most
strongly supported the Washington Consensus were often the same individuals
who had been the architects of the Alliance thirty years earlier (Scheiman 1988).
Many of the familiar developmentalist assumptions were also present in the
newer Washington consensus. Once again h la Rostow, Lipset, et al., economic
development was seen as the great motor force in change, which would, in turn,
lead to social modernization, which would--presumably inevitably and univer-
sally-produce happy, liberal, socially-just, democratic regimes that look just like
the U.S. American ethnocentrism was as strongly present in this "consensus" as it
had been in the earlier consensus on the Alliance, the Wilsonian conception that
we would "teach" Latin America not only to elect good men but also how to liber-
alize and privatize their economies and join a free trade association under U.S.
guidance and direction. The free trade and privatization aspects of the consen-
sus were new, but the assumptions of the stages and process by which stable,
m i d d l e - c l a s s d e m o c r a c i e s w e r e c r e a t e d c a m e straight f r o m e a r l i e r
developmentalist assumptions.
It is too bad that developmentalism was resurrected in this largely unreconstituted
form because, as we have seen, with appropriate corrections, the developmentalist
approach has a lot to offer. On the other hand, one of the reasons it was not re-
thought was that from the perspective of the 1990s, developmentalism's assump-
tions and correlations appeared to have been in large part vindicated. Recall that
developmentalism posited economic growth would lead inevitably to democracy
but in the mid- to late 1960s, with a wave of military coups leading to long-term
authoritarianism sweeping over the area, the correlations between economic growth,
social modernization, and democracy did not correlate very well. But by the 1990s
with economic growth resuming after the debt crisis and "'lost decade" of the 1980s,
with Latin America 70 percent literate (as compared with 30% in the 1960s) and
70 percent urban (ditto), and with democracy at least formally established in nine-
teen of the twenty countries, the correlations between economic development, so-
cial modernization, and political democracy were looking very good. In turn, the
development and modernization of Latin America in all these spheres not only
made the developmentalist approach look better but also led to its revival at the
level of official U.S. government policy, if not yet among academic theorists (U.S.
Department of Commerce 1995).
There remain many problems with this newer version of developmentalism as
expressed in the Washington Consensus(Wiarda 1997). First, while there has been
some limited liberalization and privatization in the Latin American economies,
Wlarda 63

most of them remain essentially statist and mercantilist rather than entrepreneurial
and capitalist. Second, for political reasons the United States has largely aban-
doned the movement for economic integration in the hemisphere, leaving the new
initiatives mainly up to the Latin American countries. Third, while social change is
occurring, much also remains the same: class and race lines are still rigidly drawn,
inequalities are increasing between rich and poor, elite groups still monopolize
power, a stable middle class has not emerged, only limited pluralism still exists,
and a liberal, egalitarian, and socially-just society has yet to emerge. Fourth, and
perhaps more important for the argument here, while formal democracy is in place,
the precise form and definition of democracy in Latin America tends still to be
limited democracy, controlled democracy, tutelary democracy, delegative democ-
racy, organic democracy, top-down democracy, corporatist democracy, or
Rousseauian democracy---democracy with adjectives. In other words, even though
democracy has apparently triumphed throughout the region, its precise forms of-
ten derive in considerable measure from its uniquely Latin American roots, i.e.,
the political culture or LAT approach.

Conclusions

In an earlier study (Wiarda 1991), the author suggested that the fields of com-
parative politics and comparative development studies had fragmented into vari-
ous "islands of theory." That is, with the breakup of the fleeting consensus that
once surrounded developmentalism in the 1960s, these academic fields, including
Latin American studies, had fragmented into nine or ten separate fields of inquiry.
In addition to the main approaches analyzed here of developmentalism, depen-
dency theory, and the Latin American Tradition, there were various short-term
approaches such as bureaucratic-authoritarianism, as well as several sub-catego-
ries such as organic-statism, political economy, and corporatism. Recently, transi-
tions to democracy, structural adjustment policy, rational choice theory, the new
institutionalism, and post-communism have been added to the list. Each of these
"islands" has its own theory, its own "sacred" texts, its own prophets, and its own
disciples and camp followers. Almost no effort was made in earlier analyses to
bridge these islands of theory, to construct causeways among the archipelagos.
But now the world has turned, immense changes have occurred (including in
Latin America), and profound social and political forces, both domestic and inter-
national, have been set loose. These include the disintegration of the Soviet Union,
the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, the greater development and democratization of
Latin America, a better human rights situation in general throughout the world, the
decline in attractiveness of the Cuban model, the increasing influence of
neoliberalism, the continued existence of only a single superpower, the rising im-
portance and influence of international business, etc. These world-altering changes
also force us to rethink once again (a never-ending process, in my view, and essen-
tial for theory-building) the models we use for observing Latin America and the
relations of these models to observable facts.
It seems incontestable, first of all, that there has been a great deal of develop-
ment in Latin America over the preceding forty years. Per capita income is consid-
erably higher, rates of literacy and urbanization have more than doubled, the middle
64 Studies in Comparative International Development / Summer 1999

class is larger, and democracy and democratic institutions have grown. These facts
are known and the correlations among these factors look better, but it still remains
an open question as to the precise causative relationship between economic growth,
social modernization, and political democratization. Second, it seems equally in-
contestable that dependency is a fact of life: these are often small and weak coun-
tries in Latin America that have to deal with this "colossus of the North," they are
often subjected to international market forces over which they have no control,
and United States embassies as well as a host of other international actors do get
involved in the internal affairs of other nations. Some of these relations involve
dependence, others involve complex relations of interdependence. At the same
time, third, it also seems unarguable that all these forces, domestic and interna-
tional, must work through, are filtered by, or feel the effects of the particular and
socio-political environment that is Latin America: The Latin American Tradition
approach. For example, democracy has triumphed but it has taken various Latin
American, (Rousseauian, organic, corporatist, tutelary, democracy-with-adjectives)
forms; neoliberalism may be triumphant but it remains strongly statist; a middle
class has emerged but it often thinks like the elites and may not be a bastion of
stability and centrism.
In an earlier Comparative Politics textbook (Wiarda 1993), the author suggested
a number of future tasks for the discipline; among them, more case studies, genu-
inely comparative studies of two or more countries, studies of issues (e.g., agrar-
ian reform) or social and political groups (e.g., peasants) that cut across countries,
greater refinement of middle-range theories, and so on. Many such studies on these
and related themes have been carried out; we now have a substantial body of em-
pirical work on most countries of Latin America and on the area as a whole, and
the theoretical base of these studies is more sophisticated.
But now, building on these studies, we need to take the next step: to begin to
reforge, missing since the 1960s, a unified theory as well, incorporating all that we
have learned both empirically and theoretically. There is no reason why we cannot
take the useful aspects of development theory, for example, and, rather than keep-
ing the two separate, combine it with dependency theory in a fruitful, insightful
way. Nor is there any reason why we cannot explore, within the same country,
complex relations of dependency and interdependency at the same time. Nor is
there reason why we cannot examine either or both development and dependency
through the lenses of Latin American belief systems, patterns of behavior, and
socio-political institutions (the LAT approach) since these obviously have an im-
pact on political outcomes. In fact, it is hard to see why we cannot usefully and
insightfully combine developmentalism, dependence, and LAT in a grand synthe-
sis that brings all these themes together in a coherent, integrated, and particularly
enlightening ways. It seems likely that this represents the next great intellectual
frontier in Latin American studies, and no longer the endless debates between the
representatives of the separate and often competing theories surveyed here.
We should not underestimate the difficulties of arriving at such a synthesis.
Advocates of the developmentalist approach, for example, will have to acknowl-
edge (most have already done so) the importance of international market, political,
and dependency factors. They must also recognize the ethnocentrism (based on
the European and North American experiences) of the developmentalist approach
Wiarda 65

and that Latin American cannot and will not exactly mirror these earlier moderniz-
e r s - - a task made more difficult now by the overwhelming triumph of U.S.-style
democracy and neoliberalism. Dependency theorists will have to shed much of
their ideological baggage in favor of a more pragmatic approach that also acknowl-
edges the importance of developmentalist and political culture factors. Advocates
of the Latin American Tradition or LAT approach will have to acknowledge that
political culture is not determinative, that change occurs, that Latin America today
is very much different (while also exhibiting many continuities) from Latin America
of earlier decades.
It is encouraging that among many scholars of Latin America the changes called
for here are already under way. Many leading scholars have acknowledged the
contributions of developmentalism, dependency analysis, and the theories of
corporatism and organic-statism associated with the LAT approach, and have in-
corporated these into their own work, meanwhile going on to explore new ter-
rain---comparative public policy, rational choice theory, and the like. 6 But some
scholars are still fighting the ideological and methodological wars of earlier de-
cades. They will need to update their analyses and come to grips with the newer
trends toward post-Cold War pragmatism and eclecticism in the field; at the same
time, we still lack the grand synthesis of all or several of these approaches that
would help provide a more unified discipline. Some steps, guidelines, and sugges-
tions toward reconciliation of these approaches have been provided here, but we
leave the construction of the grand synthesis called for to others. Anyone who can
successfully, insightfully, and nonideologically bring off such a grand synthesis,
either at the country case study level or for the Latin American region as a whole
will have made a breakthrough for which the field will owe a profound debt.

Notes

1. See especially the series "Studies in Political Development" sponsored by the SSRC/CCP and
published by Princeton University Press: Almond and Coleman (1963); Lucian W. Pye, ed.,
(1963); Joseph LaPalombara, ed., (1963); Robert E. Ward and Dankwart A. Rustow, eds.,
(1964); James S. Coleman, ed.(1965); Lucian W. Pye and Sidney Verba, eds. (1965); Joseph
LaPalombara and Myron Weiner, eds. 0966); Leonard Binder, James S. Coleman, Joseph
LaPalombara, Lucian Pye, Sidney Verba, and Myron Weiner, eds. (1971); Charles Tilly, ed.
(1975). There were many other studies of related themes in political development but not
necessarily under SSRC/CCP auspices.
2. Someearly criticisms of the developmentalist approach are R.S. Milne (1972); Robert T. Holt
and John E. Turner (1975); Philip Coulter (1972); Geoffrey K. Roberts (1972); Philip H.
Melanson and Lauriston R. King (1971); Ignacy Sachs (1972). My own critique of this ap-
proach may be found in Howard J. Wiarda (ed.) (1991; 1993).
3. The main early literature includes Andre Gunder Frank (1967); Theotonio Dos Santon (1970);
James Cockcroft et al. (1970); Samir Amin (1976); Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Enzo
Faletto (1979).
4. After the title of the book by the embittered Juan Jos6 Artvalo, The Shark and the Sardines.
5. For some recent, spirited defenses of the political-culture approach see Lucian W. Pye (1984);
Harry Eckstein (1988); Ronald Inglehart (1988); Aaron Wildavsky (1987); Howard J. Wiarda
(1989).
6. For some recent review articles indicating that the field has begun to bridge and go beyond the
three main models surveyedhere, see Stephan Haggard (need date); Lawrence C. Mayer (1983);
Gerardo L. Munck (1994); Munck and Carol Skalnik Left (1997); and Karen L. Remmer (1995).
66 Studies in Comparative International Development / Summer 1999

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