Mahoney - Path dependence explanations Central America

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Path-Dependent Explanations of
Regime Change: Central America in
Comparative Perspective*
James Mahoney
This article explores the application of ideas about path dependence to the study of
national political regime change. It first reviews the central components of path-
dependent explanation, including the concepts of critical juncture and legacy. This
mode of explanation is then employed in the analysis of diverging regime trajecto-
ries in Central America during the 19th and 20th centuries. The article argues that
the 19th-century liberal reform period was a critical juncture that locked the Cen-
tral American countries onto divergent paths of long-term development, culminat-
ing in sharply contrasting regime outcomes. A final section puts the argument about
Central America in a broader comparative perspective by considering other path-
dependent explanations of regime change.
R ecent methodological writings by comparative-historical analysts have

emphasized the importance of path dependence for political and social
analysis (e.g., Pierson 2000; Thelen 1999; Mahoney 2000). These works have
demonstrated that major outcomes cannot always be explained in terms of short-
term processes or unique and predictable equilibria. Rather, trajectories of de-
velopment are sometimes punctuated by critical periods in which relatively small
or contingent events have a profound influence on subsequent events and pat-
terns of change. When such path-dependent processes are present, adequate ex-
planation will require identifying key historical processes that set cases on
particular trajectories of development, even if these processes rest in the dis-
tant past.
In this article, I explore the application of ideas about path dependence to
the study of national regime change. A first section reviews the central compo-
nents of a path-dependent approach. This discussion suggests that path depen-
dence occurs when the choices of key actors at critical juncture points lead to
the formation of institutions that have self-reproducing properties. These in-
James Mahoney is assistant professor of sociology at Brown University. He is the author of The Legacies of
Liberalism: Path Dependence and Political Regimes in Central America (2001). His current research focuses
on long-run development and the legacy of Spanish colonialism in Latin America.
Studies in Comparative International Development, Spring 2001, Vol. 36, No. 1, pp. 111–141.
112 Studies in Comparative International Development / Spring 2001
stitutions are important to subsequent political development because their per-

sistence produces a series of reactions and counterreactions that culminate in
the creation of major regime outcomes. Hence, in this approach, key actor
choices during critical junctures set into motion more deterministic causal pro-
cesses that drive processes of political development.
A second section employs this path-dependent approach in concrete empiri-
cal analysis by considering diverging regime trajectories in Central America
during the 19th and 20th centuries. As of the mid-20th century, the Central
American countries were characterized by some of the most disparate political
regimes in the world: harsh military-authoritarian regimes in Guatemala (1954–
86) and El Salvador (1948–79), a progressive democracy in Costa Rica (1953–
present), and traditional dictatorships in Honduras (1932–82) and Nicaragua
(1936–79). Although most of these regimes have been superseded, they consti-
tuted a coherent set of political outcomes that persisted for at least three de-
cades in each country and that merit systematic explanation. I argue that these
regime outcomes can be traced back to the 19th century and early 20th century
liberal reform period. During this period, liberal elites made key choices about
how to modernize state apparatuses and agrarian economies. Depending on
whether they adopted what I will call a “radical” or “reform” policy option,
and depending on whether foreign intervention intersected with the liberal re-
form period, different kinds of state and class structures were constructed by
the early 20th century. These state and class structures triggered predictable
patterns of reaction and counterreaction, culminating in the establishment of
divergent political regimes by the mid-20th century.
A final section puts the argument about Central America in a broader com-
parative perspective by considering other path-dependent explanations of re-
gime change. Special attention is given to the arguments developed by Moore
(1966), Rueschemeyer, Stephens, and Stephens (1992), Luebbert (1991), and
Collier and Collier (1991). Although I consider the differences between these
explanations, I argue that there are major commonalties among all of them,
including my own argument. These commonalties suggest the importance of
both strategic actor choices at key junctures—especially the choices of actors
about positioning themselves vis-à-vis one another—and more enduring struc-
tural variables—such as relationships between social classes and the state—in
understanding diverging regime trajectories across many areas of the world.
Analytic Components of Path-Dependent Explanation
The concept of path dependence is used here to refer to a specific type of

explanation that unfolds through a series of sequential stages (see figure 1).
The starting point of this formulation is antecedent historical conditions that
define a range of options available to actors at a key choice point. During this
key choice point, or “critical juncture,” a particular option (e.g., a specific
policy, coalition, institution, or government) is selected from among two or
more alternatives. The choice made during a critical juncture is consequential
because it leads to the creation of institutional patterns that endure over time.
In turn, institutional persistence triggers a reactive sequence in which actors
Mahoney 113
respond to prevailing arrangements through a series of predictable responses

and counterresponses. These reactions then channel development up to the point
of a final outcome, which represents a resolution to the conflicts marking reac-
tive sequences. To establish the framework used in this article, the various
elements in this approach are briefly reviewed here.
Critical Junctures
Critical junctures are defined here as having two components. First, they are
choice points when a particular option is adopted from among two or more
alternatives. 1 If there is no choice between alternatives, there is no critical
juncture. Second, once a particular option is selected, it becomes progressively
more difficult to return to the initial point when multiple alternatives were still
available. Whereas before a critical juncture a broad range of outcomes may
be possible, after a critical juncture the range of possible outcomes is nar-
rowed considerably. Hence, not all choice points represent critical junctures;
only those choice points that close off important future outcomes should be
treated as critical junctures.
The options available during critical junctures, as well as the choices ulti-
mately made by actors, are typically rooted in prior events and processes. The
degree to which these antecedent conditions determine actor choices during
critical junctures can vary, ranging from choices characterized by a high de-
gree of individual discretion to choices that are more deeply embedded in ear-
lier occurrences (Collier and Collier 1991: 27). In specifically path-dependent
analyses, critical junctures are often moments characterized by contingency in
which unforeseen events may have an important impact. To explain critical
junctures, therefore, path-dependent analysts often must focus on small events,
human agency, or historical peculiarities that lie outside of available theoreti-
cal frameworks.
A focus on critical junctures enables historical researchers to avoid the prob-
lem of infinite explanatory regress into the past. This problem arises when
analysts lack criteria for establishing a meaningful beginning point of analysis
and keep reaching back in time for ultimate causes that underlie subsequent
events and outcomes. Critical junctures provide a basis for overcoming this
problem: the analyst focuses attention on those key choice points that mark
Figure 1
Analytic Structure of Path-Dependent Explanation
points in history when (from the perspective of theory) the range of possible
outcomes is substantially narrowed.
Institutional Reproduction
A defining feature of path dependence is the idea that it is difficult for ac-
tors to reverse the effects of choices made during critical junctures; critical junc-
tures increase the probability that countries will follow particular paths of
development. Critical junctures have this effect because they lead to the formation
of institutions that tend toward persistence and that cannot be easily transformed.
In a path-dependent framework, institutions persist over time in the absence
of the processes responsible for their original development (Stinchcombe 1968:
103–4). Whereas during a critical juncture an initial set of contingent factors
may lead to the selection of a given institutional arrangement, after a critical
juncture a subsequent set of more deterministic causal processes reproduces
the institution without the recurrence of the original causes. These stable re-
productive mechanisms may lock in a given institutional pattern, making it
extremely difficult to transform.
Paul Pierson (2000: 252) links the notion of “increasing returns” with the
persistence of path-dependent institutions. “In an increasing returns process,”
he suggests, “the probability of further steps along the same path increases
with each move down that path.” Pierson focuses primarily on the ways in
which the relative benefits of maintaining the institutional status quo increase
over time (or, said differently, how the costs of switching to previously avail-
able alternatives rise). In particular, he emphasizes how rational actors are prone
to reproduce institutions due to the benefits of learning effects, coordination
effects, and adaptive expectations, as well as the costs imposed by irretriev-
able investments (see also Arthur 1994: Ch. 7; North 1990: 94).
Self-reinforcement and increasing returns processes can also be linked to
the concerns of more power-centered analyses (e.g., Obershall and Leifer
1986; Rueschemeyer 1986). Some institutions distribute costs and benefits
unevenly, and, when this is true, individuals in different power positions will
have conflicting interests vis-à-vis the reproduction of the institution. In such
cases, an institution may persist even when most rational individuals prefer
to change it, provided that a powerful elite that benefits from the existing
arrangement has sufficient strength to resist its transformation. Hence, in
studying institutional reproduction, attention can sometimes be usefully
shifted away from the concerns of rational decision making to issues of power
and conflict.
Reactive Sequences
With many path-dependent patterns, the endurance of institutions over time

triggers a chain of causally linked events that, once in motion, occur indepen-
dently of the institutional factors that initially produced it. This sequence of
events, while ultimately linked to a critical juncture period, can culminate in
an outcome that is far removed from the original critical juncture. These chains
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of reactions and counterreactions can be called “reactive sequences” (Mahoney

2000).
Reactive sequences are chains of temporally ordered and causally connected
events. They are marked by what Abbott (1992: 445) calls an “inherent logic of
events,” whereby one event triggers another through predictable reaction-
counterreaction dynamics. Actor resistance to prevailing institutions is often
the initial force that launches a reactive sequence. Counterreactions to this
actor resistance may then drive subsequent events in the sequence. Reactive
sequences are therefore often marked by properties of backlash and counter-
response as actors challenge or support institutional patterns established dur-
ing critical juncture periods. Even if such actor resistance does not actually
transform these institutions, it can set into motion an autonomous process that
encompasses events leading to a final outcome of interest.
The mechanisms driving reactive sequences differ substantially from those
that characterize processes of institutional reproduction. Whereas mechanisms
of institutional reproduction are marked by self-reinforcing and positive feed-
back processes, reactive sequences are characterized by transformative and
backlash processes in which there is movement toward reversing previous pat-
terns. For example, with institutions that persist by virtue of the support of a
small elite, reactive sequences may be launched when subordinate groups mo-
bilize against the established arrangements.
The conflicts of a reactive sequence typically give way to more stable final
outcomes. These final outcomes entail the formation of new institutional pat-
terns, such as national regimes or party systems. Although such outcomes rep-
resent relatively stable equilibrium points, the analyst must keep in mind that
new periods of discontinuity will inevitably dislodge them. Such periods of
discontinuity signal the end of the legacy of a given critical juncture and per-
haps the beginning of a new critical juncture.
In sum, a path-dependent approach emphasizes how actor choices create
institutions at critical moments, how these institutions in turn shape subse-
quent actor behaviors, and how these actor responses in turn culminate in the
development of new institutional patterns. Such a mutually constitutive ap-
proach to actors and institutions resonates well with many recent calls in the
Figure 2
Path-Dependent Explanation of Regime Outcomes in Central America
study of national political regime change for frameworks that go beyond vol-
untaristic and structural approaches (e.g., Bermeo 1990; Karl 1990; Munck
1994; Mahoney and Snyder 1999).
Path-Dependent Explanation of Central American Regimes
The 19th and early 20th century liberal reform period was a critical juncture
in Central American development that can help explain the origins of modern
military-authoritarian regimes in Guatemala and El Salvador, a progressive
democratic regime in Costa Rica, and traditional-dictatorial regimes in Hon-
duras and Nicaragua. To understand how, we must apply the path-dependent
framework just presented to a broad span of Central American history. In what
follows, I shall do this, utilizing the tools of comparative-historical analysis to
anchor specific arguments about political development in Central America.
Figure 2 provides a guide to the discussion that follows.
Critical Juncture: Liberal Policy Choices
The liberal reform period was an epoch in Central American history when
political elites launched reforms that advanced commercial agriculture, ex-
panded agrarian exports (especially coffee and bananas), and redefined the
position of the state in society and the economy. The exact dates for this period
differ for each country, though they roughly correspond to the 1870–1930 pe-
riod. 2 Liberals rose to power in the aftermath of intra-elite fighting between
liberals and conservatives that was carried on to differing degrees across the
five countries (see Pérez Brignoli 1989; Karnes 1961; Rodríguez 1978; Wood-
ward 1965). Although by the mid-19th century both political factions drew
membership from the same wealthy classes and concurred on the need for ex-
port agriculture (Gudmundson and Lindo-Fuentes 1995), they remained di-
vided over the pace and scope of economic change. Even most moderate liberals
sought a more rapid and thoroughgoing transition to commercial agriculture
than conservatives. Hence, when liberals wrested power from conservatives,
the Central American countries were poised to undergo a major advance of
commercial agriculture and primary product exportation.
During the early phases of liberal reform period in each country, one or two
presidents enacted policy legislation that defined the general direction of change
for the entire period. These key liberal presidents are: Justo Rufino Barrios
(1873–85) in Guatemala, Rafael Zaldívar (1876–83) in El Salvador, Braulio
Carrillo (1838–42) and Tomás Guardia (1870–82) in Costa Rica, Macro Aurelio
Soto (1876–83) in Honduras, and José Santos Zelaya (1893–1909) in Nicara-
gua. I argue that the policy choices of these leaders had important consequences
for Central American development.
Liberals faced major choices about how to achieve societal development,
especially regarding the transformation of agriculture. Before the liberal re-
form period, much or most of productive land in the region was not held as
private property. Rather, municipalities controlled substantial territory and
rented it to villagers in measured plots (often referred to as ejidal lands), while
Mahoney 117
other lands were held by indigenous groups who enjoyed communal owner-
ship rights based on colonial precedent and custom (known as común or com-
munal lands). Still other lands were owned by the national government and
officially declared to be unoccupied (often referred to as baldíos or public
lands). A basic outcome of the liberal reform period in all countries was to
partially or completely replace this common land system with private landed
property.
In promoting commercial agriculture and agrarian development, liberals had
to select from a range of specific land and labor provisions. As Table 1 sug-
gests, these varying provisions can be grouped into two overall packages of
policies: a reform policy option and a radical policy option. Radical and re-
form policy options are differentiated along three dimensions: scope of
privatization, size of estate promoted, and level of state coercion.
Scope of privatization refers to the extent to which common lands were tar-
geted for privatization by liberals. In Central America, the most dramatic case
on this dimension is El Salvador, where Zaldívar ordered the privatization of
all ejidal and communal lands in two decrees passed in February 1881 and
March 1882. 3 Estimates of the total land affected by these decrees vary, but
reliable sources suggest that it encompassed over half of all arable land (Lauria-
Santiago 1999: 193). Nicaraguan liberals under Zelaya’s leadership also abol-
ished all title to communal and ejidal lands with a decree in 1906, but this
Table 1
Agricultural Policy Options
legislation built on three decades of land reform going back to the conserva-
tive governments of the 1870s (Fernandez 1978: 58–75). At the other extreme
is Honduras, where Marco Aurielo Soto and his chief collaborator, Ramón Rosa,
pursued a far less ambitious privatization reform in their Decree for the Devel-
opment of Agriculture of April 1877.4 Despite Soto’s acknowledged dislike of
the traditional land system (Valenzuela and Argueta 1978: 111), his reform
legislation did not threaten the rights of communities to control land; rather it
promoted the use of existing holdings, generally maintaining pre-existing land
tenure relationships (Williams 1994: 93).
Guatemala and Costa Rica fall in the middle regarding the scope of
privatization. In Guatemala, Barrios’s basic land reforms were a series of de-
crees that privatized substantial amounts of state-owned communal land and
abolished long-term leases of municipal lands.5 Although nearly a million acres
of communal land were distributed as private plots from 1871 to 1883 (Herrick
1974: 237), land privatization was cautiously and selectively applied such that
communal land systems remained intact for many communities (McCreery
1994; Williams 1994: 63; Handy 1984: 69; Kauck 1988: 166). In Costa Rica,
municipal-level land reforms going back to the 1820s originally began con-
verting baldíos of the Central Valley into private property. Under the Carrillo
administration, the national government further encouraged land privatization,
but communal lands controlled by indigenous communities were allowed to
persist throughout the liberal period (Salas Víquez 1987; Castro Sánchez 1990;
Cardoso 1977: 173).
The second dimension distinguishing policy options concerns the size of
the commercial landholding estate promoted by liberals. The extreme case here
is Guatemala, where Barrios made explicit efforts to promote large-scale plan-
tations at the expense of peasant farms. In converting community-controlled
land into private plots, Guatemalan liberals imposed strict deadlines for occu-
pants to buy their land, and they set the price of land acquisition out of reach of
most occupants (McCreery 1994: 203; Herrick 1974: 231). At the other end of
this dimension is Costa Rica, where liberals showed no preference for large
estates and, in fact, actively promoted small farms. From the outset, Costa
Rican liberals sought to encourage the productive use of farms by small pro-
ducers who already controlled a particular plot of land. Land prices were made
affordable to small farmers and the bureaucratic process of acquiring land was
highly accommodating to peasant groups (Castro Sánchez 1990; Williams 1994;
Hall 1991).
With respect to this dimension of size of estate promoted, El Salvador, Nica-
ragua, and Honduras fall between the plantation-driven policies of Guatemala
and the family-based agricultural polices of Costa Rica. In El Salvador, the
price of acquiring private title to lands was within the means of most produc-
ers, and land records show that small producers often successfully gained title
to their land (Lauria-Santiago 1999). In Nicaragua, large estates were strongly
promoted by Zelaya after 1893, but there is new evidence that small estates
were also encouraged by both conservative and liberal governments in the cof-
fee region around Carazo (Charlip 1995). As for Honduras, Soto and Rosa may
have preferred large export-oriented plantations, but their legislative efforts
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targeted producers of any size who would pursue the cultivation of export crops
(Molina Chocano 1976).
Finally, policy options are distinguished in terms of state coercion and the
use of public and quasi-public security organizations in the implementation
and enforcement of land and labor legislation. In Guatemala and Nicaragua,
liberals oversaw the creation of blatantly coercive and feudal-like systems of
labor provision. In November 1876, Guatemalan leader Barrios reinstated the
colonial practice of labor drafts, obligating peasants to work on agricultural
estates. Ultimately, this move led to the creation of vast systems of debt peon-
age (McCreery 1994). In Nicaragua, Zelaya issued a similar labor law in 1894
that imposed a vagrancy regulation and guaranteed planters ample peasant la-
bor during picking season. Quite likely, an extensive debt peonage system also
developed in Nicaragua, though the historiography has not fully developed
this point (but see Teplitz 1973; Charlip 1995).
Less coercive measures were carried out in El Salvador, where the liberal
government allowed a basically free labor system to prevail. Nevertheless, once
peasant squatting and land concentration became problems, there is evidence
that liberals forced landless peasants into the coffee economy (Browning 1971:
169–71; Menjívar 1980: 91–92; Williams 1994: 124). Finally, in Costa Rica
and Honduras, there is no evidence that liberal governments used significant
coercion in implementing land and labor policy. In these cases, the absence of
coffee economies built around large plantations likely mitigated the use of
state force in the transition to commercial agriculture.
This three-component definition of radical and reform policies is highly
sensitive to the distinctiveness of liberal policy choices in each country. At the
same time, the definition allows for systematic comparison across cases. Thus,
when the three disaggregated dimensions are added together as in Table 1 ear-
lier, it becomes clear that the cases group into two basic patterns: a radical
policy option in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua, and a reform policy
option in Honduras and Costa Rica. Before considering the consequences of
these different policy options, it is useful to briefly inquire about their origins.
Antecedent Conditions: Origins of Different Policy Options
What factors led liberals to select one set of reforms and not another? I
argue that these policy choices were not determined by structural or demo-
graphic factors present before the liberal reform period; instead, I maintain
that immediate political contingencies during the reform period itself best ex-
plain liberal choices.
One possible explanation for liberal policy—often alluded to in the case
study literature—emphasizes the importance of demographic factors, in par-
ticular the density and size of the indigenous population. In this argument, a
substantial indigenous population is understood to promote the selection of a
radical policy option by providing a pool of laborers to farm large plantations
and encouraging state actors to use coercive means to develop these planta-
tions. By contrast, a sparse indigenous population favors a reform policy op-
tion by removing a potential pool of laborers and leaving government leaders
little choice but to pursue small-scale forms of commercial agriculture. De-

spite its initial plausibility, however, this demographic argument overlooks the
fact that population density (population per sq. mile) was slightly lower in
Nicaragua (where a radical policy option was followed) than in Costa Rica
(where a reform policy option was followed) for much of the 19th century. 6
Indeed, in Costa Rica there was a fairly dense settlement pattern in the Central
Valley, precisely the area where the richest coffee lands were located. By the
mid-19th century, Costa Rican liberals such as Braulio Carrillo could have
easily promoted the spread of plantations in this area, but they did not. Like-
wise, while Honduras likely had a more significant indigenous population than
Nicaragua in the 19th century, liberals in Honduras adopted a reform policy
option, not a radical policy option like Nicaragua. Thus, while population-
centered explanations might work for extreme comparisons like Guatemala
and Costa Rica, they cannot accommodate the full range of Central American
countries.
Similar problems arise with explanations that highlight the importance of
differences in levels of socioeconomic development prior to the liberal re-
form period. In the most common variant of this argument, scholars hold that
significant pre-liberal socioeconomic modernization created an agrarian bour-
geoisie that pushed for radical policies; when only limited pre-liberal mod-
ernization occurred, countries were left without the requisite elite actor necessary
to carry out a bold transformative agenda. Yet a glance at countries outside of
Guatemala and Costa Rica forces us to question this argument. For example, in
El Salvador and Nicaragua, where radical policy options were pursued, socio-
economic modernization was limited before the 1870s, and the agrarian bour-
geoisie was only a tiny class actor, hardly able to drive state policy in an
instrumental fashion.
Underlying these socioeconomic explanations of liberal policy is a concep-
tion of the liberal state as an apparatus controlled by elite classes. In fact,
however, liberal states were typically headed by personalistic dictators who
were capable of making decisions without negotiation or consultation with
classes and groups from civil society. Liberal dictators and their cohort of close
allies dictated the terms of state policies, often with little direct input from
major societal actors, and sometimes in accordance with their own personal
whims. Although dominant class interests were one consideration that liberal
presidents had to keep in mind, these leaders were fundamentally state-build-
ing political actors interested in maintaining and expanding personal power.
When faced with the choice of protecting their political interests or supporting
local agrarian elites, liberals could and did make decisions that directly con-
tradicted the socioeconomic interests of dominant class actors.
Working from this perspective allows us to see how the political calcula-
tions of self-interested liberal dictators shaped choices about whether to fol-
low a radical or a reform policy option. Radical policy options were pursued in
those three countries—Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua—where intense
political threats led rulers to build powerful militaries. Once military-building
reforms were in place, liberals had the coercive apparatus needed to actually
implement sweeping agricultural policy options. By contrast, in those two coun-
Mahoney 121
tries where a reform policy option was pursued—Honduras and Costa Rica—
liberal dictators did not encounter the same high level of political threat, and
consequently they were not led to build huge standing armies that radiated
throughout society. Rather, lacking the necessary military infrastructure to
pursue a radical transformation, liberals in these countries followed a more
modest reform policy option.
There is substantial empirical support for this argument. In Guatemala, lib-
eral leader Barrios faced major challenges from still powerful conservative
actors, and these challenges led him to pursue massive military expansion be-
fore implementing land and labor policies (see McCreery 1994: 180; McClintock
1985b: 10–11). 7 In 1873, he created Guatemala’s first professional army to
defend his position in the face of persistent uprisings, and this military mod-
ernization later provided a foundation for his enactment of forced labor poli-
cies and violent land privatization. In El Salvador, Zaldívar also created the
country’s first permanent army of roughly 1,500 troops in 1876, before his
government ordered an end to the entire common lands system.8 Zaldívar moved
to create this permanent fighting force primarily because repeated threats from
dissident liberals at home and abroad left him highly vulnerable to forced re-
moval from office; once the army was in place, he was well positioned to ex-
ecute the extensive land reforms. Nicaraguan liberal leader Zelaya also faced
political threats emanating from a notably powerful Conservative Party that
clashed with Liberals throughout the 19th century. Zelaya responded by devel-
oping what was arguably the most powerful army in the region.9 This exten-
sive security apparatus, in turn, helped him pursue aggressive land and labor
policies.
Matters were quite different in Honduras and Costa Rica, the two coun-
tries where reform policy options were followed. In Honduras, the liberal-
conservative division was almost non-existent throughout the 19th century; a
full-blown liberal reform period occurred there because Soto’s ascension to
the presidency was imposed by Barrios in neighboring Guatemala. In this
political climate, Soto did not move to establish a permanent army equiva-
lent to what existed in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua. While he
expanded and upgraded the militia, Soto never attempted to build a profes-
sional army (Molina Chocano 1976). 10 Likewise, in Costa Rica there was
virtually no conservative opposition after the 1830s, and thus military build-
ing was not an urgent concern for early liberal reformers such as Carrillo.
Only years later, under the administration of Tomás Guardia (1870–82), did
more substantial military modernization take place, but the Costa Rican army
never reached the size found in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua (Solís
and González 1991: 70-121). Moreover, by the 1870s a reform policy option
had already been implemented and the smallholder coffee economy had al-
ready been consolidated in Costa Rica. Thus, in both Honduras and Costa
Rica the relative absence of political threats discouraged reformers from
making military expansion the raison d’être of the state, which in turn made
it quite likely that these leaders would follow a reform policy option in the
agricultural sector.
Institutional Production: Radical, Reformist, and Aborted Liberalism
Radical and reform policy options were important to future development

because they led to the creation of enduring state institutions and class struc-
tures. By the end of the reform period in the 1920s, three patterns of liberal
institutional development characterized the five countries: radical liberalism
in Guatemala and El Salvador, reformist liberalism in Costa Rica, and aborted
liberalism in Honduras and Nicaragua. The defining dimensions of these pat-
terns are summarized in Table 2.
I argue that the choice of either a radical policy option or a reform policy
option was a crucial component in the creation of these types of liberalism. If
it could be carried out to its logical completion, a radical policy option would
lead to radical liberalism, as happened in Guatemala and El Salvador. Like-
wise, a reform option—when successfully implemented—would lead to re-
formist liberalism, as happened in Costa Rica. By contrast, if a particular policy
option could not be successfully implemented, as occurred in Honduras and
Nicaragua, the outcome would be aborted liberalism.
In Guatemala, Barrios’ land reforms paved the way for a coffee economy
dominated by large plantations; by the late 19th century over half of all coffee
farms were large-scale capitalist operations (Williams 1994: 121-23). In con-
junction with the enactment of highly coercive labor policies, this plantation
economy featured extremely polarized class structures in which entrenched
landed elites controlled large drafts of resident plantation laborers in a semi-
feudal system of debt-labor obligation. Although coffee planters exercised much
Table 2
Types of Liberal Reform
Mahoney 123
authority in the national government, military officials became responsible for

carrying out the day-to-day operations of the state, including overseeing the
well-being of the coffee economy and the forced labor system. In 1890, state
revenue devoted to the Ministry of War reached a peak of nearly 60 percent of
the total budget; by the early 20th century the Guatemalan army has been esti-
mated to number 6,000 men (McCreery 1994: 178; McClintock 1985b: 12; see
also Bingham 1974).
In El Salvador, Zaldívar’s promotion of both large and small estates led to
more diversity in the coffee economy, with large-scale estates representing
around one-third of all coffee farms when the first coffee census was taken in
1939 (Williams 1994: 77). However, landless and land-poor peasants in El
Salvador were more capable of acting on their felt grievances than in Guate-
mala. This was true because Zaldívar’s encompassing reforms abolished an
agricultural frontier to which land poor peasants could retreat to avoid being
incorporated into the coffee economy. In addition, free-market labor in El Sal-
vador fostered an agricultural workforce that did not face direct and constant
supervision by planters and state authorities. These aspects of the Salvadoran
economy underpinned an agricultural system marked by intense class polar-
ization and high potential for peasant revolts from below. In part as a response,
the military grew at a steady rate during the first decades of the liberal reform,
reaching a height of roughly 5,000 members by the late 19th century. 11 More-
over, the creation of the National Guard in 1912 enabled the state to establish
a permanent presence among peasants and plantation workers, concentrated as
it was in the western coffee region (Alvarenga 1994; Ching 1998; Elam 1968).
In Costa Rica, land privatization policies helped fuel an export-driven
economy built around small- and medium-sized coffee farms (e.g., Cardoso
1977; Gudmundson 1986; Hall 1991; Molina Jiménez 1991). This smallholder
economy was associated with a distinctive dominant class, one whose wealth
and power was not based on estate ownership, but rather the commercial as-
pects of coffee production, specifically the financing, processing, and market-
ing of the crop (Cardoso 1977; Gudmundson 1986; Paige 1997). In the absence
of any entrenched landed elite, polarized class structures in the rural sector
equivalent to those of Guatemala and El Salvador never developed in Costa
Rica. Although state centralization took place under the Guardia administra-
tion, the military’s position in the state and society was limited when com-
pared to Guatemala and El Salvador (Solís and González 1991). By the early
20th century, Costa Rican governments increasingly came to power through
competitive elections and spent nearly as much on education as the military
(Fischel 1990).
The cases of Honduras and Nicaragua exemplify a third pattern of aborted
liberalism. In Honduras, prime coffee lands were often isolated in pockets and
scattered throughout the country, which encouraged liberals to explore other
potential export crops, including bananas. During the 1880s, stimulated by
liberal legislation, small-scale farmers along the North Coast began to grow
bananas and the fruit quickly became a major new export of the country (Brand
1972; Kepner and Soothill 1935). At the time, it seemed that small banana
farms in Honduras might form a basis for a pattern of reformist liberalism like
that of Costa Rica. In Nicaragua, by contrast, Zelaya’s land and labor legisla-
tion had seemingly put the country on the course of radical liberalism exem-
plified by Guatemala and El Salvador. Here large coffee plantations were
emerging as the principle units of the export economy (Williams 1994). Like-
wise, in the rural sector, highly polarized class relations were developing, and
the state was becoming an increasingly militaristic apparatus (Paige 1997;
Wheelock 1975; Teplitz 1973).
However, United States intervention—economic and political—aborted lib-
eral transformation in Honduras and Nicaragua. In Honduras, this intervention
was rooted in massive foreign capital investment that came to dominate the
banana economy (Kepner and Soothill 1935; Laínez and Meza 1973; Murga
Frassinetti 1978). Exact quantitative figures are not available on the percent-
age of U.S. control of Honduran exports, but by the late 1920s the figure surely
approached 100 percent. Ultimately, foreign economic investment led to a par-
tial loss of national sovereignty, which in turn undermined the institutional
development associated with reformist liberalism. For instance, the public bu-
reaucracy remained meager in size and administratively incompetent, having
almost no hold over the national citizenry (Stokes 1950: Ch. 8; Posas and Del
Cid 1983: 88–92). In fact, “no military institution existed in Honduras during
the 19th and early 20th centuries” (Ropp 1974: 506). As for the Honduran
elite, this group was bifurcated into an economic elite composed of merchant-
commercial actors (not landed elites) centered near San Pedro Sula in the North-
ern banana zone, and a political elite made up of Tegucigalpa politicians who
were outside the dominant class and the banana economy (Euraque 1997). The
Honduran dominant economic class thus lacked the two traditional sources of
power typically exercised by economic elites in Central America: control over
land and influence within national politics.
In Nicaragua, aborted liberalism occurred in conjunction with the U.S.-spon-
sored removal of Zelaya in 1909. The causes of U.S. intervention are debated,
but few would disagree that its consequence was to transform Nicaragua into a
virtual colony of the United States. Once Zelaya was removed, the U.S. State
Department propped up sympathetic governments that supported American
interests (Booth 1985: Ch. 3; Bermann 1986: Ch. 9; Kamman 1968; Quijano
1987: Parts 1 and 2). U.S. capitalists quickly came to control the country’s
financial and fiscal institutions, and the U.S. State Department was eventually
granted the right to approve and supervise the national budget, fix customs
duties, and oversee the payment of all governmental bonds. (Hill 1933; Paige
1997: 166–67; Wheelock 1975: Ch. 5). As a result of the U.S. occupation, the
radical policy option enacted by Zelaya did not have an enduring impact on
state and class structural development. The state became little more than an
instrument for American political advisors to ensure that friendly governments
were in power and to facilitate financial control over the country by U.S. in-
vestors (Walter 1993: 13). Likewise, U.S. intervention stunted the growth of
the coffee elite, making it weak in terms of control over land and people and
also its capacity to influence the national state (Paige 1997: 79–80; Wheelock
1975).
Mahoney 125
Reactive Sequences: Democratizing Episodes
The three patterns of radical, reformist, and aborted liberalism set into mo-
tion contrasting reactions and counterreactions that ultimately culminated in
the formation of distinct political regimes. As Table 3 suggests, the countries
can be distinguished on the basis of whether or not major democratizing epi-
sodes occurred in the aftermath of the liberal reform. These “democratizing
episodes” were periods when progressive administrations and/or popular sec-
tor movements brought the issue of democracy to the forefront of national
politics by pursuing goals such as lower-class incorporation into the political
arena, increased electoral freedoms, and enhanced socioeconomic equality.
Major democratizing episodes occurred in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Costa
Rica in the aftermath of liberalism, but not in Honduras and Nicaragua. This
contrast was rooted in the differing institutional patterns established during
the liberal reform period. Thus, in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Costa Rica,
relatively centralized state apparatuses that effectively controlled a monopoly
on organized force were present at the end of the reform period. These state
apparatuses facilitated democratizing episodes by putting an end to a prior
pattern in which regionally-based military rebellions undermined national sta-
bility. As Rueschemeyer, Stephens, and Stephens (1992: 159) suggest, before
democratic contestation can occur “overt challenges to state authority have to
come to an end, particularly challenges in the form of armed resistance.” In
Honduras and Nicaragua, indeed, the failure to consolidate states during the
reform period meant that regional warfare persisted well into the 20th century,
delaying movement toward the democratic contestation that was emerging else-
where in the region.
Furthermore, in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Costa Rica, the coffee
oligarchy’s political leverage in the national state represented an obvious im-
pediment to mass actors who sought increased political influence, thereby pro-
viding a structural context for large-scale democratic protests from below. By
Table 3
Democratic Reactions to Liberal Reform
contrast, in Honduras and Nicaragua, popular sector groups may well have
sought democratization, but the target against which they might direct their
democratic aspirations was not transparent: centralized states did not exist and
no clearly visible economic elite controlled national politics.
Finally, in Honduras and Nicaragua, the emergence of democratizing move-
ments was effectively closed off by a semi-colonial environment in which do-
mestic actors had lost sovereign control of the state and economy. Substantial
popular mobilization did take place in these countries, but it was regionally-
based conflict or it was directed at U.S. actors. Thus, the Sandino revolt (1927–
31) focused on removing the United States from Nicaragua; Sandino laid down
his arms once the U.S. Secretary of State announced that the occupation force
would leave in 1931. Likewise, while strikes and worker mobilization on ba-
nana plantations were common in Honduras by the 1920s, these activities were
primarily directed at American companies, not Honduran politicians or local
capitalists. Hence, the point is not that lower-class mobilization was absent in
Honduras and Nicaragua, but rather that it did not take the form of democratiz-
ing movements. Without such movements, Honduras and Nicaragua were poised
to develop traditional forms of authoritarian rule once sovereignty was rees-
tablished.
In Guatemala, although a series of relatively reformist administrations in
the 1920s brought issues such as workers’ rights and increased electoral and
political freedoms onto the national agenda (Pitti 1975; Taracena 1993), not
until the overthrow of the Ubico dictatorship (1931–44) was a nearly success-
ful democratizing episode launched, especially during the Jacobo Arbenz ad-
ministration (1950–54). Arbenz enacted the controversial 1952 Agrarian Reform
Law, which targeted uncultivated private landholdings of more than 200 acres
for distribution, including substantial lands owned by United Fruit Company.
Although the role of the United States and the CIA in helping to overthrow
Arbenz is well documented, solid evidence now suggests that Arbenz would
have been removed even in the absence of U.S. intervention (see Handy 1994;
Galich 1994; Yashar 1997). Even without the United States, land reform was
unacceptable to the military, whose entire organizational existence was linked
to the polarized rural economy. Thus, when Arbenz moved to redistribute land
and mobilize new rural organizations, the military was poised to seize power
on its own (Handy 1994: 179–90). Indeed, the tiny armed invasion movement
trained by the CIA and headed by Castillo Armas could never have overthrown
Arbenz had the military chosen to defend the government.
In El Salvador, a significant democratic episode emerged from the reform
efforts of President Pío Romero Bosque (1927–31). Romero passed legislation
that greatly benefited urban professionals and workers, and he helped to orga-
nize the highly competitive election of 1931, which was won by the progres-
sive reformer Arturo Araujo (Wilson 1970; Ching 1998). Yet, in less than a
year, the military overthrew Araujo and allowed General Maximiliano
Hernández Martínez to take office. In response to this turn of events, as well as
to the polarized class structures described earlier, massive peasant revolts broke
out in key coffee-producing regions of El Salvador in 1932. The counter re-
sponse of the Martínez government was to oversee the brutal killing of thou-
Mahoney 127
sands of peasants (Anderson 1971; Dunkerley 1982). In the aftermath of this

government massacre, a situation of nearly full-blown military authoritarianism
prevailed in El Salvador; only the personal rule of Martínez (1931–44) pre-
vented the military as an institution from governing on its own. Not until the
development of new social pressures in the 1940s, when urban middle classes
in San Salvador demanded the end to the dictatorship, was Martínez forced to
resign (Parkman 1988). With the departure of Martínez, the military stepped
into the power vacuum, squashed the urban protest movement, and established
direct control over the state.
In Costa Rica, the 1930s saw urban middle classes, small- and medium-
sized coffee growers, and urban working classes demand increased influence
within a semi-competitive electoral regime. This mobilization provided a po-
tential political resource for the increasingly isolated President Rafael Angel
Calderón (1940–44). Calderón initiated a democratic episode by incorporating
the working class (through the communist party) into the governing coalition
and enacting important social security legislation that laid the foundation for a
future welfare state. In doing so, he increased the stakes of control over gov-
ernment, making it impossible for competing factions to peacefully accept the
results of fraudulent electoral contests. Eventually, the less than fully demo-
cratic election of 1948 triggered a brief civil war between different factions of
the elite. In effect, the war taught elite actors that they had one of two choices:
accept fully competitive democracy or experience extreme social instability.
Most factions eventually agreed to the former, laying the groundwork for Costa
Rica’s contemporary democracy.
Thus, democratizing movements appeared in Guatemala, El Salvador, and
Costa Rica alike. However, only in Costa Rica did they actually succeed in
bringing about the establishment of a democratic regime. A democratic out-
come was possible in Costa Rica because popular sector incorporation into the
political system did not fundamentally threaten the economic power of Costa
Rica’s commercial-based coffee elite. Of equal importance, the marginal posi-
tion of the armed forces within the state and society mitigated the potential for
a harsh military response to democratizing movements. Matters were quite
different in Guatemala and El Salvador, where the incorporation of lower rural
classes into national politics threatened a revolutionary transformation of the
agrarian economy, with major implications for economic well-being of domi-
nant class actors. Furthermore, in Guatemala and El Salvador the armed forces
were themselves threatened by rural mobilizations that sought to transform
agrarian relations, and thus had their own organizational interests in defeating
democratizing movements. In short, key variations in the nature of class insti-
tutions and state institutions—whose origins rest with the liberal reform pe-
riod—account for the differing success of democratizing episodes in Costa
Rica, on the one hand, and Guatemala and El Salvador, on the other.
Regime Outcomes: Military-Authoritarianism, Democracy, and Traditional Dictatorship
The reactive sequences triggered by different types of liberalism eventually

gave way to relatively stable political outcomes. In the cases of radical liberal-
ism (Guatemala and El Salvador), political order was established in the form
of military-authoritarian regimes. In the pattern of reformist liberalism (Costa
Rica), a progressive democracy was the regime outcome. Finally, the regime
outcome in the cases of aborted liberalism (Honduras and Nicaragua) was tra-
ditional dictatorship.
The military-authoritarian regimes that characterized Guatemala from 1954
to 1986 and El Salvador from 1950 to 1979 were among the most repressive
political systems in the history of Latin America. In Guatemala, it has been
estimated that as many as 200,000 people died as a result of political violence
during the period of military rule. 12 Throughout this episode, military officers
assumed increasing control over government operations, and perceived oppo-
nents—such as leaders of progressive parties, teachers’ associations, and peas-
ants’ unions—were subject to arbitrary arrest by security and paramilitary
forces, and they suffered torture, harsh prison terms, and, not uncommonly,
execution. In El Salvador, the armed forces as a whole—not individual mili-
tary leaders—also dominated the government, and over time the Salvadoran
military gradually evolved toward the single-minded goal of defeating guer-
rilla movements. By 1978 security forces roamed throughout the country; by
the 1990s roughly 100,000 individuals had died as a result of the political vio-
lence.13
An entirely different political situation prevailed in Costa Rica, where a
progressive democratic regime was consolidated. Since 1949, Costa Rican de-
mocracy has featured regular, competitive, and honest elections; and the coun-
try has functioned without any institutional military, which was abolished during
the transition to democracy. Especially before the 1980s, the state actively ex-
tended social welfare and services to large sectors of the population through
the creation of a vast network of semi-public agencies. As a consequence, Costa
Rica experienced impressive declines in income inequality, even as the economy
grew at one of the fastest rates in Latin America (Booth 1998; Wilson 1998).
In Honduras, a traditional-dictatorial regime characterized the administra-
tion of Tiburcio Carías (1933–49) and a series of less well-known rulers who
governed into the early 1980s. The Honduran regime can be called a tradi-
tional dictatorship because, like the political systems of the 19th century, it
featured personalism, clientalism, patronage, and bribes much more centrally
than either free electoral practices or harsh military repression (Schultz and
Schultz 1994; Rosenberg 1989). Elections were often held during this period,
but they were not fully democratic contests as in Costa Rica. Likewise, while
state repression was sometimes used, it was far more mild than that found in
Guatemala and El Salvador.
Finally, in Nicaragua, we find one of Latin America’s most enduring family
dynasties. The first Somoza government—that of Anastasio Somoza García—
has major parallels with Tiburcio Carías’ government in Honduras, including
the use of clientalism rather than outright repression as the primary basis for
rule. Yet, unlike Carías, Somoza could depend on the National Guard to main-
tain power, which was installed by the United States Marines in the early 1930s.
Through family control over the National Guard, Somoza García successfully
passed power to his sons, Luis and Anastasio. Although we now often associ-
Mahoney 129
ate the Somoza regime with a repressive and violent image, before the mid-
1970s the Somozas were relatively benign compared to many authoritarian
governments. Not until Somoza Debayle plundered international aid in the af-
termath of the devastating 1972 earthquake, which helped fuel a broad-based
revolutionary movement, did the regime depart from the classic traditional-
dictatorial model of Central America built around personal rule and political
patronage.
Comparing Path-Dependent Explanations of Regime Change
The first two sections of this article have presented a path-dependent frame-
work and applied this framework to the study of political development in Cen-
tral America. In this section, I consider my findings about Central America in
light of a broader array of path-dependent studies of regime change. Such a
review of the literature is now possible because path-dependent studies have
proliferated over the years, including the publication of several major studies
in the 1990s. I focus on four well-known books: Moore’s Social Origins of
Dictatorship and Democracy; Rueschemeyer, Stephens, and Stephens’ Capi-
talist Development and Democracy; Luebbert’s Liberalism, Fascism, and So-
cial Democracy; and Collier and Collier’s Shaping the Political Arena. I begin
with an analytic summary of each book that highlights the ways in which it
employs the features of path-dependent explanation (see Table 4). I then com-
pare and contrast the different explanations developed in these studies and my
own work. I argue that, despite the many differences across all of these stud-
ies, major similarities exist in the logical structure and type of explanation
employed. I illustrate this point by presenting a general formulation of the
variables highlighted in existing path-dependent explanations of regime change.
Analytic Summaries of Path-Dependent Arguments
Moore. Moore’s famous work explores branching points that established

three routes from pre-industrial society to the modern world: bourgeois revo-
lutions leading to liberal democracy (Britain, France, U.S.), revolutions from
above leading to fascism (Germany, Japan), and revolutions from below lead-
ing to communism (Russia, China). The critical junctures in this argument
concern the patterns of alliance and conflict that developed between the bour-
geoisie, landed elites, and peasants in pre-industrial society. In particular, the
choice of a specific alliance partner by the bourgeoisie is given major empha-
sis in Moore’s study. This choice was itself shaped by antecedent differences
in the extent of “bourgeois impulse,” which is closely related to the level of
development of commercial agriculture.
The key branching point that split the democratic cases from the non-demo-
cratic cases concerns the alliance patterns that developed between the bour-
geoisie and landed elites. In countries that followed the democratic route, the
bourgeoisie was able to avoid an alliance with landed elites, and consequently
the emergent axis of societal class conflict was between bourgeois and landed
factions of the elite. According to Moore, this intra-elite conflict was ultimately
Table 4
130
Select Features of Path-Dependent Explanations of Regime Change
Studies in Comparative International Development / Spring 2001

Mahoney 131
resolved by “bourgeois revolutions” in which the bourgeoisie either formed an

alliance with the peasantry and overthrew a landed aristocracy and its labor-
repressive system of agriculture (France and Southern U.S.), or the bourgeoi-
sie led a political revolution in a context where market agriculture already
prevailed (Britain).
By contrast, in the non-democratic cases, a bourgeois-landed elite alliance
was developed in the pre-modern period, closing off democracy as an histori-
cal route to the modern world. In these cases, the central axis of class conflict
was within the agrarian sector, specifically between landed elites and the peas-
antry. In the countries that became fascist dictatorships, landed elites were
more powerful than the bourgeoisie, facilitating the creation of coercive labor
structures in the countryside that undercut the peasantry’s potential to carry
out large-scale revolts from below. In the absence of such peasant revolts, bour-
geois and landed interests promoted “revolutions from above” in which highly
repressive fascist regimes were consolidated. On the other hand, in the coun-
tries that became communist dictatorships, landed elites were weaker, and peas-
ant structures allowed for large-scale revolts from below. In these cases, peasant
revolts underpinned “revolutions from below” that overthrew reigning bour-
geois-landed elite alliances and brought on the consolidation of communist
regimes.
Rueschemeyer, Stephens, and Stephens. In Capitalist Development and De-
mocracy, Rueschemeyer, Stephens, and Stephens explore the origins of demo-
cratic regimes, partially democratic regimes, and authoritarian regimes in a
comparative analysis of nearly forty countries that encompasses several re-
gions of the world and multiple historical epochs. The most important ante-
cedent conditions in the authors’ argument is the way in which capitalist
development shapes the power of subordinate classes relative to dominant
classes, or what the authors call the “relative balance of class power.” They
analyze the size and power of a wide range of classes, including landed elites,
the bourgeoisie, middle classes, peasants, and working classes. The varying
levels of power possessed by these classes, as well as more contingent histori-
cal circumstances, are argued to affect the prospects for coalitional alliances
across class groups. In particular, the decision of major class actors to form
alliances in the struggle for or against democratization are often treated as
critical junctures that greatly affect a country’s future prospects for democ-
racy.
The authors thus view democratization as a process that grows out of con-
flict between alliances that include subordinate classes and alliances that rep-
resent the interests of dominant classes. Depending on the relative power of
subordinate coalitions vis-à-vis dominant ones, countries will make compara-
tively more or less progress toward democracy. For example, in the Scandina-
vian countries workers tended to develop powerful alliances with farmers
groups, while landed elites were unable to maintain substantial middle class
support. As a result, movement toward democracy occurred early, leading to
the consolidation of robust democratic regimes by the early 20th century. By
contrast, democracy has been comparatively infrequent in regions such as Latin
America, where subordinate coalitions representing workers and peasants have
been weak in relation to dominant coalitions representing landed elites and the
bourgeoisie. In short, the authors argue that the emergence and persistence of
democracy can be traced back to key junctures when class coalitional patterns
shape the balance of class power within society.
Luebbert. Luebbert’s argument about the origins of different regimes in in-
terwar Europe—liberal democracy, social democracy, and fascism—also fo-
cuses on class actors, but it considers classes through the lens of political
organizations and their representation within government. This argument is
set into motion by contrasts across European cases in the political cohesion of
middle classes, as reflected by religious, regional, linguistic, and urban-rural
divisions. Since the middle class was a natural constituency for liberal politi-
cal movements in Europe, these antecedent divisions shaped the extent of lib-
eral political power. In Britain, France, and Switzerland, the countries that
maintained liberal democracy between the wars, middle classes were cohesive
and liberals were politically hegemonic prior to World War I. This early lib-
eral hegemony was important because it influenced liberal decisions about al-
lying with labor; specifically, liberals were secure enough to grant concessions
to working classes and form liberal-labor coalitions. In turn, these “lib-lab”
coalitions led to the political subordination of labor and the structural develop-
ment of weak trade unions and worker organizations. The crucial consequence
was that, during the crises of the interwar period, the working class was nei-
ther ideologically predisposed nor organizationally capable of mounting sig-
nificant challenges to the prevailing economic and political order. Rather,
socialist and working class parties were weak, and liberals could preserve demo-
cratic stability while forging center-right coalitions that avoided building sig-
nificant welfare states between the wars.
Elsewhere in Europe, the failure of liberals to ally with labor before World
War I paved the way for social democracy or fascism. In these countries, middle
classes were divided, which denied liberals the political hegemony and secu-
rity that underpinned “lib-lab” coalitions in the liberal-democratic cases. Un-
constrained by liberal tutelage, strong labor movements and powerful socialist
parties developed in the first decades of the 20th century. The demands and
mobilization of these movements ensured the collapse of liberal socioeconomic
orders between the wars, but whether this collapse took the form of fascism or
social democracy depended on the reaction of political parties representing
farmers. When farmers’ parties made alliances with workers’ parties, as in
Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, powerful “red-green” coalitions developed in
parliament, and governments responded to worker demands during the inter-
war crisis with social welfare legislation. By contrast, when farmers allied
with urban middle classes rather than workers, as in Germany, Italy, and Spain,
“brown-green” coalitions developed that gave support to far right parties com-
mitted to defeating the working class though harsh repression. Hence, social
democracy and fascism were founded on the failure of “lib-labism,” and the
subsequent “red-green” or “brown-green” alliances that developed.
Collier and Collier. Collier and Collier use evidence from seven South
American countries and Mexico to argue—like Luebbert—that the emergence
of labor movements and the ways in which other actors positioned themselves
Mahoney 133
vis-à-vis labor had a crucial impact on national politics. Collier and Collier are
particularly interested in exploring the effects of different patterns of labor in-
corporation—i.e., differences in the way in which the state shaped and legitimated
an institutionalized labor movement. They argue that labor incorporation peri-
ods were critical junctures that set countries on distinct paths of development
and had major implications for the organization of the electoral arena.
The way in which state actors incorporated labor movements was condi-
tioned by the political strength of the oligarchy at a time when governments
representing middle sector groups initiated reform programs to transform pre-
existing oligarchic states. In countries where the oligarchy enjoyed a very strong
political position, such as Brazil and Chile, these reformist governments sought
to create a legalized labor movement that was depoliticized, controlled, and
penetrated by the state. By contrast, in countries where the oligarchy was weak
la diferencia con bolivia es
in the political arena, such as Venezuela and Mexico, reformist governments
que nadie los incorporö, se actively mobilized the labor movement for electoral support, established strong
incorporaron. inedito union-party links, and incorporated the peasantry along with the labor move-
ment. Finally, in those countries where the oligarchy was of an intermediary
strength—such as Uruguay, Colombia, Peru, and Argentina—the terms on which
governments incorporated labor fell between these two extremes.
Different policies toward labor led to four specific types of labor incorpora-
tion: (1) state incorporation (Brazil and Chile), (2) radical populism (Mexico
and Venezuela), (3) labor populism (Peru and Argentina), and (4) electoral
mobilization by a traditional party (Uruguay and Colombia). These different
patterns triggered contrasting reactions and counterreactions in the aftermath
of labor incorporation. For example, the pattern of state incorporation led to
the radicalization of the working class and aborted populist experiments,
whereas the pattern of radical populism brought about the development of a
conservative governing coalition that included labor. Eventually, through a
complex set of intermediary steps, relatively enduring party system regimes
were established in all eight countries: multiparty polarizing systems (Brazil
and Chile), integrative party systems (Mexico and Venezuela), systems of po-
litical stalemate (Peru and Argentina), and systems marked by electoral stabil-
ity and social conflict (Uruguay and Columbia).
A Comparison of the Arguments
A great deal of diversity characterizes these explanations. For one thing, the
historical periods and cases considered vary significantly, ranging from analy-
ses of regime outcomes in Western Europe that crystallized more than a cen-
tury ago to studies of political outcomes in Latin America in the mid- and late
20th century. Likewise, scholars have employed different frames of compari-
son in their research. In some studies, the analyst focuses on a single region,
attempting to explain both sharply contrasting and significantly similar trajec-
tories of regime change. For example, a major goal of Luebbert, Collier and
Collier, and Mahoney is to explain both divergent and overlapping patterns of
political development within a given region and broadly similar world-histori-
cal epoch. By contrast, other scholars focus on regime outcomes from multiple
regions (e.g., Moore) and, perhaps, multiple world-historical periods (e.g.,

Rueschemeyer, Stephens, and Stephens). Scholars also differ in terms of the
extent to which they seek to generalize beyond the specific cases studied in
their work. For example, Luebbert’s study is centrally concerned with explain-
ing the specific pattern of regime change that emerged in interwar Europe. By
contrast, Rueschemeyer, Stephens, and Stephens are much more oriented to-
ward offering an explanation that, in principle, can be extended to many or all
countries and historical epochs.
Despite these important differences, however, major similarities exist across
all of these works. As Figure 3 suggests, these overall similarities allow one to
develop a generic model that specifies the kinds of variables and relationships
that are often highlighted in path-dependent explanations of regime change.
Although this formulation is general and does not fully capture any particular
argument, it does provide a helpful guide for thinking about the basic structure
of many existing path-dependent analyses.
The antecedent conditions that set into motion all of the arguments involve
considerations of the relative power of key economic and/or political actors. 14
The most general formulation is that of Rueschemeyer, Stephens, and Stephens,
who are concerned with the power of a wide-range of class actors, including
landed elites, the bourgeoisie, middle classes, peasants, and workers. Moore
also emphasizes class power as an antecedent condition, but he is more nar-
rowly focused on the power of the bourgeoisie, the most important class actor
in his coalitional argument about regime establishment. In comparison to
Rueschemeyer et al. and Moore, the arguments by Collier and Collier, Luebbert,
and Mahoney put more emphasis on political actors. For Collier and Collier,
the major issue is not the economic strength of the oligarchy, but its political
strength at a time when middle sectors were increasingly gaining influence
within governments across Latin America. For Luebbert, the central concern is
how regional, linguistic, and religious cleavages shaped political divisions
within the same social class (i.e., the middle class). Likewise, in my argument,
the crucial consideration is the relative power of different political factions
within the Central American elite.
There are also notable similarities in the nature of the critical junctures ana-
lyzed in these studies. All of the studies put great emphasis on the strategic
choices of actors in situating themselves vis-à-vis important social classes.
For Moore, Luebbert, and Rueschemeyer et al., the key critical juncture in-
volves the choices that class actors make about how to position themselves
Figure 3
Template of Path-Dependent Explanations of Regime Change
Mahoney 135
vis-à-vis one another. Hence, they treat class actors themselves as the main
decision makers, and they develop a primarily class coalitional argument. The
Colliers and Mahoney adopt similar emphases, but they focus on governmen-
tal elites who may or may not directly represent class groups, and they put
much emphasis on state policies rather than class alliance patterns themselves.
Thus, Collier and Collier are concerned with the choices that politicians repre-
senting political parties make about how to use the state in shaping the labor
movement, while Mahoney emphasizes the role of personalistic liberal dicta-
tors and their policies toward the military and agrarian classes. Despite such
differences, however, taken as a whole these works all suggest that strategic
choices about how to respond to social class actors are often major branching
points separating trajectories of national political development.
Once actors make choices during critical junctures, these choices become
embedded in institutions and structures that persist over long periods of time.
The works considered here suggest that analysts are often particularly inter-
ested in the persistence of class structures, state structures, and/or state-class
relations in the aftermath of critical junctures. For Moore and Rueschemeyer
et al., this emphasis entails an explict analysis of the relative power of class
actors and alliances in the aftermath of critical junctures. Luebbert embraces a
similar set of concerns, though he is centrally concerned with the organiza-
tional and political strength of specifically the working class. Collier and Collier
devote much attention to the sustainability of different kinds of state-class re-
lationships in the aftermath of critical junctures, especially those that involve
the political representation of labor. And Mahoney explores the persistence of
both patterns of state and class structures in the period following critical junc-
tures. Hence, whereas these works highlight the strategic choices of actors
during critical juncture periods, they point to the persistence of class and state
structural arrangements in the aftermath of such junctures. In doing so, several
of the authors considered here provide a detailed description of the micro-
foundations and strategic choices that underpin structural persistence.
All of these studies treat reactive sequences as political struggles between
well-defined elite and subordinate groups. In this sense, they all suggest that
power conflicts between actors with different endowments of resources, and
thus different interests, are crucial to explaining trajectories of political devel-
opment. For Rueschemeyer et al., subordinate and elite groups correspond to
particular class coalitions engaged in a political struggle for or against demo-
cratic regimes. The struggles of these groups are sometimes fought out through
political party maneuvering in the chambers of parliament; other times they
involve lower-class mobilizations and protest in the streets in favor of democ-
racy. For Moore, reactive sequences correspond to processes of class conflict
that produce “revolutionary breaks” and ultimately societal modernization.
Moore understands these episodes as including some of the most important
and conflictive events in world history, such as the French Revolution, the
Russian Revolution, the Chinese Revolution, the U.S. Civil War, and the Glo-
rious Revolution in England. Luebbert’s treatment of reactive sequences is
concerned with political struggles within European parliaments between par-
ties or movements representing the middle class, farmers, and the working
class in the post-World War I period. He focuses especially on how middle

class parties and farmer parties react to the demands of labor movements, which
are often represented by powerful socialist parties. For Collier and Collier, the
emphasis is on the responses of the labor movement and oligarchy to differing
patterns of incorporation. For example, if the incorporation period was highly
accommodating to labor, it tended to generate a powerful response from oli-
garchic actors. By contrast, if the incorporation period was limited in scope, it
tended to generate a reaction from labor movements. Here, I explore the
mobilizational activities of democratizing movements that include a range of
potential class groups, and also the response of state actors and oligarchic classes
to these movements. Taken together, then, the evidence from these five works
suggests that political struggle and conflict between aggregate groups and
classes are essential to understanding patterns of regime change.15
In these path-dependent explanations, regime outcomes are usually under-
stood to represent relatively stable equilibrium points that follow periods of
substantial and often rapid transition. For Moore and Rueschemeyer et al., the
scholars most clearly centered in the tradition of class analysis, political re-
gimes are the resolution of patterns of class conflict, and regime endurance
ultimately rests on the ability of particular class coalitions to maintain domi-
nance. Luebbert again shares a similar understanding, but his focus is more on
the expression of class interests in political parties and thus the ability of cer-
tain political party coalitions to maintain dominance. For Collier and Collier,
the concern is much more with the ways in which particular party systems
become ossified, and how these party systems in turn can explain other impor-
tant political dynamics. Finally, in my study, I emphasize the way in which
regime endurance is grounded in the organization of the state apparatus, in-
cluding especially the organization of the military.
In summary, several major comparative-historical studies of regime change
have developed arguments that follow the basic structure of a path-dependent
explanation. These works have converged around a surprisingly similar set of
variables to account for patterns of regime change. Such overlaps in approach
and explanation suggest both the overall analytic coherence of this body of
literature and important empirical similarities in the causes and dynamics of
regime change in multiple areas of the world.
Conclusion
This article has explored the application of ideas about path dependence to
the study of regime change. I first elaborated the sequential elements of a path-
dependent explanation of regime change, focusing on the stages of antecedent
conditions, critical juncture, institutional creation and persistence, reactive
sequence, and regime outcome. I then used this framework to explain regime
establishment in Central America, arguing that the 19th and early 20th century
liberal reform period was a critical juncture that put the region’s countries on
contrasting trajectories of regime change. Finally, I compared and contrasted
my argument with path-dependent explanations offered in several well-known
studies of regime change.
Mahoney 137
Perhaps ten or fifteen years ago, one could have reasonably argued that path-
dependent explanations of political and social change were rare. But this argu-
ment can no longer be sustained, given the great proliferation of work of this
kind in the 1990s. Likewise, while only five or ten years ago one might have
argued that path dependence was a poorly elaborated concept, it is now in-
creasingly difficult to make this argument. The work of Ruth Berins Collier
and David Collier (1991), Kathleen Thelen (1999), and Paul Pierson (2000)
has served to develop this concept into a coherent set of arguments about so-
cial and political change. Indeed, all indicators suggest that scholars will con-
tinue to produce much substantive and methodological work from the
perspective of path dependence.
As work on regime change from a path-dependent perspective continues to
grow, I would encourage scholars to show flexibility in their use of this frame-
work and their understanding of this concept. So long as scholars are explicit
about how they employ arguments associated with path dependence, it is pos-
sible and perhaps even desirable to have different strands of this literature
emphasizing slightly different things. Here and elsewhere, for example, I have
found it useful to include the notion of relative contingency during critical
junctures with subsequent determinism as central features of path dependence
(see Mahoney 2000). However, other scholars have highlighted alternative as-
pects of path dependence, as with Pierson’s (2000) discussion of increasing
returns. These differences do not necessarily point toward any real conflict in
understanding; rather, they reflect different emphases among scholars who share
a common commitment to major hypotheses about the workings of social and
political change. Ultimately, then, I believe scholars should be pragmatic in
their use of ideas about path dependence, focusing on those specific aspects
and hypotheses of the framework that are most relevant to their analytic ques-
tions and explanatory goals. By adopting such a pragmatic approach, analysts
will be well positioned to maximize the utility of path-dependent analysis in
the years to come.
Notes
* For helpful comments and criticisms on an earlier draft, I would like to thank David Collier,
Gerardo L. Munck, and the anonymous referees.
1. The concept “critical juncture” was developed by Lipset and Rokkan (1967). The most com-
prehensive statement on critical junctures is Collier and Collier (1991). Collier and Collier
define a critical juncture “as a period of significant change, which typically occurs in distinct
ways in different countries (or in other units of analysis) and which is hypothesized to produce
distinct legacies” (p. 29).
2. There were some important exceptions, including a notably early reform episode in Costa Rica
(beginning in 1821) and a notably brief reform period in Nicaragua (1893-1909).
3. “Decreto sobre tierras en comunidad.” Pp. 364-68 in María Leitstenschneider, ed., La
administración del Dr. Zaldívar, Tomo III, Sugunda Parte, Colección María Leitstenschneider,
Archivo General de la Nacion, San Salvador, 1972.
4. Macro Aurelio Soto and Ramón Rosa, “Decreto en que se formenta la agricultura,” Gaceta de
Honduras No. 17, Serie 2 (May 1, 1877).
5. See “Acuerdo sobre enajenación de terrenos baldíos de la Costa Cuca y El Palmar,” “Decreto
Numero 170,” and other decrees which extended land privitization in Méndez Montenegro
(1960: 123-124, 131-133, 133-144, 153-154, and 162-172).
6. Population statistics are available in Woodward (1991: 8); land area data are available in Wood-
ward (1985: 363).
7. On the military reforms initiated in the 1871-73 period see: “Organización del batallon
permanente,” “Decreto, Num. 66,” “Decreto, Num. 81,” “Decreto, Num. 83,” “Decreto, Num.
85,” and “Decreto, Num. 98,” in Recopilación de leyes, Tomo I (Guatemala, 1874) pp. 79-80,
103-05, 132-34, 135-37, 140-41, and 183-84.
8. “Cuadro de organización de la fuerza permanante,” in María Leistenschneider, ed., La
Administración del Dr. Rafael Zaldívar, Tomo I, Segunda Parte, Colección María
Leistenschneider, Archivo General de la Nacion, San Salvador, October 1972, pp. 38-
53.
9. “Organización del ejército nacional,” Gaceta Oficial Managua, December 31, 1895, pp. 2-3.
See also Alvarez Montalvan (1994).
10. Marco Aurelio Soto, “Mensaje dirijio al Congreso de la República,” No. 48, Serie 5, Gaceta de
Honduras, June 5, 1879, p. 2.
11. “Ejército de la República,” Sección Guerra y Marina, January 24, 1892, Archivo General de la
Nación, San Salvador.
12. Commission for Historical Clarification, “Guatemala: Memory of Silence.” This report can be
referenced in English and Spanish on the internet at <http://hrdata.aaas.org/ceh/report>. For
works on the Guatemalan military regime see Black 1984; Handy 1984; Jonas 1991; and
McClintock 1985b.
13. Sources on the military regime in El Salvador include Baloyra 1982; Dunkerley 1982;
McClintock 1985a; Montgomery 1995; Stanley 1996; and Williams and Walter 1997.
14. All of the events analyzed here are ultimately set into motion by general and often dramatic
processes of change. Thus, Moore is concerned with agricultural commercialization,
Rueschemeyer et al. are concerned with capitalist development, Luebbert is concerned with
the massive changes in Europe that followed World War I, Collier and Collier are concerned
with major processes of urbanization and modernization in late 19th and early 20th-century
Latin America, and Mahoney is concerned with the dramatic export expansion that occurred in
late 19th-century Central America.
15. To some researchers, this conclusion may seem patently true. However, much recent literature
outside of the comparative-historical tradition has argued that regime change processes are
driven by the choices of elite actors and that political struggle between mass actors is at best
marginal to the process.
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Mahoney 111

R ecent methodological writings by comparative-historical analysts have

stitutions are important to subsequent political development because their per-

Analytic Components of Path-Dependent Explanation

The concept of path dependence is used here to refer to a specific type of

respond to prevailing arrangements through a series of predictable responses

With many path-dependent patterns, the endurance of institutions over time

of reactions and counterreactions can be called “reactive sequences” (Mahoney

Path-Dependent Explanation of Central American Regimes

Critical Juncture: Liberal Policy Choices

Antecedent Conditions: Origins of Different Policy Options

little choice but to pursue small-scale forms of commercial agriculture. De-

Institutional Production: Radical, Reformist, and Aborted Liberalism

Radical and reform policy options were important to future development

authority in the national government, military officials became responsible for

Reactive Sequences: Democratizing Episodes

sands of peasants (Anderson 1971; Dunkerley 1982). In the aftermath of this

Regime Outcomes: Military-Authoritarianism, Democracy, and Traditional Dictatorship

The reactive sequences triggered by different types of liberalism eventually

Comparing Path-Dependent Explanations of Regime Change

Analytic Summaries of Path-Dependent Arguments

Moore. Moore’s famous work explores branching points that established

Studies in Comparative International Development / Spring 2001

resolved by “bourgeois revolutions” in which the bourgeoisie either formed an

A Comparison of the Arguments

regions (e.g., Moore) and, perhaps, multiple world-historical periods (e.g.,

class in the post-World War I period. He focuses especially on how middle

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