Desde Que en 1906 publicó en Madrid su libro Los negros brujos, Fernando Ortiz —tenía entonces veinticinco años— ha venido dedicándose, con toda la claridad de su mente, al estudio y a la divulgación de cuestiones sociológicas relacionadas principalmente con los negros. Con esa obra, inició él en Cuba el estudio científico del negro, por lo cual es el verdadero descubridor de los aportes del negro al proceso cubano de integración cultural, y el precursor del afrocubanismo. En tales estudios sólo le antecedió, en la América latina, Nina Rodríguez, del Brasil, y desde que el gran etnólogo falleció, Fernando Ortiz es el decano de los afronegrólogos del Continente suramericano.

The key to understanding Latin American relations with the United States as the century, and the millennium, draw to a close is to realize that all of the nations in the Western Hemisphere are still caught up in the transition from the Cold War. That transition, which began nearly a decade ago, is proceeding more slowly, and with greater confusion, than most observers had anticipated. The issues that constitute the framework, or infrastructure, for Hemispheric relations in the coming century emerge from the efforts of each nation in the Hemisphere, including the United States, to effect their insertions into the emerging world order. Given the priority accorded commercial and economic questions in the insertion of most Latin American nations, those are the questions that dominate the discourse. However, questions of governance — and what I call the international code of good behavior — are rapidly assuming greater salience in inter-American relations. It is my judgment that they will dominate relations among the nations of the Hemisphere in the 21st century.

The relationship between ideas and political action represents a continuing, albeit frustrating, point of contention among political analysts. Referring to the literature on ideology, Robert Putnam reflects this sentiment by noting, “Few concepts in social analysis have inspired such a mass of commentary yet few have stimulated the production of so little cumulative knowledge about society and politics. The lack of cumulation is due, above all, to recurrent confusion of empirical with definitional issues and of both with normative concerns” (Putnam, 1971: 651). The proliferation of definitions, measurement techniques, and frameworks for analyzing the concept should not be surprising because “for the political scientist the term ideology points to a cluster concept, i.e., belongs to the concepts that bracket a variety of complex phenomena about which one tries to generalize” (Sartori, 1969: 398).

Since Perón's ouster in 1955, Argentine political parties have been in a state of flux with traditional groups fragmenting and organizations wholly unknown during the Perón era making their appearance on the political scene. This process of political realignment is still under way and it would be idle to claim as definitive or even as valid for the next few years any listing of political groups. Nevertheless, for those who must rely on U. S. press coverage or comparably limited sources to follow the Argentine political scene, a description of the political party spectrum as it existed in 1957-1958 can serve as a guide to the current political maze and as a bench mark from which to measure subsequent change.

The US Policymakers Working on the 1988 Anti-Drug Abuse Act have clearly understood that going after the suppliers of narcotics is only part of the war on drugs; until US domestic demand is diminished, it will be difficult to bring this lucrative and illicit multinational business under control. There is, however, general agreement that something must be done about supply and that interdiction of drug shipments to the United States is only one means. The drug supply war's major focus is the growing, production, and shipment of narcotics within the Third World countries who are the suppliers, particularly in Latin America (Colombia, Mexico, Peru, and Bolivia head the list).

Although there have been occasional attempts to “Americanize” anti-drug operations in Latin America (with the US government assuming drug enforcement functions as it did in Bolivia with Operation Blast Furnace in 1986), the major US option is to support the build-up of the Latin American governments' own drug-fighting capabilities by supplying funds, training, and equipment.

One of the most neglected fields in current social science research until quite recently has been the problem of revolution. While some progress has been made in defining the stages of development once a revolutionary process has begun, and in clarifying the differences between revolts and social revolutions in the context of the underdeveloped world, the whole area of origins still remains a largely unexplored field. The debate is still quite fierce as to whether revolutionaries are marginal or integrated persons; or whether revolutions begin because of too rapid industrialization or because of too little; because of actual exploitation or because of rising expectations. In short, there has been a multiplicity of theories, but few concrete tests of many of these propositions.

A set of discussion groups including leftist ex-guerrillas and rightist ex-paramilitaries in Colombia shows the limits for democratic deliberation in postconflict societies, but also points to ways that outcomes closer to the deliberative ideal might be obtained. A total of 342 ex-combatants agreed to sit down and talk politics under a number of experimental conditions, using three different protocols of engagement. Results show that consensus rule fosters simultaneously a more reasoned and common-good–oriented, and less self-interested type of discussion when compared to majority rule and unstructured “free talk.” Nevertheless, while it might be desirable to promote a better quality of deliberation in divided societies, it does not necessarily prevent antagonists’ tendency to polarize.

Paraguay and its closest neighbors, the Rio Plata Basin from one point of view or the Southern Cone from another, have experienced an increasing challenge from the drug traffic in recent years. Initially, everything linked to drug use and traffic was considered—in general, much oversimplified terms — mainly as the social problem of a rich society, primarily that of the United States. The South American countries, preoccupied with surviving the blows of the “lost decade” while trying, simultaneously, both to throw off authoritarian regimes in terminal crisis and to negotiate transitions from democracy, assumed this problem could not affect them. In any event, that aspect of the drug trade which concerned the countries of South America above all was the growing tragedy of Colombia, which was just beginning to make headlines in the world press.

In the twentieth century, increased contact with world affairs and intellectual life has brought Latin America more fully into the general stream of western thought. Rapid population growth and economic development have also brought many changes in society, increasing the tempo of social change and producing such political movements as the Mexican Revolution, Uruguayan Ratllismo, Peruvian Aprismo, and similar revolutionary developments in other countries. A population increase averaging around two per cent annually, and a rise in per capita income more rapid than the average increase in the United States during the years 1869-1952, go far to explain the striking increase in intellectual activity which has occurred. An additional factor of no mean significance, however, has been the immigration of refugee scholars resulting from the Spanish Civil War and World War II.

In a book which has circulated rather widely in Latin America (Lieuwen, 1960), it was stated that, with the passage of time, Latin American military men would intervene less and less in politics. This was not an altogether mistaken belief, considering that in 1961 Paraguay was a “military island” in a sea of Latin American civilian governments. Today the situation has radically changed in many ways. On the one hand, more than half the population of Latin America lives under military regimes; on the other, military domination has a different cast: it is no longer a caudillo who takes over, but the armed forces, which have institutionalized their access to the government. Linked to the foregoing is the emergence of an authoritarian ideological platform—the military call it a doctrine of national security—which provides the armed forces with the necessary rationale for their political activities.

This research note contributes updated and extended point estimates of the ideological positions of Brazilian political parties and novel estimates of the positions of all presidents since redemocratization in 1985. Presidents and parties are jointly responsible for the operability of Brazil’s version of coalitional presidentialism. Locating these key political actors in a unidimensional left–right space over time reveals rising challenges to the institutional matrix, particularly since 2013. Ideological polarization among parties has sharply increased, presidents have become more distant from Congress, and the political center has become increasingly vacated. Coalitional presidentialism is being subjected to unprecedented ideological stress as President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva begins his third term in office.

Mounting evidence suggests that Latin American democracies are characterized by politics and societies becoming more divisive, confrontational, and polarized. This process, which we define here as the “new polarization” in Latin America, seems to weaken the ability of democratic institutions to manage and resolve social and political conflicts. Although recent scholarship suggests that polarization is integral to contemporary patterns of democratic “backsliding” seen in much of the world, this new polarization in the region has not yet received systematic scholarly attention. Aiming to address this gap in the literature, the different contributions in this special issue revise the conceptualization, measurement, and theory of a multidimensional phenomenon such as polarization, including both its ideological and affective dimensions, as well as perspectives at the elite and mass levels of analysis. Findings shed light on the phenomenon of polarization as both a dependent and an independent variable, contributing to comparative literature on polarization and its relationship to democratic governance.

This article studies how public investment and other types of spending by municipal governments shape perceptions of corruption in Mexico. We argue, drawing on various strands of literature, that investment in visible public works projects should lower corruption perceptions, given the well-known difficulties in directly observing corrupt acts. Contrary to our expectations and common assumptions in studies of public investment, we find that more public investment by municipal governments is associated, on average, with higher corruption perceptions. However, this effect is mediated by individuals’ education levels. For individuals with less formal education, higher public investment correlates with higher perceived corruption, while highly educated individuals perceive less corruption when municipal public investment is high. The study uses qualitative evidence from municipal audit reports to identify a possible mechanism driving this outcome: municipal investments may not be targeted to the poorer neighborhoods with greater public service deficits.

To say that the Brazilian scene has been volatile—politically and economically—during the past ten years is to risk an understatement. A mere listing of the presidents of Brazil during this limited period illustrates the point. It begins with the enormously popular— then and now—Juscelino Kubitschek, who represented the industrialization of Brazil and the move away from the coast with the decision to create a new capital in Brasilia. Then, the overwhelming electoral victory of Jânio Quadros—the enigma of Brazilian politics who had been such a successful Mayor and Governor of São Paulo only to resign the presidency after six months for reasons that still remain unclear today. Next came the then Vice President João Goulart, who was visiting Red China when he heard he was to become President. Although his powers were curtailed before he was allowed to take office, he served long enough to create an impression of corruption and leftward drift and the reality of almost runaway inflation—factors which led to the revolution of March, 1964, and the administration of Marshal Castello Branco.

Debates about democratization in developing countries have generally emphasized competitive elections, broad participation, and the protection of civil and political liberties. A survey of the first two years of PAN administration in the city of Puebla, Mexico, assesses government capacities and policy responses to social and economic demands. It suggests that excitement over the election of opposition party officials should be tempered pending evidence of the accommodation of such demands.

The data concerning Brazilian law students presented in this article are the result of a survey made by the author ini 1960 while studying the judiciary system of that country. The objective of the survey was to identify those students favorably disposed toward the judiciary and to examine their social and economic background. In the process, however, a large amount of data of a more general nature was collected. Besides significant variations between different universities, Catholic and state, and the various economic groups, the data provide an empirical examination of the results of the process of selection for higher education in Brazil and the economic groups from which the student is drawn. Some information concerning the students’ attitudes toward politics was also gathered.