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The Collapse of Democracy in Brazil: Its Economic Determinants

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2022

Michael Wallerstein
Michael Wallerstein*
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
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Perhaps the most common generalization linking political systems to other aspects of society has been that democracy is related to the state of economic development. The more well-to-do a nation, the greater the chances that it will sustain democracy.

(Lipset 1960, p. 31)

There are few examples in the history of Latin American studies of such generally accepted “facts” that were so contradicted by subsequent events as the association of democratic politics with industrial economies. Lipset's (1960) simple comparative study of Latin American nations in which he found a striking positive correlation between the degree of economic development and the extent of democracy in the late 1950s has been upset. The military coup d'état that abolished democracy in Brazil in 1964 turned out to be not a unique event, but the first of a series of military takeovers throughout the most industrialized nations of South America: Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile. For this reason, the study of the demise of electoral politics in Brazil acquires a new significance. And for this reason also, analysts are inclined to attempt explanations in terms of structural causes common to all capitalist nations on the periphery. The purpose of this paper is to examine one set of such explanations: those in which economic conditions play the major role.

Type
Research Article
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 15 , Issue 3 , 1980 , pp. 3 - 40
Copyright
Copyright © 1980 by Latin American Research Review

Footnotes

*

I would like to thank Adam Przeworski and Philippe Schmitter for making this paper possible. In addition, I received valuable aid and comments from Argelina Maria Cheibub Figueiredo, Marcus Faria Figueiredo, and Ernest Underhill. This work was supported by the National Science Foundation grant number SOC 78–04595.

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