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Political Participation in Latin America: Levels, Structure, Context, Concentration and Rationality
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2022
Extract
Despite calls to improve and systematize research on political participation in Latin America more than a decade ago (Kling 1964, Flores Olea 1967), the burgeoning literature on the subject has yet to achieve full recognition. Thus certain contradictory and incomplete traditional images still linger in the scholarly literature (Booth and Seligson 1978a). These treatments vary dramatically and almost bewilderingly: while one suggests that Latin Americans are becoming increasingly politically mobilized, two others hold that mass participation is very low and that most political activity is restricted to socioeconomic elites. Other images portray mass political participation as irrational and dwell upon political violence. Such familiar notions have often intertwined. For example, a common picture depicts most Latin Americans, and especially peasants, as politically passive and quiescent until provoked, when they may burst violently into the political arena (for example, see Forman 1971, Singelmann 1975, Handelman 1975b, Moreno 1970). Similarly Wiarda (1974, pp. 4–5) discusses how the image of mobilization often combines with that of violence, producing the notion that the rising political awareness and participation of Latin Americans leads inexorably to ever greater levels of conflict (e.g., Schmitt and Burks 1963, Hadley 1958, Petras and Zeitlin 1968, Petras 1968).
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- Research Article
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- Copyright
- Copyright © 1979 by the University of Texas Press
Footnotes
This is a revised version of a paper presented at the November 1977 national meeting of the Latin American Studies Association in Houston, Texas. Comments by and discussions with Richard N. Adams, Thomas A. Baylis, Wilber A. Chaffee, Jr., Henry A. Dietz, Shepard Forman, Brian Loveman, Mitchell A. Seligson, Karl M. Schmitt, and three anonymous reviewers have contributed substantially to the development of this essay. I also wish to thank participants and observers in the Seminar on the Faces of Participation in Latin America: A New Look at Citizen Action in Society, San Antonio, Texas, 12–13 November 1976; their comments have clarified many of the issues discussed here. [Note: Seligson and Booth (forthcoming-b) was published in 1979.]
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