The economic history of Latin America has become more voluminous, complex, and fascinating in the past decade. The new work has already provoked noteworthy commentaries; one could even write an historiography of the historiography. The purpose of this essay is to comment on (and applaud) the re-emergence of political economy in the economic history of the region. By this I mean the renewal of interest in the Big Questions that inspired the structuralists, “cepalinos,” Marxists, dependentistas, and modernizationists of the post-World War II generations. Economic historians are again worrying about the long, long run, about the connections between social stratification, political power, and economic strategy, and about the relative impact of structures, endowments, and institutions on economic growth and development.

Consensus is growing about the fundamental principles underlying economic policy reforms. In addition, a series of recent comparative studies have increased scholarly understanding of the political conditions necessary for launching such reforms. Yet understanding of the factors that make reforms sustainable over the longer term is far less developed. A wide-ranging and unresolved debate continues over the roles played by institutions, politicians, interest groups, and the popular sectors. The influence of such groups tends to be marginal during the initial implementation of policies, a process involving an insulated group of technocrats. As the reforms proceed, the opposition of different societal groups to specific policies may have some impact but is less critical to the success or failure of the adjustment program than overall economic performance (see Geddes 1995). The primary strength of these groups is retrospective and collective: they can vote reforming governments out of office. Elections—and therefore voter behavior—are critical in sustaining economic reforms over the long term. Voters can reverse economic reform programs, and at times they do. Yet they also can play a major role in making programs more sustainable by legitimating their continuation at the ballot box.

The new democracy in Chile provides an interesting test case for two influential lines of thinking on Latin American political economy. Both these perspectives have claimed that the recently installed civilian regimes would find it exceedingly difficult to effect equity-enhancing change. One hypothesis has stressed the impediments posed by a capitalist free-market system to measures favoring the poor. The other has emphasized the obstacles presented by a transition to democracy that avoids a rupture with the preceding conservative dictatorship. Because the democratic government led by Patricio Aylwin (1990–1994) faced both types of constraints, it should have been particularly unlikely to achieve greater social fairness.

This essay will report the results of research on the Río de la Plata clergy during the transition to Argentine nationhood, between 1806 and 1827. It will examine a database compiled from manuscripts, printed primary sources, and biographical dictionaries on 204 clerics residing in the Río de la Plata during those years (about 40 percent of the estimated 560 individuals). The database is analyzed according to descriptive and correlation procedures. The statistical analyses were undertaken to relate the demographic characteristics of the churchmen to their attitudes toward independence from Spain and the religious reforms initiated in the ensuing years by Bernardino Rivadavia, chief minister under Martín Rodríguez, governor of the Province of Buenos Aires. The quantification complements the secondary literature (mostly narratives) on the nineteenth-century Catholic Church in the Río de la Plata region.