Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 February 2015
The field of Latin American Studies owes much to Professor Howard J. Wiarda, whose pioneering work on “corporatism” and political culture during the 1960s and 1970s helped establish a new conceptual paradigm for interpreting the persistence of corporately defined, institutional identities throughout Latin America, despite the purported triumph of the “Liberal Tradition.” A child of Dutch parents, his early travels throughout Africa, Asia, and Latin America sparked a keen interest in the question of “third world development.” Entering graduate school in the early 1960s, Professor Wiarda gravitated to the newly emergent field of modernization studies at the University of Florida, where he received his masters and doctorate degrees in Latin American politics. It was a time of tremendous social ferment in Latin America and his early fieldwork took him to the Dominican Republic, Mexico and Brazil, among other places. In each instance, he found recognizable patterns that transcended geographic locations, patterns that seemed to directly challenge the predominant arguments set forth in the modernization literature at the time.
1 Some of the books include Bowen, Ralph, German Theories of the Corporate State (New York: McGraw Hill, 1947);Google Scholar Cawson, Alan, Corporatism and Political Theory (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986);Google Scholar Cox, Andrew and O’Sullivan, Noel, eds., The Colorate State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988);Google Scholar Elbow, Matthew, French Corporative Theory (New York: Columbia University Press, 1953);Google Scholar Lehmbruch, Gerhard and Schmitter, Philippe C., eds., Patterns of Corporatist Policy-Making (London: Sage, 1982);Google Scholar Landauer, Carl, Corporatist State Ideologies (Berkeley: University of California, 1983);Google Scholar Pike, Frederick and Stritch, Thomas, eds., The New Corporatism (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 1974);Google Scholar and Williamson, Peter, Corporatism in Perspective (London: Sage, 1989).Google Scholar For Latin America see Collier, David, “Trajectory of a Concept: Corporatism in the Study of Latin American Politics,” in Smith, Peter H., ed., Latin America in Comparative Perspective (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995).Google Scholar
2 Heisler, Martin, ed., Politics in Europe: Structures and Processes in Some Postindustrial Democracies (New York: McKay, 1974).Google Scholar
3 Newton, Ronald, “On ‘Functional Groups,’ ‘Fragmentation,’ and ‘Pluralism’ in Spanish American Political Society,” Hispanic American Historical Review 50 (1970), pp. 1–29.Google Scholar
4 Schmitter, Philippe C., “Still the Century of Corporatism?” The Review of Politics 36 (January 1974).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
5 Malloy, James, ed., Authoritarianism and Corporatism in Latin America (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1977).Google Scholar
6 Wiarda, Howard J., “Toward a Framework for the Study of Political Change in the Iberic-Latin Tradition: The Corporative Model,” World Politics 25 (January 1973), pp. 206–235;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Wiarda, , Corporatism and National Development in Latin America (Boulder: Westview Press, 1981);Google Scholar and Wiarda, , Corporatism and Comparative Politics (New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1997).Google Scholar
7 I have been asked by numerous of these scholars why I never responded to the critics, provided a better and clearer definition, and explained the background of the corporatism concept. I thought I had done all those things but maybe in obscure journals or books that were not reviewed in the right places, or that these things were self-evident (they, obviously, weren’t), or by then I had gone on to other research projects.
8 I am amused today when some of my graduate students suggest that two courses on Latin America are sufficient to constitute a major field.
9 I am convinced that our training at Florida on Latin America was better than that of some of my contemporaries (who later became well known in the profession) from the more prestigious universities like Harvard, Yale, Berkeley, Columbia or Stanford, which either lacked Latin American studies programs at that time or had no or weak political scientists teaching Latin America. They may have gotten better training in international relations and global politics from such renowned scholars as Samuel Huntington or Stanley Hoffman, but Florida graduates were better trained on Latin America.
10 Finer, Herman, The Theory and Practice of Modern Government (New York: Holt, 1949).Google Scholar
11 Friedrich, Carl, Constitutional Government and Democracy (Boston: Ginn, 1941).Google Scholar
12 Lowenstein, Karl, Political Power and the Governmental Process (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957).Google Scholar
13 Easton, David, “An Approach to the Study of Political Systems,” World Politics 9 (April, 1957), pp. 383–400.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
14 Almond, Gabriel A., “Introduction,” in Almond, Gabriel A. and Coleman, James S., eds., The Politics of Developing Areas (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1960).Google Scholar
15 McAlister, Lyle N., The “Fuero Militar” in New Spain (Gainesville, FL: University of Florida Press, 1957);Google Scholar McAlister, , “Civil-Military Relations in Latin America,” Journal of Inter-American Studies 3 (1961), pp. 341–350.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
16 Newton, , “Natural Corporatism and the Passing of Populism in Spanish America,” Review of Pol-itics 36 (1974), pp. 34–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
17 The thesis was written in 1962; it came out in book form as Wiarda, Howard J., Dictatorship and Development: The Methods of Control in Trujillo’s Dominican Republic (Gainesville, FL: University of Florida Press, 1968).Google Scholar
18 Wiarda, Howard J., “Mexico: The Unraveling of a Corporatist Regime,” Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs 30 (Winter 1988-89), pp. 1–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
19 Ropp, Steve C., “What about Corporatism in Central America?” in Wiarda, Howard J., ed., Authoritarianism and Corporatism in Latin America—Revisited (Gainesville, FL: University of Florida Press, 2004), pp. 256–281.Google Scholar
20 Wiarda, Howard J., Dictatorship, Development, and Disintegration: Politics and Social Change in the Dominican Republic (Ann Arbor: Xerox University Microfilm, for the Center for Latin American Studies, University of Massachusetts, 1975), 3 volumes.Google Scholar
21 Wiarda, Howard J., The Brazilian Catholic Labor Movement (Amherst, MA: University of Mass-achusetts, Labor Relations and Research Center, 1969).Google Scholar
22 Erickson, Kenneth P., The Brazilian Corporative State and Working Class Politics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977).Google Scholar
23 Schmitter, Philippe C., Interest Conflict and Political Change in Brazil (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1971).Google Scholar
24 Wiarda, Howard J., “The Government and Politics of Paraguay,” Unpublished paper, University of Florida, 1962.Google Scholar
25 Rostow, W.W., The Stages of Economic Growth (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1960).Google Scholar
26 Heilbroner, Robert, The Great Ascent (New York: Harper and Row, 1963).Google Scholar
27 Deutsch, Karl, “Social Mobilization and Political Development,” American Political Science Review 55 (September 1961), pp. 493–514.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
28 Lipset, Seymour M., “Some Social Requisites of Democracy: Economic Development and Political Legitimacy,” American Political Science Review 53 (March 1959), pp. 69–105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
29 Almond, ed., Politics of Developing Areas.
30 Wiarda, Howard J., Adventures in Research, Vol. I: Latin America (Lincoln, NE: iUniverse, 2006).Google Scholar
31 Hartz, Louis, The Liberal Tradition in America (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1955).Google Scholar
32 Wiarda, Howard J., Corporatism and Development: The Portuguese Experience (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1977).Google Scholar
33 Wiarda, Howard J., Transitions to Democracy in Spain and Portugal: Real or Wishful? (Washing-ton, D.C.: University Press of America, 1988), with lèda Siqueira Wiarda.Google Scholar
34 Wiarda, Howard J., From Corporatism to Neo-Syndicalism: The State, Organized Labor, and the Industrial Relations Systems of Southern Europe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, Center for European Studies, 1981).Google Scholar
35 Wiarda, Howard J., “Corporatist Theory and Ideology: A Latin American Development Paradigm,” Journal of Church and State 13 (Winter 1978), pp. 29–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
36 A Japanese colleague, Hiroshi Matsushita, who serves as an unofficial biographer and is the fore-most exponent chronicler, and popularizer of corporatist theory and approaches in Japan, told me that he was studying Peronism in Argentina in the early 1970s when he first came across my World Politics article on corporatism. At that time he was taking two graduate seminars at the University of Mendoza, one on systems theory and the other on Catholic political thought. He saw immediately that what I had done was to wed systems theory to the foundations of Catholic political theory and culture in a way that provided a unique Latin American model of development. When he later read my work on ethnocentrism and the need for non-Western theories of development, the circle was complete in Prof. Matshushita’s mind: he now had not only a model of Latin American development but a method for constructing a distinctive Japanese or Asian one.
37 Wiarda, Howard J., Ethnocentrism and Foreign Policy: Can We Understand the Third World? (Washington, D.C. American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 1985).Google Scholar
38 Wiarda, Howard J., ed., Non-Western Theories of Development (Fort Worth, Harcourt Brace, 1998);Google Scholar and Wiarda, , ed., Comparative Democracy and Democratization (Forth Worth: Harcourt Brace, 2001).Google Scholar
39 I first published these ideas in widely accessible form while a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (ΑΕΙ) in the early 1980s. Because ΑΕΙ and some of its scholars did have what they saw as a universal model of development (free markets) and democracy (American-style pluralism), these writings got me in bad trouble with my colleagues and the Institute, and almost cost me my job there.
40 Wiarda, The Methods of Control.
41 Wiarda, The Brazilian Catholic Labor Movement.
42 Wiarda, Howard J., “Elites in Crisis: The Decline of the Old Order and the Fragmentation of the New in Latin America,” Presentation at the Mershon Center, Ohio State University, 1970.Google Scholar Half of that pape became the World Politics article of 1973; the first and introductory part, “Elites in Crisis,” was incorporated as the introductory theoretical chapter in Wiarda, Dictatorship, Development, and Disintegration, and was later published as a separate chapter in Wiarda, Corporatism and Development in Latin America.
43 Howard J. Wiarda, “Toward a Framework for the Study of Political Change in the Iberic-Latin Tradition.”
44 Wiarda, Howard J., “Corporatism and Development in the Iberic-Latin World,” Review of Politics 36 (January 1974), pp. 3–33;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Wiarda, , “Corporatism Rediscovered,” Polity 10 (Spring 1978), pp. 416–28;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Wiarda, , “The Corporative Origins of the Iberian and Latin American Labor Relations Systems,” Studies in Comparative International Development, 13 (Spring 1978), pp. 3–37;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Wiarda, , “The Corporatist Tradition and the Corporative System in Portugal,” in Graham, Lawrence and Makler, Harry, eds., Contemporary Portugal (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1979), pp. 89–122;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Wiarda, , Transcending Corporatism? The Portuguese Corporative System and the Revolution of 1974 (Columbia, SC: Institute of International Studies, University of South Carolina, 1976);Google Scholar and Wiarda, “Corporatist Theory and Ideology.”
45 Howard J. Wiarda, Corporatism and National Development in Latin America.
46 Howard J. Wiarda, Dictatorship, Development, and Disintegration.
47 Howard J. Wiarda, Corporatism and Development: The Portuguese Experience.
48 Howard J. Wiarda, Transitions to Democracy in Spain and Portugal.
49 Howard J. Wiarda, Corporatism and Corporative Politics.
50 Wiarda, Howard J., The Soul of Latin America: The Cultural and Political Tradition (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001).Google Scholar
51 Wiarda, Howard J., ed., Authoritarianism and Corporatism in Latin America—Revisited (Gainesville, FL: University of Florida Press, 2004).Google Scholar
52 Ronald C. Newton, “On ‘Functional Groups,’ ‘Fragmentation,’ and ‘Pluralism’ in Spanish Amer-ican Political Society”; also “Natural Corporatism,”
53 Malloy, James, Bolivia (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1970).Google Scholar
54 Martin Heisler, Politics in Europe.
55 Philippe Schmitter, Interest Conflict and Political Change in Brazil; Schmitter, , “Corporatist Inter-est Representation and Public Policy-Making in Portugal,” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, D.C., September 5-7, 1972.Google Scholar
56 Schmitter, Philippe C., “Still the Century of Corporatism?” The Review of Politics 36 (January 1974), p. 93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
57 See especially the writings of Martz, John, “The Place of Latin America in the Study of Comparative Politics,” Journal of Politics 28 (February 1966), pp. 57–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
58 In my files I have a thick manila folder of letters from Latin America scholars telling me how much they appreciated the corporative focus, that it opened their eyes to new research possibilities, and, most importantly for the argument presented here, that it made what they saw as a critical connection tying the field of Latin American studies (7,000 members of the Latin American Studies Association) together with mainstream political science and comparative politics.
59 Petras, James, in New Politics (Winter 1962) and (Winter 1965).Google Scholar
60 Huntington, Samuel P., Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1968).Google Scholar
61 Space considerations rule out a longer treatment here, which in any case focuses on the anatomy and political sociology of the corporatism concept. Readers interested in more detailed exposition can pursue the items referenced above.
62 Wiarda, Howard J., Corporatism and Comparative Politics, p. ix.Google Scholar
63 It was hard to write about corporatism as a neutral, social-scientific term because of its widespread association with 1930s fascism and World War II. That was brought home to me after a lecture in the Netherlands when an elderly gentleman came up to me afterwards and said he had “fought” corporatism in World War II. “And now you’re asking me to accept that as a neutral, descriptive term as applied to certain countries,” he went on; “I cannot accept that.”
64 Hammergren, Linn, “Corporatism in Latin American Politics: A Reexamination of the Unique Tradition,” Comparative Politics (July 1977).CrossRefGoogle Scholar My response was entitled “Corporatism in Iberian and Latin American Political Analyses: Criticisms, Qualifications, and the Context and ‘Whys’ of the Debate,” Comparative Politics (January 1978), pp. 307-312.
65 Chaplin, David, ed., Peruvian Nationalism: A Corporatist Revolution (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1976);Google Scholar Palmer, David Scott, “Revolution from Above”: Military Government and Popular Participation in Peru (Ithica, NY: Cornell University Latin American Studies Dissertation Series, 1973).Google Scholar
66 Haynes, Keith A., “Authoritarianism, Democracy, and Development: The Corporative Theory of Howard J. Wiarda,” Latin American Perspectives 15 (Summer 1988), pp. 131–150.CrossRefGoogle Scholar My response was in the Fall 1989, issue, pp. 60-63.
67 Wiarda, Howard J., Universities, Think Tanks, and War Colleges: The Main Institutions of American Educational Life—A Memoir. (Philadelphia, PA: Random House/XLibris, 1999) Chapter 4.Google Scholar
68 McAlister, L.N., “Social Structure and Social Change in New Spain,” Hispanic American Historical Review 43 (1963), pp. 349–370.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
69 This was the thrust of Schmitter’s criticism in “Still the Century.”
70 Howard J. Wiarda, Corporatism and Comparative Politics.
71 Weber, Max, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (New York: Scribner’s, 1958).Google Scholar
72 Mead, Margaret, Coming of Age in Samoa (New York: Marrow, 1961).Google Scholar
73 Benedict, Ruth, Patterns of Culture (New York: Mentor, 1957);Google Scholar Benedict, , The Crysanthemum and the Sword (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1967).Google Scholar
74 Geertz, Clifford, After the Fact: Two Countries, Four Decades, One Anthropologist (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
75 Almond, Gabriel and Verba, Sidney, The Civic Culture (Boston: Little Brown, 1963);CrossRefGoogle Scholar Almond, and Verba, , The Civic Culture Revisited (Boston: Little Brown, 1980).Google Scholar
76 Berger, Peter and Harrison, Lawrence E., eds., Developing Cultures (New York: Routledge, 2006).Google Scholar
77 Huntington, Samuel and Harrison, Lawrence, eds., Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress (New York: Basic Books, 2000).Google Scholar
78 Eckstein, Harry, “A Culturalist Theory of Political Change,” American Political Science Review 82 (September 1988), pp. 789–804.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
79 Wildavsky, Aaron, “Choosing Preferences by Constructing Institutions: A Cultural Theory of Preference Formation,” American Political Science Review 81 (March 1987).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
80 Douglas, Mary, in Ellis, Richard J. and Thompson, Michael, eds., Culture Matters (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997).Google Scholar
81 Landes, David, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are so Rich and Some so Poor (New York: W.W. Norton, 1998).Google Scholar
82 Inglehart, Ronald, “The Renaissance of Political Culture,” American Political Science Review 82 (December 1988), pp. 1203–1230;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Inglehart, , Culture Shift in Advanced Industrial Societies (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
83 See especially Wiarda, Howard J. and Kline, Harvey F., An Introduction to Latin American Politics and Development (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2nd edition, 2007);Google Scholar and Wiarda, and Kline, , eds., Latin American Politics and Development (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 6th edition, 2007).Google Scholar
84 Inglehart, Ronald, “Political Culture and Democracy,” in Wiarda, Howard J., ed., New Directions in Comparative Politics (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 3rd edition, 2002), pp. 141–164.Google Scholar
85 Hartz, Louis, ed., The Founding of New Societies (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1964).Google Scholar
86 Braudel, Fernand, The Mediterranean and Mediterranean Civilization in the Age of Philip II (New York: Harper and Row, 1972);Google Scholar and Braudel, , A History of Civilizations (New York: Penguin, 1993).Google Scholar
87 On Kuyper see Bratt, James D., ed., Abraham Kuyper: A Centennial Reader (Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdman’s Publishing Company, 1998).Google Scholar
88 Howard J. Wiarda, Corporatism and Comparative Politics.
89 Huntington, Samuel P., The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twenthieth Century (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991).Google Scholar
90 But see Crepaz, Markus L., “Corporatism in Decline? An Empirical Analysis of the Impact of Cor-poratism on Macroeconomic Performance and Industrial Disputes in 18 Industrialized Democracies,” Comparative Political Studies 25:1 (April 1992).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
91 Wiarda, Howard J., ed., Globalization: Universal Trends, Regional Variations (Dartmouth, NH: University of New England Press, 2008).Google Scholar
92 Bloom, Harold, The Closing of the American Mind (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987).Google Scholar
93 Fukuyama, Francis, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Avon Books, 1993).Google Scholar
94 Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave.
95 Wiarda, Howard J., “Pluralism in Nicaragua?” in Department of State, Papers Presented at a Con-ference in Nicaragua (Washington, D.C.: Department of State, 1982).Google Scholar
96 Wiarda, Howard J., Dilemmas of Democracy in Latin America (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Lit-tlefield, 2005);Google Scholar also Peiler, John, Building Democracy in Latin America (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1998);CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Agüero, Felipe and Stark, Jeffrey, eds., Fault Lines of Democracy in Post-Transition Latin America (Coral Gables, FL: North-South Center Press, Univeristy of Miami, 1998).Google Scholar
97 Zakaria, Fareed, “Illiberal Democracy,” Foreign Affairs 76 (November-December, 1997), pp. 22–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
98 Ottaway, Marina, ed., Democracy in Africa: The Hard Road Ahead (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1997).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
99 Wiarda, Howard J., An Introduction to Comparative Politics (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2nd edi-tion, 1999); Wiarda, ed., New Directions in Comparative Politics.Google Scholar
100 Markus Crepaz, “Corporatism in Decline?”; also Adams, Paul S., “Corporatism and Comparative Politics: Is There a New Century of Corporatism?” in Wiarda, Howard J., ed., New Directions in Comparative Politics (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2002), pp. 17–44.Google Scholar
101 Wiarda, Howard J., The Soul of Latin America; Wiarda, Howard J., ed., Authoritarianism and Corporatism in Latin America; and Wiarda, Dilemmas of Democracy.Google Scholar
102 Howard J. Wiarda and Harvey F. Kline, eds., Latin American Politics and Development; Wiarda, Dilemmas of Democracy.
103 Adams, Paul S., The Europeanization of the Social Partnership: The Future of Neo-Corporatism in Austria and Germany (Amherst, MA: Ph.D. Dissertation Submitted to the Department of Political Science, University of Massachusetts, 2007).Google Scholar