¹ O'Donnell, Guillermo, ‘Estado democratizatión y ciudadanía’, Nueva Sociedad, no. 128 (11 1993), pp. 62–87Google Scholar, and ‘Delegative Democracy’, Journal of Democracy, vol. 5, no. I (1994), pp. 55–69. The danger of the majorities oppressing minorities through democratic procedures inspired one of de Tocqueville's most appealing discussions. Yet, it does not appear to be a threat to democracy in contemporary Central America.

² For recent restatements, see Wolfe, Marshall, ‘Las estructuras sociales y la democracia en los años noventa’, Revista de la CEPAL no. 40 (04 1990), pp. 55–71Google Scholar; Helliwell, John F., ‘Empirical Linkages Between Democracy and Economic Growth’, British Journal of Political Science vol. 24 (1994), pp. 225–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³ However, allegations of electoral fraud were one of the ingredients prompting the revolution led by José Figueres Ferrer in 1948.

⁴ See the interview with Salvadorean businessman Abraham Rodríguez, one of the founders of the Christian Democratic Party and El Salvador's Vice-President (Primer Designado) during José Napoleón Duarte's government, in Tendencias no. 26 (12 1993), pp. 15–20Google Scholar. See also Baloyra, Enrique, ‘Reactionary Despotism in Central America’, journal of Latin American Studies, vol. 15 (11 1983), pp. 295–319CrossRefGoogle Scholar; LaFever, Walter, Inevitable Revolutions. The United States in Central America (New York, 1984)Google Scholar.

⁵ US Government, Report of the National Bipartisan Commission on Central America (Washington, 1984); the Commission was chaired by former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. See also Bermúdez, Lilia, Guerra de baja intensidad (Mexico City, 1987)Google Scholar; Karl, Terry, ‘Exporting Democracy: The Unanticipated Effects of U.S. Electoral Policy in El Salvador,’ in Hamilton, Nora et al. . (eds.), Crisis in Central America. Regional Dynamics and U.S. Policy in the 1990s (Boulder, 1988), pp. 173—91Google Scholar; Carothers, Thomas, ‘The Reagan Years: The 1980s’, in Lowenthal, Abraham F. (ed.), Exporting Democracy: The United States and Latin America (Baltimore, 1991), pp. 90–122Google Scholar.

⁶ Vilas, Carlos M., Between Earthquakes and Volcanoes. Market, State, and the Revolutions in Central America (New York, 1995), chapter 4Google Scholar.

⁷ For an updated quantitative overview, see CEPAL, Indicadores sociales básicos de la subregión norte de América Latina y el Caribe, 1950–1994 (Mexico City, LC/MEX/L/266, 04 1995)Google Scholar.

⁸ For a lengthy discussion of this approach see Vilas, Carlos M., ‘Una patria para todos: Revolución, subdesarrollo y democracia en Nicaragua’, in Casanova, Pablo González and Roitman, Marcos (eds.), La democracia en América Latina. Actualidad y perspectivas (Madrid, 1992), pp. 387–426Google Scholar. On citizenship as a pluridimensional process, see Turner, Bryan S., ‘Contemporary Problems in the Theory of Citizenship’, in Turner, Bryan S. (ed.), Citizenship and Social Theory (London, 1993), pp. 1–18Google Scholar; on ‘embeddedness’, see Evans, Peter, ‘The State as Problem and Solution: Predation, Embedded Autonomy, and Structural Change’, in Haggard, Stephan and Kaufman, Robert R.(eds.), The Politics of Economic Adjustment (Princeton, 1992), pp. 139–81Google Scholar.

⁹ As in the well-known model by Lewis, W. Arthur, ‘Economic Development with Unlimited Supply of Labour’, The Manchester School of Economics Studies, vol. XXII, no.1 (01 1954), pp. 139–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁰ Arriola, Joaquín and Candray, José Antonio, Derechos prohibidos. Negociación colectiva y sindicatos en El Salvador (San Salvador, 1994), pp. 49 ffGoogle Scholar.

¹¹ It is worth recalling that the effective enfranchisement of low, middle, and labouring classes in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Uruguay, coupled the development of domestic markets and the expansion of urban mass consumption. Zubillaga, Carlos, ‘El batllismo: una experiencia populista’, in Vilas, Carlos M. (ed.), La democratizatión fundamental. El populismo en América Latina (Mexico, 1994), pp. 177–213Google Scholar; Carvalho, José Murillo de, Desenvolvimiento de la ciudadanía en Brasil (Mexico City, 1995), passimGoogle Scholar.

¹² See Lindenberg, Mark, ‘World Economic Cycles and Central American Political Instability’, World Politics, vol. XLVII, no. 3 (04 1990), pp. 397–421CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹³ Regional diversity may be appreciated through the UNDP's Index of Human Development (IHD). Costa Rica ranked as having a ‘high’ IHD (position 39), while Nicaragua ranked 106, Guatemala 108, El Salvador 112, and Hondura 115. UNDP, Human Development Report 1994 (UNDP, 1994), table 1Google Scholar.

¹⁴ Bravo, Pedro Vuskoviç, Pobreza y desigualdad en Améerica Latina (México, 1993)Google Scholar; Altimir, Oscar, ‘Cambios de la desiguladad y la pobreza en América Latina’, E1 Trimestre Económico, vol. 241 (1994), pp. 85–133Google Scholar; Birdsall, Nancy, Roos, David and Sabott, Richard, ‘La desigualdad como limitación del crecimiento en América Latina’, Oikos, vol. 8 (09 1995), pp. 42–7Google Scholar.

¹⁵ UNICEF/SEGEPLAN, Análisis de la situación del niño y la mujer (Guatemala, 1992)Google Scholar Figures refer to cash or cash-equivalent income.

¹⁶ Vilas, Carlos M., The Sandinista Revolution (New York, 1986), chapter 2Google Scholar.

¹⁷ See Segovia, Alexander, La implementación de los acuerdos de paz y las reformas económicas en El Salvador (San Salvador, 1994)Google Scholar; De Soto, Alvaro and Castillo, Graciana del, ‘Obstacles to Peacebuilding’, Foreign Policy, vol. 94 (Spring 1994), pp. 69–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Vilas, C. M. and Feuer, Björn, El Salvador: El desarrollo socioeconómico reciente y el avance de los Acuerdos de Paz (Stockholm, 01 1995)Google Scholar; Boyce, James K. et al. , Adjustment Toward Peace: Economic Policy and Post-War Reconstruction in El Salvador (San Salvador, 05 1995)Google Scholar.

¹⁸ Sainz, Juan P. Pérez and Menjívar, Rafael(eds.), Informalidad urbana en Centroamérica (Caracas, 1991)Google Scholar. While in Nicaragua the UIS has grown consistently during the 1990s, there seems to be an opposite evolution in El Salvador, where UIS shrank from 50.8% of EAP in 1990 to 46.6% in 1993 – although growth in formalisation refers almost exclusively to the male labour force. Aguilar, Renato and Renzi, María Rosa, Empleo y desempleo en Nicaragua (Managua, 1992)Google Scholar; FESSEL, lnforme laboral 1994 (San Salvador, 1995)Google Scholar.

¹⁹ Cameron, Maxwell A., Democracy and Authoritarianism in Peru (New York, 1994)Google Scholar; Tironi, Eugenio, ‘Mercado de trabajo y violencia’, in Tokman, Victor E. (ed.), El sector informal en América Latina. Dos décadas de análisis (Mexico City, 1995), pp. 561–88Google Scholar.

²⁰ CEPAL, Remesas y economía familiar en El Salvador, Guatemala y Nicaragua. LC/MEX/R.294, 1991Google Scholar, and author's interviews at El Salvador's Ministry of Planning (October 1994).

²¹ Smith, Robert, ‘Los ausentes siempre presentes’. The Imagining, Making and Politics of a Transnational Community Between New York City and Ticuani, Puebla. ILAIS, Columbia University. Working Papers on Latin America, 1994Google Scholar.

²² Céspedes, Pedro Vúskoviç, ‘Lo s actores externos: Presencia y proyectos’, Cuadernos de CRIES, vol. 19–20 (Managua, 1991)Google Scholar.

²³ Cuenca, Brenny, El poder intangible. La AID y el estado salvadoreño en los años ochenta (San Salvador, 1992), pp. 27–30Google Scholar.

²⁴ Manaut, Raúl Benítez, ‘La guerra en Centroamérica: Dinámica del proceso de militarizatión y tendencias’, Sintesis (01–04 1989), pp. 130–57Google Scholar.

²⁵ Excélsior (Mexico City), 17 April 1992, p. 2.

²⁶ Stone, Samuel Z., La dinastía de los conquistadores (San José, 1975)Google Scholar.

²⁷ Arzú, Marta Casaus, Guatemala: Linaje y racismo (San José, 1992)Google Scholar.

²⁸ Vilas, Carlos M., ‘Family Affairs: Class, Lineage and Politics in Contemporary Nicaragua’, Journal of Latin American Studies, vol. 24, no. 2 (1992), pp. 309–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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³⁰ Statements by members of Guatemala's traditional families, in Casáus Arzii, Guatemala, pp. 259, 287, 289 (these interviews were conducted in the mid 1980s).

³¹ La Jornada (Mexico City), 12, 13 June 1993; 4, 29 November 1993; 14, 16 December 1993; Excélsior (Mexico City), 10 November 1993.

³² From 1932 to 1980 all Salvadorean presidents were army officers, while all the ministers of agriculture or economy were members of the coffee bourgeoisie. From the 1963 military coup on, all of Guatemala's ministers of economic affairs were directly appointed by CACIF (Comité Coordinator de Asociaciones Agrícolas, Comerciales, Industrials y Financieras). Gordon, Sara, ‘Guatemala y El Salvador: Dos regímenes de exclusión’, Polémica no. 10, January–March 1990, pp. 12–23Google Scholar.

³³ See INFORPRESS Centroamericana, Los empresarios centroamericanos ante la crisis (Guatemala City, 1988)Google Scholar; Tapia, Gabriel Gaspar, ‘La modernization de las clases dominantes centroamericanas’, in Vilas, C. M. (ed.), Democracia emergente en Centroamérica (Mexico City, 1993), pp. 51–63Google Scholar.

³⁴ See Spalding, Rose J., Capitalists and devolution in Nicaragua. Opposition and Accommodation, 1979–1993 (Chapel Hill, 1994)Google Scholar.

³⁵ ‘Our overriding purpose must be to expand and strengthen the world's community of market-based democracies’, stated President Clinton in his speech at the UN General Assembly on 27 September 1993; National Security Advisor Anthony Lake advanced a similar concept when lecturing at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies: ‘The successor to a doctrine of containment must be a strategy of enlargement – enlargement of the world's free community of market democracies’ (21 September, 1993).

³⁶ I found a very illustrative example of this articulation of modernisation and traditionalism in several sugar estates in Escuintla, Guatemala. Over recent years a number of the largest sugar fincas in this coastal area have been improving housing and sanitary conditions for their seasonal workers, in what may be understood as a shift from a traditional approach to labour as an expense, to a capitalist focus on labour as an investment. At the same time, their owners opposed the Cerezo government's tax reform in mid 1980s, and still keep private armies watching over the estates' premises, and bribe government officials and military officers. A PAHO officer in Guatemala City told me (May 1995): ‘It is easier to conduct an inspection in a military barracks than in a sugar estate’, while the comparative perspective of a Ministry of Health regional official was more blunt: ‘It is easier to hold up a bank, than to get into a finca’.

³⁷ A good case for this modernisation-cum-patronage is afforded by the privatisation of El Salvador's banking system conducted by Alfredo Cristiani's ARENA government, where most of the banks were handed over to Cristiani's clique: see Sarto, Francisco and Segovia, Alexander, ‘¿Hacia dónde se dirige la privatizatión de la banca?’, Revista de Político Económica, vol. 12 (1992), pp. 3–2Google Scholar. A number of my own interviewees in San Salvador in March 1995 interpreted Armando Calderón Sol's new wave of privaisations in terms of the claims of Calderón Sol's clique who had been marginalised from the privatisation benefiting Cristiani's ‘golden ring’.

³⁸ The strategic role of US military support was openly acknowledged by Blandón, General Adolfo, El Salvador's Armed Forces Chief of Staff from 1984 to 1989, in a recent interview: El Financiero (Mexico City), 11 09 1995, p. 72Google Scholar; La Jornada, 11 September 1995, p. 58.

³⁹ LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions; Torres-Rivas, Edelberto, ‘Centroamérica: Guerra, transición y democracia’, CINAS. Cuadernos de Divulgatión, 12 1986, pp. 5–25Google Scholar.

⁴⁰ Nairn, Allan, ‘De Kennedy a Reagan. El Salvador y la disciplina de la muerte’, Nexos, 07 1984, pp. 27–36Google Scholar; McClintock, Michael, The American Connection. State Terror and Popular Resistance in El Salvador and Guatemala (London, 1985Google Scholar, two volumes); Verdad, Comisión de la, De la locura a la esperanza. La guerra de 12 años en El Salvador. Informe de la Comisión de la Verdad para El Salvador (San Salvador, 03 1995)Google Scholar; Waller, Douglas, ‘Running a ”School for Dictators”’, Newsweek, 9 08 1993, pp. 31–3Google Scholar.

⁴¹ El Financiero (Mexico City), 25 March 1995, p. 26; Cohen, Richard, ‘Guatemala Shame’, The Washington Post, 4 04 1995, p. A23Google Scholar; Weiner, Tim, ‘C.I.A. Director Admits to Failure in Disclosing Links to Guatemala’, The New York Times, 6 04 1995, pp. A1–A14Google Scholar; Krauss, Clifford, ‘Guatemala's War: Ideology is the Latest Excuse’, The New York Times, 9 04 1995, p. E5Google Scholar; Nairn, Allan, ‘C.I.A. Death Squads’, The Nation, vol. 260, no. 15, 17 04 1995, pp. 511–13Google Scholar.

⁴² See Soro, Sergio Reuben, ‘El papel de las ONG en la cooperatión europea hacia Centroamérica’, in Rubén, Raul and van Oord, Govert (eds.), Má alla del ajuste (San José, 1991), pp. 337–68Google Scholar; Sollis, Peter, ‘Multilateral Agencies, NGOs, and policy reform’, Development in Practice, vol. 2, no. 3 (1992), pp. 163–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Almost 75 % of all development NGOs working in El Salvador from the 1960s on (or 139 out of 186) registered during the 1980s (88 or 47.3%) and in 1990–2 (51 or 27.4%). UNDP, Directorio de instituciones privadas de desarrollo de El Salvador, 1992 (San Salvador, 11 1992)Google Scholar.

⁴³ Barry, Tom and Preusch, Deb, AIFL in Central America: Agents as Organisers (Albuquerque, 1986)Google Scholar; Prosterman, Roy and Riedinger, Jeffrey M., Land Reform and Democratic Development (Baltimore, 1987), esp. chapter 6Google Scholar.

⁴⁴ Hirezi, Hector Dada, ‘Los acuerdos de paz y la democratizatión’, ECA, Estudios Centroamericanos, no. 558 (04 1995), pp. 367–76Google Scholar.

⁴⁵ Breny Cuenca, Elpoder intangible; Sojo, Carlos, La Utopía del estado minimo. Influencia de la AID en Costa Rica en los años ochenta (Managua, 1991)Google Scholar, and La mano visible del mercado (Managua, 1992); Escoto, Jorge and Marroquín, Manfredo, La AID en Guatemala (Managua, 1992)Google Scholar; Saldomando, Angel, El retorno de la AID. El caso de Nicaragua (Managua, 1992)Google Scholar; Rosa, Herman, AID y las transformaciones globales en El Salvador (Managua, 1993)Google Scholar.

⁴⁶ de Guatemala, Gobierno, Programa Sectorialde Salud (Guatemala City, 05 1995)Google Scholar, Annex III–1.

⁴⁷ See McSherry, J. Patrice, Civil Conflicts and the Role of the International Community: The Cases of Guatemala and El Salvador, The Ralph Bunche Institute on the United Nations' Occasional Papers Series, CUNY, New York, 10 1994Google Scholar.

⁴⁸ Baumeister, Eduardo, ‘La agricultura centroamericana en los 80s’, Polémica, vol. 14/15 (12 1991), pp. 53–79Google Scholar.

⁴⁹ See Stansfield, David, Insecurity of Land Tenure in Nicaragua (Madison, 1992)Google Scholar; Santamariáa, Ricardo, ‘El problema agrario y los acuerdos de paz’, ECA, Estudios Centroamercanos, no. 559–60 (05–06 1995), pp. 505–17Google Scholar. On 31 October 1995 Salvadorean president Armando Calderón Sol announced that the implementation of the peace accords had been ‘officially accomplished’ though land distribution to more than one third of the beneficiaries was still pending. La Jornada, 1 November 1995, P. 53.

⁵⁰ The agenda of peace talks between the Guatemalan government and the insurgent URNG included this question as a central chapter. Early in 1995 both parties arrived at an Agreement on the Identity and Rights of the Indigenous Peoples (Acuerdo sobre identidad y derechos de los Pueblos Indígenas).

⁵¹ For an updated insightful discussion of these issues, see Sinclair, Minor (ed.), The New Politics of Survival. Grassroots Movements in Central America (New York, 1995)Google Scholar.

⁵² See Crozier, Michael, Huntington, Samuel and Watanuki, Joji, The Crisis of Democracy (New York, 1975)Google Scholar; for subsequent discussions see Arbós, Xabier and Giner, Salvador, La gobernabilidad. Ciudadanía y democracia en la encrucijada mundial (Madrid, 1993)Google Scholar.

⁵³ Offe argues in a similar vein with regard to social movements in Western societies: Claus Offe, ‘Reflections on the Institutional Self-transformation of Movement Politics: A Tentative Stage Model’, in Dalton, Russell J. and Kuechler, Manfred (eds.), Challenging the Political Order. New Social and Political Movements in Western Democracies (New York, 1990), pp.232–50Google Scholar.

⁵⁴ The Democratic Party is the joint product of Joaquín Villalobos's ERP and Eduardo Sancho's (‘Ferman Cienfuegos’) RN dissent, plus most of the social democratic Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario (MNR). The full text of the Pact was published in El Diario de Hoy (San Salvador) 31 May 1995. It has to be said that the commitment of former leftists to this particular brand of consensual politics has not been matched by their right-wing partners: ARENA keeps on publicly honouring D'Aubuisson's memory, while its ‘Principles, Goals and By-laws’ claim ‘To defend our Western traditions from ideological assault and permanent aggression from international communism’ as the party's primary goal. The Democratic Party decision resembles Williamson's appeal to Left organisations to embrace the economic recipes summarised by the ‘Washington consensus’: Williamson, John, ‘Democracy and the “Washington Consensus”’, World Development, vol. 21, no. 8 (1993), pp. 1329–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵⁵ FSLN, Para una salida national a la crisis (Managua, November 1994).

⁵⁶ See Tapia, Gabriel Gaspar, La Democracia Cristiana en Centroamérica (México City, 1993)Google Scholar.

⁵⁷ Przeworski, Adam, Democracy and the market. Political and economic reforms in Eastern Europe and Latin America (Cambridge, 1991), p. 13CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵⁸ Flynn, Peter, ‘Collor, Corruption, and Crisis: Time for Reflection’, Journal of Latin American Studies, vol. 25, no. 2 (1993), pp. 251–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Panfichi, Aldo, ‘Liderazgos autoritarios en el Perú’ Debates en Sociología, vol. 18 (1993), pp. 227–47Google Scholar. Vilas, Carlos M., ‘Entre la democracia y el neoliberalismo: Los caudillos electorales de la postermodernidad’, in Dutrénit, Silvia and Váldez, Leonardo (eds.), El fin de siglo y los partidos políticos en América Latina (Mexico City, 1994), pp. 323–40Google Scholar; Borón, Atilio et al. , Peronismo y menemismo (Buenos Aires, 1995)Google Scholar.

⁵⁹ Macías, Ricardo Córdova, El Salvador en transición: El proceso de paz, las elecciones de 1994 y los retos de la gobernabilidad democrática (San Salvador, 1994)Google Scholar; Spence, Jack et al. , El Salvador: Elections of the Century (Cambridge, MA, 1994)Google Scholar.

⁶⁰ Actual absentionism is even higher than reflected in figures if referred to the overall potential voters and not just to registered ones.

⁶¹ IADB, Economic and Social Progress in Latin America. 1994 Report (Washington, D.C., 1994)Google Scholar.

⁶² de Costa Rica, Gobierno, Plan Nacional de Desarrolk 1994–1998. Diagnóstico y estrategia (San José, 1994), table 3Google Scholar; de la, Gobiernode Nicaragua, República, Estudio sobre elgasto social 1990–1994, (Managua, 11 1994), table 6Google Scholar.

⁶³ Which fits pretty well with World Bank's claim on the need to insulate economic policy-makers from civil society's short–sighted particularistic, selfish messing around: World Bank, The East Asian Miracle. Economic Growth and Public Policy (Oxford, 1993)Google Scholar.

⁶⁴ Take for instance the following case I witnessed in May 1995 during an evaluation of Central American health reforms. The health centre in E.J.L. (a rural municipality in north-western Nicaragua with some 10,000 inhabitants, 85–90% of them living in poverty) participated in a pilot experience of decentralisation and health community management implemented by the Nicaraguan government on behalf of the World Bank's structural adjustment conditionalities. According to a particular conception of ‘self management’, the community is supposed to pay for most of the health services – which in any case are very basic. Nicaragua's Ministry of Health's monthly contribution to the centre's pharmaceuticals budget amounts to 12,000 cordobas, or 1.20 córdobas per person per month (less than 20 US cents). As could be expected, the entire preoccupation of the nurse running the centre was devoted to cost/benefit analysis and management creativity to stretch those twenty cents out as much as she could. It was hard for evaluators to detect the presence of a health worker beyond her efficientist discourse. In November 1995 a deadly leptospirosis epidemic occurred in that same region and rapidly spread over the border to Honduras; Nicaragua's Health Ministry's core recommendation to the population was to use cats, since the main disease vector is rats. The Ministry's exhausted budget prevented it from proposing other than symbolic responses.

⁶⁵ See World Bank, The Challenge of Poverty Alleviation (Washington, D.C., 1993Google Scholar; Report 12315-ES); IADB, Socioeconomic Report: El Salvador (Washington, D.C., 1993Google Scholar; Report GN–1800).

⁶⁶ Trevor Evans, ‘Ajuste estructural y sector público en Céntroamerica y el Caribe’, in Evans, T. (ed.), La transformación neoliberal del sector público (Managua, 1995). 1–47Google Scholar.

⁶⁷ See Manín, Florentines Moreno, Infantiaj guerra en Centroamérica (San José, 1991)Google Scholar; Poncela, Anna Fernandez, ‘Desempleo, angustia y violencia: Las mujeres de Nicaragua’, Estudios Ecumenicos, 35 (07–09 1993), 42–5Google Scholar. On the persistence of death squads in Salvador, El, see Informe del Grupo Conjunto para la investigatión de grupos armados ilegales con motivación política (San Salvador, 07 1994)Google Scholar.

⁶⁸ See Levenson, Deborah, ‘Las “maras”: Violencia juvenil de masas’, Polémica, 7 (01–04 1989), 2–12Google Scholar; Amnesty International, Guatemala: Los ninos de la calle (Madrid, 1990)Google Scholar.

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⁷¹ According to UN sources in El Salvador, by mid–1994 the new 'National Civil Police', a security body created after the Peace Accords, had turned into the main source of human rights violations: Vilas and Feuer, El Salvador.

⁷² Painter, James, Guatemala: False Hope False Freedom, (London, 1987), 47–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷³ Guzmán, Luis Humberto, Politicos de uniforme (Managua, 1992)Google Scholar; Alba, Xavier Reyes, ‘Un general sin laberinto’, El Día Latinoamericano, 116 (Mexico City), 28 08 1993, 5Google Scholar.

⁷⁴ US Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, Drugs, Law Enforcement, and Foreign Policy. A Report of the Subcommittee on Narcotics, Terrorism, and International Operations (Washington, D.C., 1989)Google Scholar; de la, Asamblea LegislativaRepública, de Costa Rica, Informe de la Comisión sobre el Narcotráfico (San Jose, 1989)Google Scholar; ibid., Segundo Informe de la Comision sobre el Narcotrdfico (San Jose, 1989); Sklar, Holly, Washington's War on Nicaragua (Boston, 1989)Google Scholar; Scott, Peter Dale and Marshall, Jonathan, Cocaine Politics. Drugs, Armies and the CIA in Central America (Berkeley, 1991)Google Scholar.

⁷⁵ Gramsci, Antonio, II materialismo storico e la filosofia di Benedetto Croce (Roma, 1977), 47–8Google Scholar.

⁷⁶ Wolf, Eric R., ‘Kinship, Friendship, and Patron–Client Relations in Complex Societies’, in Banton, M. (ed.), The Social Anthropology of Complex Societies (London, 1966), 1–22Google Scholar; see also Vilas, Between Earthquakes and Volcanoes, chapter 1. Most discussion on ‘exporting democracy’ tends to ignore this cultural dimension of politics – thus reproducing at a literary level US foreign policy failures. Terry Karl, ‘Exporting Democracy…’ offers a stimulating alternative approach. See also Joseph, Gilbert M. and Nugent, Daniel (eds.), Everyday Forms of State Formation. Revolution and the Negotiation of Rule in Modern Mexico (Durham, 1994)Google Scholar.

⁷⁷ Howard Wiarda's many books offer the crudest version of the argument; for more articulated elaborations see Peeler, John A., Latin American Democracies: Colombia, Costa Rica and Venezuela (Chapel Hill, 1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Booth, John A. and Seligson, Mitchell A., ‘Paths to Democracy and the Political Culture of Costa Rica, Mexico, and Nicaragua’, in Diamond, Larry (ed.), Political Culture and Democracy in Developing Countries (Boulder, 1994) 99–13OGoogle Scholar Yet the most sophisticated versions of culturalist hypothesis have not gone beyond the paths opened up and explored by the classic works of Werner Sombart, Max Weber or R. H. Tawney: see for instance Inglehart, Ronald, ‘The Renaissance of Political Culture’, American Political Science Review, 82 (11 1988), 1203–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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⁷⁹ Marx, Karl, La idtologia alemana (Montevideo, 1968)Google Scholar.

⁸⁰ Pillories and other instruments for punishment were still common in Guatemalan estates as recently as the 1970s (personal communication from Guatemalan lawyer and political leader Catalina Soberanis, September 1995), while jus prima noctt has not been entirely uprooted from landlord culture either there or in El Salvador.

⁸¹ Offe, Claus, ‘“Ingobernabilidad”. Sobre el renacimiento de teon'as conservadoras de la crisis’, inC. Offe, Partidospoliticosjnuevosmovimientossociales (Madrid, 1988), 27–53Google Scholar; see also Nogueira, Marco Aurelio, ‘Gobernabilidad democrática progresiva’, Análisis político, 25 (05–08 1995), 55–68Google Scholar.

⁸² Edelberto, Torres-Rivas, ‘Centroamérica: La transitión autoritaria hacia la democracia’, Polémica, 4 (01 1988), 2–13Google Scholar.

⁸³ See Vilas, Carlos M., 'Nicaragua: A Revolution that fell from the grace of the people', in Miliband, Ralph and Panitch, Leo (eds.), The Socialist Register 1991 (London, 1991), 300–19Google Scholar.

⁸⁴ Przeworski discusses democracy as 'a contingent outcome of social conflict', while Bleany and Kamal Pasha argue that under particular circumstances the activation of civil society may lead to rising authoritarianism. Przeworski, Adam, 'Democracy as a Contingent Outcome of Social Conflicts', in Elster, Jon and Slagstad, Rune (eds.), Constitutionalism and Democracy (Cambridge, 1988), 59–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Blaney, David L. and Pasha, Mustapha Kamal, 'Civil Society and Democracy in the Third World: Ambiguities and Historical Possibilities', Studies in Comparative International Development, 28, no.1 (1993), 3–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar.