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Scholarly Images of Latin American Political Democracy in 1975

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2022

Kenneth F. Johnson
Kenneth F. Johnson*
Affiliation:
University of Missouri, St. Louis
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As practiced contemporaneously in most of Latin America, political democracy is more accurately elite governance, with many of the thornier authoritarian trappings cloaked behind an often transparent facade of “popular suffrage” and “parliamentary government.” Democracy, as a normative basis for the “good life,” is difficult to describe and conceptualize, especially when one assumes that the democratic prototype is to be discovered somewhere within that caldron of slippery political variables known as the Anglo-American model. I do not assume in this report that the nations of Latin America should be trying to move in the direction of the Anglo-American model (assuming we can describe, more or less generically, the constituent parts of that model). Nevertheless, I would be remiss in not stating the general outlines of what I understand political democracy to mean as related to the quinquennial survey of scholarly images to be reported herein.

Type
Research Reports and Notes
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 11 , Issue 2 , 1976 , pp. 129 - 140
Copyright
Copyright © 1976 by the University of Texas Press

Footnotes

*

The author is grateful to Merle Kling and James Wilkie for their constructive criticism leading to renovation of much of the conceptual and theoretic context of this research, and especially to Kling for his encouragement and guidance in maintaining this longitudinal study or “time-series.” Thanks are due also to Kenneth Coleman for his critical suggestions and to Miles Williams for his valued advice and insight. The seminal idea, of course, came from Russell H. Fitzgibbon thirty years ago and he continued his inspired participation in the 1975 survey. This could be done, however, only because some eighty generous colleagues agreed to participate. Their names appear at the end of the text.

References

Notes

1. Drawing upon such works as Leslie Lipson's The Democratic Civilization (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964), and Stanislav Andreski's Parasitism and Subversion: The Case of Latin America (New York: Pantheon, 1966), I would argue that a democratic political system should have all of the following characteristics to at least some degree: (1) Popular sovereignty exercised through competing interest groups that vie for power and leadership within a fixed and impartial set of rules that are applied equally to all participants; (2) the state and its personnel exist to serve the public, not to rob them, and there is a recognized norm distinguishing between that which is public and that which is private; (3) some free and honest procedure for selecting leaders of the state that will be competitive and popular; (4) leadership elements so selected will be perpetually (or periodically) subject to public review, challenge, and/or removal from office, again within an impartial and equitably applied set of rules; (5) the stakes in the power struggle are not so high as to make it impossible for one politically relevant group to accept an adverse popular judgment vis-à-vis its preferred candidate or policy; and (6) the overall thrust of the political system is conducive to individual self-realization (what Christian Bay has called “potential freedom”) as opposed to fascism, in which the individual is sacrificed to the alleged organic unity of the nation-state. A glance over the hemisphere will show that, in substance, Latin American political life does not measure up well to the above criteria if they are taken in an absolute sense. Therefore, it is necessary to stress that political democracy in Latin America is to be taken as a culture-relative concept. A discussion similar to that given above is to be found in Lyman T. Sargent, Contemporary Political Ideologies, 3rd ed. (Homewood, Illinois: Dorsey Press, 1975), and a somewhat contrasting view is found in David E. Ingersoll, Communism, Fascism, and Democracy (Columbus, Ohio: Charles E. Merrill, 1971). Ingersoll argues that individuality is the core idea in democratic theory but the practice of “mass democracy” in the contemporary world seems to be destroying that key element, an observation that is especially relevant to the study of political democracy in certain Latin American states.

2. For instance, the nineteenth-century Argentine writers Esteban Echeverría (Los ideales de mayo y la tirania [1838 approx.]) and Juan Bautista Alberdi metamorphosed French and British political thought and reflected it in the Argentine constitution of 1853. Notwithstanding, many scholars would not distinguish Argentina for its democratic achievements in relative terms.

3. Alberto Lleras Camargo, “Los países subdesarrollados tienen la política que merecen,” Visión, 9 de octubre de 1971, p. 25.

4. See Julio Cortázar, Libro de Manuel (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1973), pp. 261-62. V.S. Naipaul observed the tendency among Argentines to believe in thaumaturges as a part of their quest for political faith (which Perón pretended to provide). See his “The Corpse at the Iron Gate,” The New York Review of Books, 10 August 1972 and, in the same review, his later article “Argentina: Brothels Behind the Graveyard,” 19 September 1974.

5. Ibid.

6. Paul Gallet, Freedom To Starve (London: Penguin Books, 1970), p. 52.

7. See Octavio Paz, Posdata (México: Siglo Veintiuno Editores, 1970), passim.

8. Daniel Cosío Villegas, El estilo personal de gobernar (México: Cuadernos de Joaquín Mortiz, 1974) p. 78.

9. From Jerome Levinson and Juan de Onis, The Alliance That Lost Its Way (New York: Quadrangle Books, 1970).

10. James Wilkie has written that the key issue in the debate over the Fitzgibbon experiments is not whether democracy as such is being measured but that the project reflects “the scholarly image of democracy, an image that has influenced not only several generations of students (many of whom went on to government) but also opinion in the United States and subsequently elite opinion in Latin America itself.” From his Statistics and National Policy (Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center, 1975), p. 480.

11. See Robert J. Pranger, The Eclipse of Citizenship (New York: Holt-Rinehart-Winston, 1968), p. 29.

12. Hannah Arendt, On Violence (New York: Harcourt, Brace, & World, 1970), p. 52.

13. Ibid., p. 55. See also E. J. Hobsbawm, Revolutionaries (New York: Pantheon, 1973), pp. 210-14.

14. See Kenneth F. Johnson, “On the Guatemalan Political Violence,” Politics and Society, Fall 1973, for a discussion of the degree to which violence can become an accepted part of political life under extreme circumstances.

15. Christian Bay, The Structure of Freedom (New York: Atheneum, 1968), p. 317.

16. Ibid., p. 382.

17. Leslie Lipson, The Democratic Civilization (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964), p. 589.

18. See his “Measuring Democratic Change in Latin America,” Journal of Politics 29 (1967), for a discussion of the methodology involved in the series of ranking experiments.

19. See my “Measuring the Scholarly Image of Latin American Democracy: 1945 to 1970,” in James W. Wilkie and Kenneth Ruddle, eds., Methodology in Quantitative Latin American Studies (Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center, 1976).

20. The Spanish version was administered by this author to a select group of Argentine scholars with whom rapport had been maintained over the years, and many of whom participated in the 1970 survey. The second instrument (power index) was not administered in Argentina due to my own fears about political sensitivity during a very difficult period in that country's political life. The power index that I am developing in collaboration with Miles Williams was administered to the resident North Americans only. Results from that, correlated with the Fitzgibbon-Johnson data, will be forthcoming.

21. The respondents were asked to rate the twenty Latin American republics according to the fifteen substantive criteria that appear in figure 1. Their votes were in the form of A through E with the former valued at five points and the latter one point. Thus, the higher the score the more favorable, or in cases greater, the evaluation. The technique is designed to generate a kind of political “beauty contest” in terms of scholarly images vis-à-vis political democracy and/or its accompanying conditions and consequences. Creation of the special index of five freedom-oriented criteria was intended to separate variables and eliminate much of what had been substantive and conceptual overlap in previous experiments. Copies of the traditional instruments used are contained in the forthcoming study cited in note 19.

22. In the interest of space I shall list only the names and institutions of the participating scholar respondents for 1975. We did, however, elicit generational and other professional and attitudinal information about the panel of experts for possible correlation and testing. My sincere thanks go to: Marvin Alisky (Arizona State), Charles D. Ameringer (Pennsylvania State), Barry C. Ames (Washington, St. Louis), Charles W. Anderson (Wisconsin), Gayle Avant (Baylor), John Bailey (Georgetown), Enrique A. Baloyra (North Carolina at Chapel Hill), C. Richard Bath (Texas at El Paso), Marvin D. Bernstein (SUNY at Buffalo), Robert R. Bezdek (Texas at Corpus Christi), Robert E. Biles (Sam Houston State), Morris J. Blachman (South Carolina), George Blanksten (Northwestern), Cole Blasier (Pittsburgh), John A. Booth (Texas at San Antonio), Winfield J. Burggraaff (Missouri, Columbia), David Bushnell (Florida), Leonard Cardenas, Jr. (Louisiana State), Henry A. Christopher (St. Louis University), Kenneth M. Coleman (Kentucky), Charles F. Denton (California State University at Fresno), Edward C. Epstein (Utah), John Farrell (Southern Illinois, Edwardsville), M. Barry Faye (Western Illinois, Macomb), Julio A. Fernandez (State University College at Cortland), Russell H. Fitzgibbon (retired), Charles J. Fleener (St. Louis University), William H. Furlong (Utah State at Logan), Rudolph O. de la Garza (Colorado College), Federico G. Gil (North Carolina at Chapel Hill), R. Kenneth Godwin (Oregon State), Paul E. Hadley (USC), Paul R. Hoopes (Texas at Kingsville), Gary Hoskin (SUNY at Buffalo), Clifford Kaufman (Wayne State), Harvey F. Kline (Massachusetts), Merle Kling (Washington, St. Louis), Lawrence E. Koslow (Arizona State), Sheldon B. Liss (University of Akron), Leo B. Lott (Montana), Donald J. Mabry (Mississippi State), R. Michael Malek (University of South Alabama), John D. Martz (North Carolina at Chapel Hill), Mary Jeanne (Reid) Martz (Clemson), Rev. Kieran McCarty (San Xavier Mission, Tucson), Ronald H. McDonald (The Maxwell School, Syracuse), James W McKenney (Wichita State), Richard Millett (Southern Illinois, Edwardsville), David J. Myers (Pennsylvania State), Martin Needler (New Mexico), James L. Payne (Texas at College Station), Neale Pearson (Texas Tech, Lubbock), John H. Petersen (Western Kentucky), Robert L. Peterson (Texas at El Paso), Alberto J. Pinelo (Northern Kentucky State), Guy E. Poitras (Trinity University), William Dirk Raat (State University College at Fredonia), Karen L. Remmer (New Mexico), Riordan Roett (Johns Hopkins, SAIS), H. J. Rosenbaum (City University of New York), J. Mark Ruhl (Dickinson College), Steffen W. Schmidt (Iowa State), Carl E. Schwarz (Fullerton College), Martin L. Seeger (Creighton University), Mitchell A. Seligson (Arizona), John W Sloan (University of Houston), Peter G. Snow (Iowa), Charles L. Stanisfer (Kansas), Andrés Suárez (Florida), Lewis A. Tambs (Arizona State), Philip B. Taylor (University of Houston), Joseph S. Tulchin (North Carolina at Chapel Hill), F. LaMond Tullis (Brigham Young), Frederick C. Turner (Connecticut), Richard J. Walter (Washington, St. Louis), Howard J. Wiarda (Massachusetts), James W. Wilkie (UCLA), Edward J. Williams (Arizona), Miles W. Williams (Central Missouri State), Ralph Lee Woodward (Tulane), Freeman J. Wright (Montana), plus myself and several respondents who either neglected to sign their responses (a fact we neglected to observe when the letters arrived) or asked that their names not be published. As a matter of interest for those colleagues involved in doing survey research in Latin America, the Spanish version of the questionnaire that was adminstered in Argentina was accompanied by this writer's promise not to divulge the respondents' names publicly in that country for the indefinite future, i.e., the lingering sensitivity over the various U.S. clandestine activities in Latin America and fears over public collaboration with North American social scientists.