State Formation and Democracy in Latin America, 1810-1900

Despite a shared colonial past, South American nations experienced different patterns of conflict in the 19th century. These differences led to the creation of a variety of states and regimes, from authoritarian military oligarchies to popular democracies. Using a rigorous logic of comparison, Fernando Lopez-Alves explores the roots of state building in five countries and explains why the political systems of these early post-independent societies were prone to militarism, corporatism, or liberal democracy. Breaking with traditional economic analyses of South American development, Lopez-Alves argues that civil-military relations lay at the core of state building. By comparing three countries in particular -Uruguay, Colombia and Argentina - during an intense phase of state and regime formation, he shows how war and the collective action of the rural poor contributed to the construction of central armies, the rise of new social classes, and the emergence of civilian organizations. He also examines characteristics unique to each country’s war-formed culture and discusses how coalitions were built during this period. The volume includes examples from Paraguay and Venezuela and references to state formation in Europe, the USA, Asia and the Middle East.