COMPARATIVE

Wood / AN INSURGENT
POLITICAL
PATH
STUDIES
TO DEMOCRACY
/ October 2001

In El Salvador and South Africa, mobilization by the economically and socially marginalized
impelled the transition to democracy, forcing the initial liberalization of the regime and eventu-
ally laying the political and economic foundations for democratizing compromise. These cases
thus provide an opportunity to analyze one mechanism by which mobilization “from below”
impels some regime transitions. In this insurgent path to democracy, sustained mobilization by
poor and working-class people transformed key interests of economic elites, leading to pressure
on the state to compromise with the insurgents, thereby strengthening regime moderates over
hard-liners with the result that negotiated transitions to democracy followed. The dramatis per-
sonae of these transitions were not contending elite factions, as in most Latin American and
southern European transitions, but representatives of distinct classes whose conflict of economic
interest propelled the conflict and whose economic interdependence contributed to the structural
basis of its democratizing resolution.

AN INSURGENT PATH TO DEMOCRACY

Popular Mobilization, Economic
Interests, and Regime Transition
in South Africa and El Salvador

ELISABETH JEAN WOOD

New York University

I n El Salvador and South Africa, mobilization by the economically and

socially marginalized impelled the transition to democracy, forcing the ini-
tial liberalization of the regime and eventually laying the political and eco-
nomic foundations for democratizing compromise. This causal centrality of
popular insurgency differentiates these cases from most other transitions to
democracy in which subordinate social actors played a more modest role, in
some cases constituting part of a cross-class democratic coalition, in others

AUTHOR’S NOTE: For comments on earlier versions or related work, I thank William Barnes,
Vince Boudreau, Samuel Bowles, Ruth Berins Collier, George Downs, Richard Fagen, Johannes
Fedderke, Michael Foley, Jeff Goodwin, Jeffrey Herbst, Samuel Huntington, Terry Karl, David
Lewis, Roy Licklider, Charles Meth, Barrington Moore, Jr., Nicoli Nattrass, Adam Przeworski,
Kenneth Roberts, Philippe Schmitter, Jeremy Seekings, Jack Spence, and William Stanley. For
COMPARATIVE POLITICAL STUDIES, Vol. 34 No. 8, October 2001 862-888
© 2001 Sage Publications

862
 Wood / AN INSURGENT PATH TO DEMOCRACY 863

mounting demonstrations that affected the pace of transition.1 The South

African and Salvadoran cases thus provide an opportunity to analyze one
mechanism by which mobilization “from below” impels some regime transi-
tions. In these cases, sustained mobilization by poor and working-class peo-
ple transformed key interests of economic elites, leading to pressure on the
state to compromise with the insurgents, thereby strengthening regime mod-
erates over hard-liners with the result that negotiated transitions to democ-
racy followed. The key dramatis personae of these transitions were not
contending elite factions, as was the case in most Latin American and
southern European transitions, but representatives of distinct classes whose
conflict of economic interest propelled the conflict and whose economic
interdependence contributed to the structural basis of its democratizing reso-
lution. I call this the “insurgent path to democracy.”
These transitions to democracy were highly contested because in both
cases the owners of exceptionally concentrated productive assets had particu-
lar reason to resist democratization. In both societies, the distribution of
income and the perpetuation of economic privilege was determined by insti-
tutions in which the state played a far greater role than in liberal economies.
In these highly unequal societies, economic elites long opposed democratiza-
tion not only for the usual reason—that the many might expropriate or heavily
tax the few—but because their livelihoods depended on state-enforced proce-
dures unlikely to be sustained under democratic rule. In South Africa, these
included the reliance on highly regulated foreign migrant labor, strict con-
trols on the mobility of domestic labor, and an extreme racial bias in public
spending; in El Salvador, they included strict limits on political competition,
the overthrow of reformist governments that attempted moderate
redistributive measures, and directly coercive workplace practices that long
prevented any labor organizing. Thus an elite-initiated transition to democ-
racy was unlikely in these cases, as was a military victory by insurgent forces
given the cohesiveness of economic and regime elites. Neither country was
defeated in war by a foreign power, nor did a regime transition by imposition

1. Mobilization “from below” that culminates in insurgent military victory rarely results in
democracy. Nicaragua in 1984 is an exception but one complicated by international
involvement.

financial support, I thank the U.S. Institute of Peace, the Harvard Academy for International and
Area Studies, the MacArthur Foundation, and the Stanford Center for Arms Control, the Tinker
Foundation, and the Institute for the Study of World Politics. For institutional support, I am
grateful to the Development Policy Research Unit and the South African Labour and Develop-
ment Research Unit, both of the University of Cape Town, and to the Universidad
Centroamericana José Simeón Cañas.
864 COMPARATIVE POLITICAL STUDIES / October 2001

occur. As these canonical paths to democracy were closed, democratic transi-

tions were once thought quite unlikely in either case.2 Thus the transition to
democracy in these two cases poses a puzzle. Why did Salvadoran elites—
historically among the most antidemocratic in the hemisphere, whose princi-
pal party was founded by the mastermind of the country’s notorious death
squads—eventually accept democratic rule? In the South African case, why
did the leaders of the apartheid regime finally decide to abandon their
attempts to limit citizenship and suffrage and to negotiate with the African
National Congress (ANC)?
As in many other cases, the route to democracy that occurred in both coun-
tries was a transition negotiated by representatives of the regime and an oppo-
sition. However, in sharp contrast to most negotiated transitions in which rep-
resentatives of economic elites or traditional political parties sit on the
opposition side of the table, in El Salvador and South Africa opposition lead-
ers represented those whose low incomes and political exclusion had been the
erstwhile basis of elites’ income flows.
Three processes together comprise this insurgent path to democracy. First,
in both countries, political mobilization fostered by political and economic
exclusion deepened to insurgency as limited reforms and brutal repression
exacerbated grievances and foreclosed more moderate forms of protest,
eventually constituting the leadership of the popular opposition as an “insur-
gent counterelite,” by which I mean representatives of economically subordi-
nate and socially marginalized social actors that are a necessary party to
negotiations to resolve an enduring crisis of the political regime.
Second, the ongoing political mobilization eventually led some economic
elites to consider compromise. The accumulating costs of the insurgency
(including various counterinsurgency measures) threatened and then trans-
formed core economic interests, eventually convincing substantial segments
of the elite that their interests could be more successfully pursued by a demo-
cratic transition than by continued authoritarian recalcitrance. As a result,
these economic elites pressed state elites to negotiate, changing the balance
of power between regime soft-liners and hard-liners. Third, the political bar-
gains undergirding these insurgent transitions took a particular form whereby
insurgents accepted political inclusion at the cost of moderation of their eco-
nomic agenda, principally a commitment to economic liberalism with little
change in the distribution of wealth.

2. On El Salvador, see Rueschemeyer, Huber Stephens, and Stephens (1992, p. 247); on the
general obstacles to democratic resolution of revolutionary struggles, see Stinchcombe (1999,
pp. 64-69).
 Wood / AN INSURGENT PATH TO DEMOCRACY 865

In this article, I focus on the second process whereby sustained political

mobilization pushed hitherto recalcitrant elites to compromise on democratic
rule. The argument is developed using a research design based on J. S. Mill’s
method of agreement. On the eve of the transition to democracy, El Salvador
and South Africa were different in many ways, most strikingly in their levels
of industrialization, the institutionalization of the rule of law, and the degree
of ethnic cleavage. I trace a common outcome in the two cases—a transition
to democracy in an oligarchic society—to a common proximate antecedent:
the presence of a sustained insurgency. I identify a mechanism whereby that
antecedent plausibly produced the outcome: Sustained insurgency trans-
formed elite economic interests, leading to compromise. A secondary argu-
ment is that this common antecedent of sustained mobilization by subordi-
nate social actors reflects a common history of long-standing coercive labor
practices enforced by an exclusionary political regime. The analysis draws
on interviews with political actors including insurgent leaders, business rep-
resentatives, and government officials in El Salvador between 1987 and 1996
and in South Africa between 1997 and 1999, as well as on analysis of docu-
ments and macroeconomic data.

TRANSITIONS TO DEMOCRACY
IN OLIGARCHIC SOCIETIES

The “third wave” of transitions to democracy began in Latin America and

southern Europe where elites were the dominant actors in both the regime and
the opposition, in contrast to later transitions in Africa, Eastern Europe, and
Asia, where popular protest played a more significant role (Bratton & van de
Walle, 1997; Collier, in press; Geddes, 1999). As a result, the initial analyses
of third-wave transitions emphasized the role of elites: Moderate regime
elites initiate a period of liberalization that, if followed by an agreement with
moderate opposition elites (usually leaders of opposition political parties, as
these were generally cases of redemocratization), culminates in a transition
to democracy (O’Donnell & Schmitter, 1986; Przeworski, 1991). In this
view, a transition is a highly contingent political process in which economic
interests play little role and popular mobilization is both ephemeral and of
ambiguous effect: Although it may push forward a transition if it occurs at the
right time and to the right extent, it may also reinforce regime recalcitrance.
This initial literature did not account for the initial split between soft-
liners and hard-liners, which was treated as exogenous (Collier & Mahoney,
1997, pp. 286-287). The literature generally skirted this problem by focusing
866 COMPARATIVE POLITICAL STUDIES / October 2001

on the dynamics of transition following the initial liberalization, thus neglect-

ing the social and often economic conflicts that frequently led to liberaliza-
tion. It also conflated as “elites” a wide range of political actors, including
leaders of the regime, established political parties, powerful economic
groups, and organized labor and social movements (Collier, 1999, pp. 17-
19). The result was to overlook the difference between transitions that reflect
the weakness of the regime vis-à-vis the traditional (and usually elite) politi-
cal opposition and those in which a group hitherto excluded from power had
forced its way to the bargaining table.
Of course a political pact between contending leaderships was crucial to
the two transitions considered here—indeed, few transitions were as tightly
choreographed with as certain an electoral outcome as the South African
case. But these were not pacts between elites except in the tautological sense
in which anyone who participates in a pact is an elite. Although most leaders
of both the ANC and the Salvadoran guerrilla group, the Farabundo Martí
Front for National Liberation (FMLN), were well-educated people who had
significantly wider economic opportunities than the workers and peasants
they represented, and although there was little doubt that members of the
ANC negotiating team would be powerful members of any postapartheid
government, their place at the bargaining table came only by virtue of their
leadership of powerful insurgent organizations. That some of these leaders
subsequently became regime elites or economic elites in the aftermath of the
transitions to democracy should not be confused with their role as counter-
elites in the negotiations that led to those transitions.
Because subsequent literature drew on a broader universe of cases, ana-
lysts increasingly recognized that nearly all transitions combine elements
“from above” with elements “from below”: mobilization by subordinate
social actors in some circumstances may be crucial to the process of demo-
cratic transition. Indeed, scholars revisited some of the canonical initial cases
and found a greater role for popular mobilization in impelling the transition
than had been hitherto understood, as in Collier’s (1999) analysis of the
Spanish and Peruvian cases.
However, with the proliferation of arguments explaining various cases or
sets of cases, there is little consensus in the literature concerning the condi-
tions under which popular mobilization may contribute to a transition to
democracy. Nonetheless, a number of recurring themes are evident. In con-
trast to the initial emphasis on political, not economic, calculus by key actors,
the literature increasingly analyzes how economic interests shape the politics
of transitions, as in the work of Haggard and Kaufman (1995). Differences
 Wood / AN INSURGENT PATH TO DEMOCRACY 867

between types of antecedent regimes are increasingly invoked to explain

important variations between cases (Geddes, 1999). Extending the work of
Therborn (1979) and Moore (1966), other authors emphasize the importance
of working-class actors in forcing elites to extend suffrage and of the avail-
ability of urban bourgeois or petty rural groups for alliance with these actors
as a result of capitalist development (Collier, 1999; Rueschemeyer, Huber
Stephens, & Stephens, 1992). Finally, international actors and changing
international opportunities may play important causal roles in the politics of
transitions (Remmer, 1995).
The analysis presented here draws on these recurring themes. The distinc-
tive nature of this insurgent path—the emergence of an insurgent counter-
elite and the transformation of elite economic interests—reflects the oligar-
chic character of the antecedent regime and class structures. Both South
Africa and El Salvador were what I term “oligarchic societies”: societies in
which economic elites rely on nonmarket regulation of labor by the state for
the realization of incomes superior to those possible under more liberal,
market-based arrangements. Thus oligarchic societies are those in which the
dominant labor relations are what Moore termed labor-repressive. By “eco-
nomic elites,” I mean those who by virtue of their control of the means of pro-
duction attain significant wealth and social status. By “regime elites,” I mean
those individuals whose power depends on their occupation of state offices.
By “nonmarket regulation,” I mean institutions that coercively discipline
labor, such as slavery, restrictions on the mobility of labor (such as serfdom,
debt peonage, criminal vagrancy laws, and pass laws that prohibit residency
in some areas without a state-issued pass), and gross violations of the liberal
rights of free speech and association that repress nascent attempts by laborers
to organize. In contrast, in liberal societies, labor regulation and discipline
occur through competition for employment on labor markets, the state’s
enforcement of property rights, and the bargaining of workers free to orga-
nize themselves collectively.
The distinction between market and nonmarket regulation of labor is not
always sharp, as Moore (1966, p. 434) himself recognized. Some workplace
practices discourage labor organization yet would not be considered coer-
cive, and some forms of nonmarket control of labor are not in the interests of
economic elites (as in Brazilian corporatism). Nonetheless, it seems useful to
distinguish between cases in which state agents act directly to secure wages
and working conditions that deliver high levels of income to economic elites
and those in which the state provides a general, liberal, market-based frame-
work for labor relations.
868 COMPARATIVE POLITICAL STUDIES / October 2001

In oligarchic societies, the reliance of economic elites on nonmarket regu-

lation of labor by regime elites leads to an enduring alliance between the two,
with economic elites’ supporting the authoritarian political structures on
which their economic position depends. In addition to the higher incomes
made possible by labor-repressive practices, economic elites enjoy other
privileges that are also unsustainable under democratic rule, including state
spending sharply skewed toward their interests. The result may be extreme
and racially coded inequality as in South Africa or less extreme inequality as
in El Salvador; however, it is not inequality per se but rather the way it is sus-
tained that explains the characteristic politics of oligarchic societies. Because
the existing distribution of income and wealth is perpetuated through the oli-
garchic alliance, the resulting cohesiveness of economic and regime elites
when challenged from below means that these regimes are not vulnerable to
overthrow by the mobilization of cross-class alliances of political actors, as
were the personalist regimes of Nicaragua, the Philippines, and many Afri-
can regimes, where some economic elites were excluded from state power
and supported insurgent forces.
The interests of regime elites and economic elites do of course differ in oli-
garchic societies: Economic elites prefer to retain the largest possible share
of their profits for private consumption or renewed investment, whereas
regime elites prefer to capture resources for the state through taxation. Such
differences may lead to significant strain within the alliance in times of labor
acquiescence, particularly where regime elites and economic elites are
largely drawn from ethnically distinct populations, as in South Africa. But in
oligarchic societies, elites join forces to defend their common interests
against mobilization that might threaten the political control of labor or the
stability of the polity and thus the existing distribution of wealth, political
power, and social status.
In such societies, the exclusivist ideology of economic and regime elites
(whether racially coded or not) toward subordinate groups together with
coercive labor practices, the rigid enforcement of class (and perhaps racial)
boundaries, and the repression of mobilization fuels deep resentments that
can be mobilized by an insurgent group based on a claim to common citizen-
ship; moreover, ongoing repression may contribute to the emergence of its
leadership as an insurgent counterelite (on South Africa, see Marx, 1992,
1998; Price, 1991; Seidman, 1994; on El Salvador, see Wood, 2000, pp. 47-
49). Thus insurgency in oligarchic societies may emerge and force economic
and regime elites to negotiate a transition to democracy.
 Wood / AN INSURGENT PATH TO DEMOCRACY 869

INSURGENCY, SHIFTING ELITE INTERESTS, AND

COMPROMISE IN EL SALVADOR

I am absolutely willing to sell. It’s been a nightmare, trying to work it or to rent

it. If we want to work the property, they [the FMLN-allied peasants occupying
the property] are not going to let us.
—Salvadoran landlord, interviewed by author, 1992

In El Salvador, widespread mobilization and then guerrilla insurgency

disrupted a long-standing pattern of state enforcement of coercive labor rela-
tions, which had been forged in the late 19th and early 20th century as coffee
cultivation rapidly expanded in areas of dense indigenous settlement, a pat-
tern unique to Latin America. Rather than the gradual workings of land mar-
ket or the lure of wages, in El Salvador the factors of production for the
expansion of coffee were secured by a deliberate redefinition of property
rights by fiat and by direct coercion (Stanley, 1996; Williams, 1994). Police
forces founded to enforce the new property rights dispossessed indigenous
communities, some of whose members settled on the new estates as a quasi-
bound labor force.
By the 1920s, the landed elite together with immigrant families that
invested in coffee mills and export firms began to coalesce into an oligarchy
of a few dozen families. Although the economy became more diverse and oli-
garchic families more numerous after World War II, economic power
remained extremely concentrated as this small elite controlled the financial
sector, the agricultural sector, and the slowly expanding manufacturing sec-
tor (Colindres, 1976, 1977; Paige, 1987; Sevilla, 1985). From the suppres-
sion of a largely indigenous rebellion in 1932 until the civil war (with brief
exceptions), the military ruled while economic elites controlled economic
policy as ministers of various cabinet posts. Although reformist factions of
the military occasionally attempted to modernize land tenure and labor rela-
tions (in 1944, 1960, 1972, and 1976), the core alliance of landlords and mili-
tary hard-liners repeatedly defeated such attempted reforms. Although
patron-client relations were gradually replaced by wage labor, close relations
between local landlords and military commanders—which included the per-
manent billeting of state security forces on individual estates—endured until
the outbreak of civil war in 1980.
The brutally repressive response of the Salvadoran state to increasing
political mobilization by peasants, workers, and students in the 1970s led
many hitherto nonviolent activists to support the guerrilla forces (which
870 COMPARATIVE POLITICAL STUDIES / October 2001

united as the FMLN in 1980). The threat posed by mobilization, repression,

and armed conflict led to a coup of reformist officers in 1979. Although the
reformists were soon marginalized, the ongoing insurgent threat led to the
formation in 1980 of a new governing alliance between the military and the
Christian Democratic Party (PDC), supported by the United States (Stanley,
1996). Under this new alliance, a series of reforms designed to undermine the
social bases of the insurgency was carried out. In contrast to previous initia-
tives, these reforms endured; in the eyes of the U.S. and Salvadoran policy
makers, reform was necessary because of the ongoing military capacity of the
FMLN. Despite these reforms and U.S. assistance, by the mid-1980s a mili-
tary stalemate was in place, one made dramatically clear in 1989 when the
FMLN attacked San Salvador and occupied a number of wealthy
neighborhoods.
Military stalemate does not by itself create conditions for the enduring
resolution of civil conflict, as the ongoing war in Angola demonstrates. In the
Salvadoran case, however, the civil war had dramatically reshaped the eco-
nomic structure of the country, thereby laying the structural conditions for
compromise. Insurgency, together with the state’s counterinsurgency poli-
cies, had two economic effects. First, national output rapidly declined from
the 1978 peak: the (real) per capita domestic product fell 28% between 1978
and 1982.3 Capital flight contributed to the fall as wealth holders sent capital
abroad. Although a further decline was arrested (in part by massive interna-
tional assistance), production stagnated between 1982 and 1989.
Second, there was a very significant shift in the relative contributions of
the component sectors: As a share of domestic product, export agriculture,
the economic basis of the oligarchy, declined sharply, whereas the commer-
cial and service sectors surged (see Figure 1).4 This sectoral shift occurred for
several war-induced reasons. The guerrilla forces targeted export crops for
sabotage and extracted “war tax” payments that eroded profits. The land
reform carried out by the counterinsurgency alliance in 1980 resulted in the
expropriation of about a quarter of all farmland in the country, including 38%
of the land planted in coffee on large farms (greater than 100 hectares in
areas), 28% of all land planted in cotton, and 11% of that in sugar.5 Moreover,
in a classic instance of “Dutch disease,” an extraordinary inflow of dollars
3. Unless otherwise noted, all Salvadoran data are calculated from the national accounts
data published by the Central Reserve Bank in its quarterly Revista Trimestral.
4. Export agriculture is defined here as the sum of the value added contributed to the gross
domestic product by the production of coffee, cotton, and sugar. It includes the initial processing
of coffee and sugar but not coffee roasting, beverage production, or other food processing.
5. Calculated from Tables VI, V, and VI of Wise (1986) and from the 1971 agricultural
census.
 Wood / AN INSURGENT PATH TO DEMOCRACY 871

40
Commerce
35

Percent of GDP
30
25
20 Manufacturing
15
10
5 Export Agriculture
0
1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995

Export Agriculture Manufacturing Commerce

Figure 1. Structure of gross domestic product (GDP) in El Salvador, 1970 to 1993.

(both official U.S. transfers and a growing flood of remittances from

Salvadorans relocated to the United States to avoid the war) caused the price
of nontradables to soar compared with that of tradables, further undermining
the export sector and increasing the value of other sectors. As a result, the
profitability of the agro-export sector relative to other uses of capital declined
sharply during the years of the war. The decline in agro-export profits would
have been even greater had it not been for the labor policies maintained
throughout the war: Real wages for agricultural workers declined by 63%
between 1980 and 1991 (Boyce, 1996, Table A.12).
These economic trends were the result of insurgency (and the counter-
insurgency measures it prompted), not the result of the gradual moderniza-
tion of the economy as markets expanded. El Salvador did not experience the
classic modernizing process whereby manufacturing displaces agriculture
and creates moderate class forces that unite to displace an agrarian elite.
Rather, in El Salvador export agriculture had expanded as a share of domestic
production (and in real terms) through the 1970s while manufacturing
declined as a share of output. Nor was the decline of export agriculture due to
world market, climatic, or other conditions, as is clear from the fact that the
coffee sectors of neighboring countries, which faced the same conditions,
prospered during the war years (see Table 1).
As a result of this structural transformation, by the late 1980s economic
elites in El Salvador drew much more of their income from the commercial
and service sectors than from traditional export agricultural production and
processes.6 Interviews with wealthy Salvadorans indicate that families that
6. Data on individual portfolios are not available: In El Salvador such information is
extremely closely guarded, even within families.
872 COMPARATIVE POLITICAL STUDIES / October 2001

Table 1
Coffee Production in Central America, Percentage of Change, 1979 to 1991

Country Yield Area Production

El Salvador –12.9 –3.1 –15.8

Guatemala 19.4 –3.9 14.3
Costa Rica 14.4 31.3 50.0
Honduras 29.2 22.2 56.8
Source: Data from Food and Agricultural Organization (1992 and 1993, Table 78).
Note: Calculated as percentage change between average of 1979 to 1981 values and average of
1990 to 1992 values.

failed to diversify were marginalized economically and politically. More-

over, the prospect for increased investments through participation in free
trade agreements was a further incentive to resolve the war lest trade and
investment go to other countries (Paus, 1996, p. 270).
Of course a transformation of elite economic interests does not in itself
lead to political compromise. Indeed, despite the counterinsurgency reforms,
collaboration between hard-line elements of the oligarchy and the military
continued in the early 1980s. With the financial help of wealthy Salvadoran
exiles in Miami, rightist hard-liners led by Roberto D’Aubuisson both devel-
oped death squads to deter political mobilization through intimidation and
violence and founded the National Republican Alliance party (ARENA) to
contest for power in elections.7 The founding of a political party to directly
represent elite interests rather than to rely on governance by the military was
a new development in El Salvador. Even the limited electoral competition
under conditions of civil war had unintended outcomes: The United States
promotion of political liberalization resulted in the victory in the 1982 consti-
tutional assembly elections by ARENA—a political party representing hard-
line elements that the counterinsurgency reforms were designed to under-
mine.8 After the United States made clear its strong opposition to
D’Aubuisson’s nomination as interim president, a compromise was reached
whereby ARENA gave up the presidency but took control of the Ministry of
Agriculture and the agrarian reform institutions, effectively ending imple-
mentation of agrarian reform. The rift in the oligarchic alliance was made
decisive when the military recognized the PDC’s victory in the 1985 presi-
dential election—a necessary step if U.S. aid was to continue.
7. The Truth Commission for El Salvador (1993), mandated by the peace agreement to
investigate civil war violence, documented the close ties between the leaders and funders of
ARENA (National Republican Alliance party) and the death squads.
8. ARENA won only a plurality, but with the support of allied parties it commanded a
majority.
 Wood / AN INSURGENT PATH TO DEMOCRACY 873

No longer able to rely on military allies to govern, ARENA leaders sought

to broaden the electoral base of the party by appealing to new constituencies,
including middle-class voters and small businessmen. A significant step in
this process occurred in September 1985 when Alfredo Cristiani replaced
D’Aubuisson as party president, signaling a shift within the party away from
the hard-liners of the Miami group. Cristiani’s faction, with its diversified
economic interests, was more tolerant of democratic norms and aspiration
than were those members of the elite with interests narrowly based on coffee
cultivation, as documented by Paige (1997) in his extensive interviews with
Salvadoran elites.9 For these moderate elites, the decline of export agriculture
lessened their perceived reliance on coercive labor practices—urban unem-
ployment and labor market competition would adequately discipline labor in
the booming service and commercial sectors—and made likely compromises
imaginable. With the help of a U.S.-funded think tank, the Cristiani faction
developed and proposed a set of neoliberal policies (Johnson, 1993).
Neoliberalism was attractive to these elites for several reasons: Its emphasis
on private sector innovation could justify reprivatizing the nationalized sec-
tors, its agenda of neoliberal reforms would render the state incapable of
threatening elite economic interests even if a hostile party governed, and lib-
eralization of capital flows would discipline the state against redistributive
measures (Wood, 2000, pp. 244-246).
The revamped party proved appealing to voters, and Cristiani was elected
president in 1989. After the FMLN’s 1989 offensive in San Salvador, negoti-
ations to end the war began in earnest under UN mediation and led to a series
of interim accords that culminated in the signing of the final peace agreement
on January 16, 1992. The negotiators agreed that a UN mission would moni-
tor human rights during the cease-fire (the first significant expansion of UN
peacekeeping to civil wars), define constitutional reforms to the judicial and
electoral systems and to the mandate and prerogatives of the military, and
endorse the founding of a new, civilian police force. The FMLN would
become a political party, some members of the FMLN would join the new
police force, and ex-combatants of both sides (as well as civilian supporters
of the FMLN occupying properties in conflicted areas) would have the
opportunity to buy land on credit. The peace process culminated in the first
inclusive elections in 1994, in which the ARENA candidate won the presi-
dential contest (after a second round of voting), but the FMLN made a
respectable showing, winning 25% of the vote in the first round.

9. Revelations that a ring of kidnappers that had preyed on the elite included military offi-
cers associated with D’Aubuisson also contributed to the transition in leadership (Stanley, 1996,
pp. 238-240).
874 COMPARATIVE POLITICAL STUDIES / October 2001

Had the shift in elite economic interests not taken place, it is highly
unlikely that crucial elements of the negotiated settlement, particularly the
police reform and the transfer of significant land to FMLN supporters, would
have been acceptable to ARENA negotiators. Willingness to compromise
was in part a recognition of transformed relations in the countryside, as indi-
cated by the comment that appears at the beginning of this section. In inter-
views, economic elites described the shift in elite interests, as did this busi-
ness organization official:

The structure of capital has changed. The big capitalists have left agriculture,
they’ve left the countryside broken up by the agrarian reform. There are still
some in agro industry and exporting, in coffee mills and cotton gins. Medium
capitalists have also changed their way of thinking and of investing quite a bit;
they’re diversifying as they recapitalize the country. Now it’s the Arabs [a term
referring to Salvadorans of Middle Eastern origins] who are the strong capital-
ists. They’ve little in land, but they have the assets in the biggest textile facto-
ries and in fast food—in MacDonald’s, Biggest, Mr. Donut, and Wendy’s.
(interviewed by author, 1992)

One member of an oligarchic family reflected in an interview that if eco-

nomic elites had been less recalcitrant in the 1970s, the war could have been
avoided. He expressed his willingness to collaborate in the peace process:
“We have to be positive, not a single shot has been fired [during the cease-
fire] and everybody has to pay a quota of sacrifice. Let me not sound as
though I favor either the FMLN or the army.” In the peace negotiations,
ARENA representatives consistently defended the interests of these diversi-
fied capitalists while compromising on the interests of those few elites (or
erstwhile elites, as many had become much less wealthy) whose principal
interests remained in export agriculture. Such landlords lamented the terms
of the agreement (from interview by author, 1992): “We landlords weren’t
represented at the [negotiating] table in Mexico. No one now represents our
interests!”
Other factors also contributed to the negotiated resolution of the civil war.
The killing of the six Jesuit priests by the government’s Atlacatl Battalion
during the FMLN’s 1989 offensive resulted in renewed congressional oppo-
sition to U.S. funding of the Salvadoran military (Whitfield, 1994). Because
(thanks to the insurgent threat) the military was dependent on U.S. funding, a
shift in U.S. policy toward negotiation ensured the military’s compliance. As
the military stalemate dragged on, moderates within the FMLN gained influ-
ence. Thus the end of the cold war reinforced the dynamics pushing the par-
ties toward democratizing compromise. Although it is possible that the mili-
 Wood / AN INSURGENT PATH TO DEMOCRACY 875

tary stalemate, together with the end of the cold war—but without the shift in
elite economic interests emphasized here—would have led eventually to a
resolution of the Salvadoran civil war, it is quite doubtful that a transition to
democracy would have occurred as it did, with remarkably little political vio-
lence after the signing of the peace agreement.

INSURGENCY, THE SUSPENSION OF INVESTMENT,

AND COMPROMISE IN SOUTH AFRICA

Obviously the route we were on could have led to absolute ruin, to scorched
earth. Increasingly it was difficult for us to do business or travel abroad. We
could actually see a revolution on its way. It was there for everybody to see.
—Chamber of Mines official, interviewed by author, 1997

In South Africa, labor-repressive institutions dating from the colonial

period ensured an ample and acquiescent labor force for agriculture and min-
ing in the resource-rich, labor-scarce economy. Ongoing dispossession of
African farmers created an expanding labor force dependent on wage labor
and lowered the income that employers would have to match to attract work-
ers. As a result, the wages of African mineworkers did not rise in real terms
between 1911 and 1969 despite a manyfold increase in productivity (Wilson,
1972). As manufacturing and other urban economic activities expanded
throughout the 20th century, increasing numbers of African workers were
allowed to work and reside in restricted areas. However, under ever more
elaborate legal regulations, their residency depended on a valid pass endorsed
by their employer, without which they were subject to deportation to the labor
reserves (later “bantustans” and “homelands”), a policy that strengthened
employers’ bargaining power by depressing the reservation wages of African
workers (Wintrobe, 1998; Wood, 2000, pp. 144-150).
The uneasy but long-enduring alliance between the Afrikaners and the
“English” (the generally English-speaking, non-Afrikaner population) dat-
ing from the settlement of the Boer War forged a highly unequal society in
which class and race coincided ever more closely. Reflecting the weakness of
liberal and cross-racial political aspirations in the virtually all-White elector-
ate, the National Party ruled without interruption between 1948 and the early
1990s. As the state promoted Afrikaner economic and political interests at
the expense of English interests, the interests of English business elites con-
verged with the interests of White labor and the rapidly expanding Afrikaner
876 COMPARATIVE POLITICAL STUDIES / October 2001

business group on the maintenance of residential segregation, the illegality of

African trade unions, and the political disenfranchising of non-White adults.10
After government troops opened fire on pass law protestors in Sharpeville
in 1960 and subsequently banned the ANC, protest subsided for more than a
decade until an outbreak of strikes in Durban in 1973. Despite various mea-
sures by the state to contain union organizing, unionists succeeded in build-
ing various unions and federations in the 1970s. Political mobilization in
townships also surged. After police killed several schoolchildren in Soweto
in 1976, protest lasted more than a year, spreading to more than 100 urban
areas.
In response, conservative modernization took two forms, the reform of
labor market and pass law regulations and the promotion of non-White politi-
cal representation in racially segregated institutions (including the bantu-
stans, local municipal councils, and racially defined “own affairs” parlia-
ments). Significant changes to labor regulations, influx controls, township
governance, and other restrictions on African workers and residents were
made at the recommendations of the Weihahn and Riekert Commissions
beginning in 1979. Unions grew explosively and became increasingly mili-
tant, leading to the founding of the Congress of South African Trade Unions
(COSATU) in 1985. With the organization of the United Democratic Front,
civic organizations became increasingly militant as well, particularly after
the 1983 constitution reaffirmed the exclusion of Africans from citizenship.
Unrest spread widely in the Transvaal from 1984 through 1986 despite a
series of intensifying states of emergency. By 1985 continued governance
required the occupation of some townships by the army. Various government
efforts to create or attract Black moderates to new constitutional discussions
failed as candidates refused to participate.
With the failure of conservative modernization, business confidence
declined. Except for a brief increase from 1979 to 1981 as a result of a boom-
ing world price of gold, a widespread and enduring decline of previously
buoyant investment—what I call the investment U-turn—coincided with this
deepening pattern of sustained mobilization and repression. Figure 2 shows
that the ratio of private gross domestic investment over capital stock for both
annual and business cycle averaged data responded to such political events as
the Durban strike wave in 1973, the Soweto uprising in 1976, and the wide-
spread rebellion from 1984 to 1987.11 Thus investment fell as unrest
10. The various policies to regulate labor had contradictory effects, and many business orga-
nizations consistently opposed some policies that limited the supply of urban labor. Nonetheless,
until the 1970s reforms, the overall effect of apartheid policies was to keep wages low and labor
quiescent.
11. All South African data are from South African Reserve Bank publications.
 Wood / AN INSURGENT PATH TO DEMOCRACY 877

7
6.5
Percent of Capital Stock

6
5.5

5
4.5
4
3.5
3
1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995

Annual Business cycle average

Figure 2. Private investment in South Africa, 1960 to 1993.

increased. Alternative explanations for declining investment, such as declin-

ing profit rates and skilled-labor shortages, are inconsistent with the time
trends in the relevant data series (Wood, 2000, pp. 161-166).
South Africa Reserve Bank analysts—generally a group wary of
noneconomic explanations—attribute the U-turn in investment to explicitly
political factors, including a diffused lack of confidence in the economy, per-
vasive uncertainty about South Africa’s future, increased civil unrest, nega-
tive foreign perceptions of the socioeconomic and political situations, trade
sanctions and boycotts (especially financial sanctions), disinvestment by for-
eign enterprises, and, after the early 1980s, the domination of the labor mar-
ket by “strong and militant labor unions that negotiated successfully for high
real wages that were not matched by productivity growth” (Prinsloo & Smith,
1996, pp. 36-37).12
An econometric analysis of investment in South Africa confirms this
emphasis on political unrest as a determinant of investment. Heintz (2000)
found that his index of strike activity and political detentions was a statisti-
cally significant determinant of investment: his decomposition of the
observed decline in investment between 1971 and 1992 shows that it was the
increase in political instability (not changes in the other determinants of
12. Prinsloo and Smith (1996) also list other, nonpolitical, factors such as drought and the
reduction of investment by some of the parastatal enterprises.
878 COMPARATIVE POLITICAL STUDIES / October 2001

3000 10000

Short-term, Million 1990

Long-term, Million 1990 2000 5000

1000 0

Rand
Rand

0 -5000
1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990
-1000 -10000

-2000 -15000

Year
-3000 -20000

Long-term, nonmonetary, private inflows

Short-term, nonmonetary, private inflows

Figure 3. Short- and long-term private capital flows to South Africa.

investment such as the level of capacity utilization, the cost of capital, and the
profit rate) that accounts for most of the observed decline.
Another measure of declining investor confidence is the reduction and
redirection of foreign investment in the South African economy. The 5-year
moving average of real long-term private capital flows (excluding those
related to reserves) rose steeply during the boom of the 1960s and remained
high during the early 1970s before falling steeply (see Figure 3). After 1977,
the long-term capital flowed outward. The graph also shows flows of short-
term private capital (unaveraged, to capture the timing of capital move-
ments). During the 1960s boom, short-term capital flowed into South Africa,
but beginning in 1975 it flowed out (except for a sharp peak of inflows during
1981-1983 following the gold price surge). Years of unrest and those imme-
diately following (1973, 1976, and 1984-1987) registered downturns in the
flow of short-term capital. Econometric analyses also confirm this relation-
ship between political instability and capital flows: Fedderke and his collabo-
rators found that political instability was a significant determinant of capital
movements from 1960 to 1996.13
Sustained insurgency had other, less direct, effects as well, shaping the
movement of other economic variables such as the exchange rate and the cost
of capital. As a result of the massive outflows of capital, the value of the rand
declined by 34% from 1983 to 1985. As a significant portion of capital goods
13. See Fedderke (2001) and Fedderke and Liu (in press). However, their political stability
index does not include strike data, only other forms of social unrest.
 Wood / AN INSURGENT PATH TO DEMOCRACY 879

were imported, the decline in the rand contributed to a sharp increase in the
cost of borrowing and thus of investment. For example, the user cost of capi-
tal for the manufacturing sector rose very sharply in the mid-1980s and
remained at unprecedented high levels until the transition (Prinsloo & Smith,
1996, p. 37). Moreover, by the mid-1980s, the mobilization against apartheid
had landed one of its most decisive if unsung blows on economic elites, the
removal of the credit subsidies long enjoyed by investors. Further direct
evidence that political unrest in South Africa caused increased investor un-
certainty is provided by a study of the effect of news of unrest on the willing-
ness of foreign exchange traders to hold the rand (Melvin & Tan, 1996).
Intensifying international sanctions also contributed to the suspension of
investment, the outflow of capital, and the fall in the exchange rate. But such
sanctions were not exogenous; rather, they were responses to the domestic
dynamic of mobilization and repression (as well as, of course, mobilization
by foreign activists in their own countries) (Lowenberg & Kaempfer, 1998).
An econometric study of the timing of a large number of “sanctions episodes”
over the entire period concluded that the increasing number and intensity of
sanctions reflected the rise in oppositional political activity in South Africa
as measured by the number of Black workers participating in strikes
(Kaempfer, Lowenberg, Mocan, & Topyan, 1995, p. 23). For example, the
most serious wave of sanctions—which included financial sanctions—was
triggered by the government’s imposition of a partial state of emergency on
July 20, 1985, after several months of ongoing unrest.
In contrast to the Salvadoran case, in which sustained rural insurgency led
to a shift in core elite interests between sectors of the economy, in the South
African case political mobilization posed a more general threat to elite eco-
nomic interests, sparing few if any major wealth holders (making this aggre-
gate analysis of performance sufficient). There are two reasons why this
impact was widespread rather than concentrated in a few sectors. First, major
business agglomerations such as Anglo American, Barlow Rand, and Nedcor
were highly diversified, with assets in a wide range of sectors. And second,
the well-developed stock exchange meant that business leaders individually
held a wide portfolio of interests.
Declining confidence in South African institutions not only undermined
investment but led to a period of extraordinary engagement with politics by
leading business elites, reflecting their recognition of the impossibility of
reconciling increasing economic interdependence among races with ongoing
political exclusion. In interviews, business elites emphasized labor mobiliza-
tion as central to their move to support political reform. For example, one
well-placed executive asserted that mining companies lost $150 million dur-
ing the 1987 gold mine strike and noted that among the lessons learned was
880 COMPARATIVE POLITICAL STUDIES / October 2001

the importance of “integrative bargaining where win/win is the outcome.”

The problem was not limited to strikes on the shop floor, according to a
Chamber of Mines official.

From the 1980s, you didn’t know whether your work force was going to come
to work in the morning in conflict-ridden areas—and very often 20% did not
because there were barricades and they just couldn’t get through. Or when they
arrived they were exhausted because they’d been terrorized the night before.
Essentially, it was harming the productivity of the labor force. (interviewed by
author, 1997)

He continued, “You didn’t have any access to international markets. Finan-

cial sanctions were biting. So a variety of factors created a climate of opinion
which said the current order was unsustainable.” Economic elites who were
interviewed emphasized their perception that labor mobilization was strong
in part because of the absence of fundamental political reform. For example,
according to one official of the South African Chamber of Business,

Because [workers] did not have a way to express political freedom, they used
the labor situation, the shop floor, to do that. And that was an important pres-
sure point on business. (interviewed by author, 1997)

Or as a mining executive expressed it,

[There was] no legitimate political avenue for political unrest, so it had to be

channeled into the only vehicle that’s available. And the only vehicle that you
can effectively not take away is labor. You may damn the organization, but you
can’t damn the workers. (interviewed by author, 1997)

Frustrated with the government’s vacillation between vain attempts to culti-

vate a moderate Black opposition through limited reforms and increasing
repression, representatives of business interests took a range of initiatives
that contributed crucially to accumulating pressure on state elites for political
reform.
Among these initiatives were campaigns by business organizations for
political reform. In January 1985, all the principal business organizations
(including the usually conservative Afrikaner organization) issued a mani-
festo calling for common and meaningful citizenship, the scrapping of the
pass laws, and the ending of forced removals (Lipton, 1985, p. 254). After
P. W. Botha’s recalcitrant speech of August 15, 1985, many business organi-
zations went further, calling for the release of Nelson Mandela and negotia-
tions with the ANC (O’Meara, 1996, p. 331). In 1986, the Federated Cham-
 Wood / AN INSURGENT PATH TO DEMOCRACY 881

ber of Industries called for universal rights to own property, to South African
citizenship, and to vote in secret balloting (with protection of the rights of
minorities under a vague consociational formula) as well as other civil liber-
ties. Although intermittent liberal opposition to particular apartheid policies
had been expressed by individual businessmen such as Harry Oppenheimer
since 1948, the level, radicalism, and coordination of these efforts were with-
out precedent.
Economic elites also took more direct steps to push the regime toward
political compromise. In September 1985, a group of executives of the largest
firms of South Africa flew to Lusaka for a clandestine meeting with the
ANC’s executive committee to discuss economics and government after
apartheid (Price, 1991, pp. 238-240). Although other organizations and
groups would soon carry out similar encounters, business initiated the
“Lusaka trek,” thereby making it easier for subsequent groups to do so. At the
end of 1986, a group of executives of major corporations met with domestic
representatives of opposition organizations (including several banned indi-
viduals) in South Africa, a discussion that led to the founding of the Consulta-
tive Business Movement to build mutual confidence among business, opposi-
tion forces, and government officials (an organization that would serve as the
secretariat for later negotiations). Two of the largest corporations, Nedcor
and Old Mutual, made presentations to hundreds of business and other
groups around the country in 1986 and 1987 that contrasted two scenarios of
South Africa’s future: in one, a one-party regime dedicated to African social-
ism leads to economic decline; in the other, democratic government by a
Black and White coalition conducts a pragmatic economic policy con-
strained by a bill of rights (Tucker & Scott, 1992). According to one executive
involved, the message was clearly that if South Africa were to remain profit-
able, political changes would have to be made and negotiations would have to
occur.
By the late 1980s, many business executives and nearly all business orga-
nizations agreed that the country should move toward a liberal nonracial
democracy, the state should play a role in redistributing wealth and address-
ing poverty from the proceeds of growth, and negotiations with Black leader-
ship were necessary (Bernstein & Godsell, 1988, pp. 170-171). After the
release of Nelson Mandela and the unbanning of the ANC, economic elites
continued to play key roles. Beginning in 1989, business and labor represen-
tatives negotiated a series of agreements on many aspects of labor relations,
hammering out the general outline of posttransition capital-labor relations
and thereby contributing to the overall process of transition. This process cul-
minated in the institutionalization of a role for both capital and labor in the
design of economic policy via a corporatist bargaining forum, the National
882 COMPARATIVE POLITICAL STUDIES / October 2001

Economic Development and Labour Council (NEDLAC), established a few

months after the 1994 elections.
As a result of the economic downturn fueled in part by declining invest-
ment and the government’s efforts to reform apartheid, the National Party’s
traditional coalition of White labor, Afrikaner business, and the civil service
began to collapse in the early 1980s. Some constituents were disillusioned by
the party’s efforts and abandoned the party for the new Conservative Party.
The economy’s poor performance was also an incentive for some voters to
look elsewhere. By the early 1980s, less than half of Afrikaners supported the
National Party (O’Meara, 1996, p. 308). Other constituents were dismayed at
the failure of the party’s efforts at reform. The Afrikaner business sector
increasingly perceived its core interests as more akin to those of English busi-
ness than to those of the National Party and Afrikaners generally and joined
initiatives pressing for fundamental reform. After the 1984-1986 uprising
and repression, increasing numbers of influential Afrikaner intellectuals and
religious leaders renounced apartheid. The failure of efforts to liberalize
apartheid without compromising White supremacy left the party without an
agenda, particularly after the end of the cold war undermined hard-liners’
justification for continued recalcitrance (Giliomee, 1997, pp. 17-19).
The National Party faced other problems as well, including the displace-
ment of party regulars by the increased militarization of government under
Botha, growing opposition to the overextension of its defense forces into
neighboring states and to conscription among Whites, and the rising costs of
the apartheid bureaucracy with its five presidents, 1,500 members of parlia-
ment, and tens of thousands of local councillors (O’Meara, 1996, p. 351).
These issues, together with the failure of reform and repression, deepened
divisions within the party between moderate and conservative factions.
As a result of the increasing pressure by both insurgents and economic
elites for fundamental political change and the indirect pressure of ongoing
economic stagnation (fueled by elite suspension of investment and sanctions
imposed in response to regime repression and recalcitrance), moderate party
leaders and government officials increasingly pressed within the regime for
fundamental reform. By 1985, regime officials including Kobie Coetsee and
Niëls Barnard were carrying on intermittent conversations with Nelson
Mandela; in 1984 government officials met secretly with members of the
ANC in Geneva; another meeting occurred in Paris in 1986.14 Although Pres-
ident P. W. Botha initiated some of these initiatives and acquiesced to others,
he did not publicly acknowledge them. After illness loosened his grip on
power, F. W. de Klerk, whose ties were to other party leaders rather than to
14. This paragraph draws on Sparks (1995), Seegers (1996), and Waldmeir (1997).
 Wood / AN INSURGENT PATH TO DEMOCRACY 883

Botha’s “securocrats,” became first the leader of the National Party and then
state president. Known as a conservative, de Klerk proved at least as prag-
matic as conservative: He released Mandela and unbanned the ANC and the
South African Communist Party, thereby making possible a negotiated
transition.
In contrast to ARENA’s confidence that it could compete successfully in
elections after the transition, the National Party negotiated in the shadow of a
virtually certain ANC victory in nonracial elections. In the long process of
negotiations that culminated in the 1994 elections, elite economic interests
were largely protected in the new constitutions and labor laws. Indeed, the
ANC dropped nationalization from its policy proposals and embraced trade
liberalization by 1992 (Nattrass, 1994; Padayachee, 1998). The principle of
the right to private property, with expropriation allowed only under a limited
range of conditions and with compensation required, was entrenched in both
the 1993 interim and the 1996 final constitutions. Although property rights
were protected, the National Party failed in its attempt to ensure White
minority interests through ethnically based consociational schemes. Apart-
heid had imposed closely intertwined patterns of class and race; one of its leg-
acies was a powerful nonracial movement of subordinate social actors that
rejected state-defined ethnic categories, claiming a common citizenship in a
single nation (Marx, 1992, 1998). The ANC made federalist concessions, but
the resulting power-sharing arrangements did not include any explicit recog-
nition of group rights (much less a National Party veto); they provided only
for a sharing of cabinet seats and deputy presidencies during the first post-
transition government.

CONCLUSION

Why then did the elites of these oligarchic societies abandon their impla-
cable opposition to democratic rule and negotiate a transition to democracy
with the insurgent counterelite? Along the insurgent path to democracy
described here, insurgency was sustained long enough to create the structural
conditions for the resolution of conflict: It constituted an insurgent counter-
elite with whom negotiations proved necessary and it directly threatened the
interests and opportunities of economic elites (via labor mobilization in
South Africa and peasant insurrection in El Salvador) such that they came to
judge the foreseeable returns to continued recalcitrance as less than the
returns to compromise with the insurgents. Economic elites in both countries
came to believe that their interests would be better secured under a transition
to democracy by a combination of the discipline of labor offered by glutted
884 COMPARATIVE POLITICAL STUDIES / October 2001

labor markets, the discipline of economic policy promised by the threat of

capital flight in liberalized economies, and constitutional assurances of the
security of their property. As a result, economic elites pressed for negotiation
with insurgent forces. As in many countries, in both South Africa and El Sal-
vador, once negotiations were under way, the insurgent counterelite deployed
renewed political mobilization whenever the process faltered, an ongoing
reminder of insurgent capacity to reimpose costs on economic and regime
elites.15
In response to increasing repression and inadequate reform, international
actors reinforced domestic pressure on the regime to negotiate, imposing
economic sanctions in South Africa and conditioning military assistance on
negotiations in El Salvador. In addition, the fall of the Communist regimes of
Eastern Europe made the implementation of socialist policies increasingly
unlikely while also making elite opposition to democratic rule increasingly
difficult to justify. The global hegemony of neoliberalism reassured elites
that other alternative economic models were also unlikely to be sustained if
implemented. The joint result of both was thus to truncate the set of possible
long-term outcomes in ways that facilitated compromise by reinforcing the
essentially domestic dynamics of compromise. The Salvadoran military ini-
tially compromised its autonomy and eventually bent to U.S. pressure only
because it was unable to defeat the FMLN on its own. Similarly, long-standing
moral condemnation of the apartheid regime around the world did not pro-
voke effective international sanctions until massive mobilization and brutal
repression within South Africa prompted states, international bodies, and
global businesses to go beyond token measures.
The argument presented here is closely related to Collier’s (1999) path of
“destabilization/extrication,” whereby working-class unrest destabilizes the
authoritarian regime, initiating processes that eventually lead to transitions
(pp. 114-132). However, the causal role played by subordinate social actors
in these two transitions was significantly greater. Not only did the insurgent
counterelite sit at the bargaining table (as do labor representatives in some of
Collier’s cases), but in the two cases considered here, no other party to the
negotiations (except for the government) was remotely as important to the
success of any resulting agreement.
There are of course significant differences between these two transitions
despite their common insurgent path to democracy. In El Salvador, insur-
gency evolved from widespread mobilization to a largely rural civil war,

15. Adler and Webster (1995) document how insurgent mobilization impelled negotiations
in South Africa once they began.
 Wood / AN INSURGENT PATH TO DEMOCRACY 885

occasioning a massive sectoral shift in the core interests of the economic

elite. In South Africa, insurgency was largely urban as mobilization by labor
and township organizations lowered profits across virtually all sectors and
undermined business confidence, leading to declining aggregate investment.
A crucial aspect of the Salvadoran process was the founding of a political
party to represent elite economic interests: After ARENA won the 1989 elec-
tions, economic elites with diversified interests became regime moderates in
control of the executive. In contrast, a crucial aspect of the South African pro-
cess was the decline of the political party that had long governed the country.
Finally, the outcome of posttransition elections (in 1994 and 1999 in both
countries) was distinct: The ANC swept into power whereas the FMLN led
the opposition (but gradually increased its share of municipal and legislative
offices).
There are several implications of this argument for our understanding
of regime transitions. First, to explain the varied and evolving alliances that
struggle over democratization, we need to distinguish between traditional
political elites, regime elites (of varied types), distinct types of economic
elites with different ways of securing profits, leaders of labor or popular
movements that play an occasional if important role, and counterinsurgent
elites whose organizations’ ability to sustain mobilization over the years has
made them necessary partners to negotiations. Second, distinct forms of
mobilization pose different threats to distinct regimes; we should develop
these causally relevant distinctions. The insurgency in both South Africa and
El Salvador, although embracing a heterogeneous range of economically
marginalized people, secured the massive participation of classes on whom
the profits of economic elites depended and thus inflicted substantial costs on
those elites.
Third, elite economic interests (other than the most abstract such as pri-
vate property rights) are endogenous to the trajectory of conflict; they are not
fixed as is often assumed by a wide range of social science approaches, includ-
ing simple versions of both Marxist and rational choice approaches. Together
these three lessons may help us account for the crucial initial split between
hard-liners and soft-liners that initiates liberalization in other countries as
well. Fourth, where civil conflict is largely structured by class, the economic
interdependence of the contending parties may contribute to compromise—
even if significant ethnic differences parallel those of class, as in South
Africa—in contrast to civil wars in which the parties are economically inde-
pendent, as when insurgents control diamonds or cocaine (Wood, 2000,
pp. 197-208 and 213-218).
886 COMPARATIVE POLITICAL STUDIES / October 2001

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Elisabeth Jean Wood is an associate professor at New York University where she teaches
comparative politics and political economy. She has done fieldwork for many years in
El Salvador as well as in South Africa. She is the author of Forging Democracy from
Below: Insurgent Transitions in South Africa and El Salvador (Cambridge University
Press, 2000) and of Insurgent Collective Action and Civil War in El Salvador (Cam-
bridge University Press, 2002), an ethnographic account of peasant insurgency.