Professional Documents
Culture Documents
The Challenges of
Creating Democracies
in the Americas
The United States, Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela,
Costa Rica, and Guatemala
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For my wife Jan
and
my mother-in-law Barbara
Preface
This book may be my last one. The approach of my 74th birthday, accompa-
nied by the invasion of an unexpected and often destructive disease, engen-
dered a new awareness about my mortality. Regardless of whether I will have
the energy and drive to initiate and complete a book that I have been planning
for several years, I consider myself a very fortunate individual.
My move to the United States in 1965 opened doors to a future I could
never have imagined. After spending 19 turbulent years in Argentina, a
long stint in Vietnam in the late 1960s as an Army reporter and photog-
rapher, and the attainment of US citizenship, I finally found my passion.
My mother said it best in 1983 when she stated, “Who would have
dreamed that you, who barely made it through high school, cared about
little but swimming in the Rio de la Plata, and skipped classes regularly to
go to the movies, would eventually get a Ph.D. from Stanford University.”
I don’t have a clue as to what made that transformation possible, but I am
very grateful that it happened.
This project would have never been completed without the hard work
and tremendous patience of two of my Connecticut College students.
Zander Weisman Mintz spent months collecting data and writing about
Venezuela’s and Colombia’s distinct political experiences. Elise Hope
Dunn carried out the same task in her analysis of Mexico. Zander also
contributed to the analysis of the Mexican case at a later stage.
I am grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their very helpful criti-
cisms and suggestions. I am also thankful to Connecticut College for
granting me multiple sabbaticals and providing the necessary financial
support via my endowed chair.
vii
viii PREFACE
ix
x Contents
Index261
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
This book’s principal objectives are threefold. The initial goal is to identify
the key challenges encountered by six political entities in the Americas as
each one tried to create its own state and form its own political regime.
The second objective is to postulate a set of time-related hypotheses that
capture the evolutionary processes of state creation and political-regime
formation. The third objective, which is closely related to the first two, is
to explain why some states in the Americas have been more effective than
others at creating a democratic regime. Since the arguments presented
here are built on the contention that past developments can affect the
state-creation and political-regime-formation processes, the analysis begins
with the identification of the main conditions each newly freed entity
inherited from the colonial period. An examination of the challenges each
group encountered as it sought to create a state and form a political regime
is followed by an evaluation of its effectiveness in addressing those tasks.
The six cases investigated in this book are the United States, Mexico,
Colombia, Venezuela, Costa Rica, and Guatemala.
Rationale
Democracy is in peril. Just a few decades ago, most Western political sci-
entists would not have voiced such a concern. They would have agreed
with the contention that democracy was the “only game in town.”1 They
would have added that in places where democracy had been consolidated,
the return to authoritarianism had become an unacceptable alternative.2
Today, such a bold assertion would be questioned, and with very
good reasons.
In the 1920s, only a very small number of sovereign states had political
regimes that would have qualified as democratic. By 1990, that number
had increased to 69, and by 2012 to 117. Between the years 2005 and
2013, however, more countries experienced a decline in political rights
and civil liberties than an increase.3 Equally disturbing are the figures rep-
resenting the percentage of millennials in developed democracies who
actually support democracy. In the United States, the number of millenni-
als who believe it is “essential to live in a democracy” is only 30 percent.
In Australia, Great Britain, the Netherlands, and New Zealand the per-
centage is at 40 percent or lower. Ironically, the last four states are among
the 16 most developed democracies in the world. The numbers remain
troubling as the analysis focuses on those who believe that it is preferable
to have a “strong leader who does not have to bother with parliament and
elections.” As could be expected, the percentage in places such as Russia,
Romania, Ukraine, and Turkey oscillates between the high 50s and the
high 70s. But sadly, though the percentages are much lower, they have
increased in the United States and Germany, as well as in Mexico,
Argentina, Peru, and Uruguay, four South American countries that seemed
to have finally embraced democracy some two to three decades ago.4
Is the world beginning to witness the steady downfall of democracy?
Will a modified form of authoritarianism arise, one in which autocratic
leaders limit the access to multiple sources of information in order to mold
the preferences of the public? The two questions beg another question:
Should democracy be desired?
Any serious attempt to answer the questions forces analysts to recog-
nize that despite democracy’s present allure among many people in vari-
ous corners of the world, for much of history political leaders and
philosophers did not view it favorably. Plato posited that oligarchies turned
into democracies when elites overindulged, became idle and wasteful, and
developed interests separate from those they ruled. Democracies did not
fare much better. Democracies became tyrannies when mob passion over-
took political reason and autocrats became the darling of the masses.
Machiavelli was no less critical. He argued that democracies catered to the
whims of the people, who too often accepted false ideas, misused their
resources, and failed to take into consideration potential threats until it
1 INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF THE PROBLEM 3
was too late. The founders of the United States also feared democracy.
John Adams warned that democracies never lasted long. Every democracy
throughout history self-destructed. James Madison was equally troubled.
But then Winston Churchill told us to keep in mind that no one “pretends
that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democ-
racy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that
have been tried from time to time.”5
Churchill’s implicit warning should not be taken lightly. Democracies
have not always enabled the wisest to lead, and too often, they have
become victims of the whims of uninformed populists. But it should not
be forgotten that though open and competitive political systems have not
always shielded democracies from grave errors, they have enhanced the
chances to correct those mistakes before they became unbearably costly.
Other political systems lack such safety measures. Moreover, no other sin-
gle type of political system has empowered the voices of those who, forced
to remain quiet throughout history, can finally be heard and counted.
The study of the conditions that either facilitate or obstruct the forma-
tion of democratic regimes is an old enterprise. Some investigators have
focused on single cases; others have conducted comparative studies in dif-
ferent regions. Based on their works, analysts have derived multiple argu-
ments, often in the form of theories. Because democracies have emerged
in every region of the world, and at different times in history, it would be
futile to attempt to develop a theoretical argument applicable to states
worldwide without first acquiring a clear understanding of the struggles
that states in particular regions endured at different point in time as they
strove to consolidate and legitimize their power and establish democratic
regimes. Hence the rationale for focusing solely on a few states in the
Americas.6
Methodology
Process-tracing procedure is an analytical tool utilized to draw “descrip-
tive and causal pieces from diagnostic pieces of evidence—often under-
stood as part of a temporal sequence of events or phenomena.”7 As David
Collier explains, process-tracing helps to: (a) identify and describe political
and social phenomena, (b) evaluate prior explanatory hypotheses, discover
new ones, and assess the new causal claims, (c) gain insights into causal
mechanisms, and (d) provide alternative ways of addressing challenging
problems such as reciprocal causation, spuriousness, and selection bias.8
4 A. R. HYBEL
Case Selection
The decision to study the United States, Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica,
Colombia, and Venezuela demands answers to two questions: Why com-
pare the state-creation and political-regime-formation processes of the
United States with those of Spanish American states when their histories
and cultures are so different? Why include in the analyses the experiences
of Mexico, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Venezuela, and Colombia and not of
other Spanish American states?
The analysis presented here rejects the contention that the inclusion of
the United States in the comparison would elicit arguments of limited
theoretical value. The United States’ pathway to democracy was neither
predetermined nor intentional. Much of its evolution was defined by a
combination of domestic and external factors that compelled the US lead-
ers to steadily transform the nature of the state and of their political sys-
tem. As demonstrated in this study, though differences existed between
the ways the United States and the Spanish American colonies evolved
into states and formed their respective political regimes, many similarities
were also present. The identification of the differences and similarities
helps develop a better understanding of the types of obstacles and oppor-
tunities newly independent entities in the Americas encountered as they
created their respective states and political regimes and, as a result, helps
determine what enabled or prevented the development of democratic
regimes. In short, despite the fact that the founders of the United States
feared democracy, unintentionally they helped set up its foundation, which
in turn served in a number of cases as a model for the Spanish American
leaders who were determined to create their own sovereign states and
distinct political regimes after they gained independence from Spain.
With regard to the second question, it is evident that the comparison of
cases other than Mexico, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Venezuela, and Colombia
would help elicit valuable explanatory hypotheses.10 In a separate book,
the state-creation and political-regime-formation experiences of the
1 INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF THE PROBLEM 5
United States are compared with those of Argentina, Chile, and Peru.
Needless to say, there are many other Spanish American cases that could
also be studied, and this analyst hopes that other investigators will assume
such responsibility and compare their conclusions with those arrived at in
this volume and its companion.
There are several distinct rationales for selecting Mexico, Venezuela,
Colombia, Costa Rica, and Guatemala. Mexico is one of Spanish America’s
most idiosyncratic states. Because of its richness and vastness, and its sig-
nificance to Spain for much of its colonial period, Mexico stood singularly
apart from the other Spanish American colonies. For much of the nine-
teenth century, the same type of domestic political turmoil that afflicted
other Latin American entities plagued Mexico. However, despite this simi-
larity, none of the other Spanish American states was forced to surrender
large parcels of its territory to the United States, had its own capital threat-
ened by the US military forces, or was governed for a brief period by a
European political figure who assumed the title of emperor.11 In addition,
Mexico, from the late 1920s until 2000, was the only Spanish American
state that did not experience a military coup; was ruled by a single political
party despite having relatively open elections; and ultimately managed to
partially overcome its past and give rise to a regime that, notwithstanding
its multiple deficiencies, is democratic. To explain these differences, it is
important to examine what made Mexico’s political history so unique.
What was it about Mexico that led it to undergo such a distinctive trans-
formation? Why did a state that experienced many of the same conditions
generated by colonialism in other colonies throughout Spanish America,
and that suffered many of the same problems the other newly freed states
encountered during the nineteenth century, ultimately moved along a dif-
ferent political path in the twentieth century?
The comparative analysis of Colombia and Venezuela builds on the con-
clusions arrived at in the Mexican study. The investigation is guided by this
question: Why would Colombia ultimately be markedly more successful
than Venezuela at creating the state and forming a quasi-democratic
regime, when the two shared common borders, achieved independence at
almost the same time, and were members of the same confederation during
their immediate years after independence? The question becomes substan-
tially more intriguing when one considers that for some three decades after
1959, Venezuela was viewed by many researchers as one of the few Spanish
American states that had succeeded at creating a stable democracy, while
during the same period Colombia’s political regime was being challenged
6 A. R. HYBEL
A few final points about the selection of cases: Brazil is Latin America’s
biggest country, has the largest population, economy, and military force,
and houses one of the most populated democracies in the world. Those
characteristics alone would justify its inclusion in the analysis. Two reasons
dictate its exclusion. First, this analyst does not possess the knowledge about
Brazil needed to conduct a meaningful study. Second, the intent through-
out the book is to conduct a comparative analysis of the United States and
Spanish American states, not of the United States and Latin American states.
This analyst recognizes that the comparison of Brazil’s state-creation and
political-regime-formation experiences with a number of Spanish American
states, and possibly the United States, would bring to light some valuable
arguments, but such an analysis is beyond the scope of this study.
To sum up, the six cases investigated throughout this book share both
similarities and differences in the creation of their respective states and
political regimes. The analysis of how each state and its political regime
evolved through time helps reveal possible causal relationships between
the conditions that either facilitated or obstructed the construction of
stable states and democratic political regimes. It is imperative to keep in
mind that the relationships between state creation and regime formation,
though distinct, are generally dependent on one another. As the study
shows, many states that initially were assumed to have attained stability, in
fact, had not; and political regimes that early on were deemed to be demo-
cratic often became nondemocratic. To understand what brought such
changes, it is essential to study the interconnections between the creation
of the state and the formation of its political regime. Stated differently,
because setbacks in attaining state stability and achieving democracy were
not uncommon, investigators are compelled to expose the conditions that
brought about changes in one or the other process, or in both, at specific
points in time, and determine how those conditions differed when some
of those same entities were finally able to create stable states and form last-
ing democratic regimes.
Each empirical case closes with a two-part examination. In the first part,
the factors that either served democratization well or impeded its develop-
ment are identified. The contents of the analyses can vary substantially
from case to case. Because this study uses cases as building blocks and as a
way of assessing the explanatory value of earlier conclusions, some analyses
are more detailed and more complex than others. The second part exam-
ines the obstacles to further democratization and compares those conclu-
sions with the ones derived in the previous cases.
The empirical cases are arrayed in a specific order. Chapter 3 explains
the creation of the United States as a state actor and the development of
its political regime. Mexico is a unique case, and thus also merits its own
separate chapter. Its analysis is conducted in Chap. 4. Chapter 5 focuses on
Colombia and Venezuela’s distinct experiences and presents several
hypotheses. Chapter 6 focuses on the state-creation and political-regime-
formation processes of Guatemala and Costa Rica, and also posits a small
set of hypotheses designed to explain their distinct experiences. Chapter 7
brings the various arguments together in the form of revised hypotheses.
To fulfill the objectives identified at the start of the Introduction, it is
necessary to address a set of questions:
This is not the place to bring to the fore the multiple hypotheses pos-
tulated in the conclusion, but the presentation of a summary version of
the arguments derived from them is justified.
First, the empirical examinations establish that the values, beliefs, and
ideas the British and Spanish colonizers brought to the Americas influ-
enced greatly their approaches to colonization—approaches that after
independence affected significantly their processes of state creation and
political regime formation.
Second, the analyses demonstrate that a region’s topography, natural
resources, and characteristics of the indigenous population also played a
1 INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF THE PROBLEM 11
Notes
1. Juan J. Linz and Alfred C. Stepan, “Toward Consolidated Democracy,”
Journal of Democracy, Vol. 7, Number 2, April 1996: 14–33.
2. See Roberto Stefan Foa and Yascha Mounk, “The Signs of Deconsolidation,”
Journal of Democracy, Vol. 28, No. 1 (January 2017): 5–16.
1 INTRODUCTION: THE NATURE OF THE PROBLEM 15
Bibliography
Collier, Simon. 1967. Ideas and Politics of Chilean Independence: 1808–1833.
Cambridge University Press. Print.
Diamond, Jared. 1997. Guns, Germs, and Steel. New York: W. W. Norton and
Company. Print.
Diamond, Larry, Jonathan Hartlyn, and Juan J. Linz. 1999. Introduction: Politics
Society, and Democracy in Latin America. In Democracy in Developing
Countries, ed. Larry Diamond, Jonathan Hartlyn, Juan J. Linz, and Seymour
Martin Lipset. Boulder, CO: Lynne Reinner Publishers.
16 A. R. HYBEL
Foa, Roberto Stefan, and Yascha Mounk. 2017. The Signs of Deconsolidation.
Journal of Democracy 28 (1): 5–15. Print.
Freedom House. 2017. Freedom in the World, 2014. Web. January 24.
Hybel, Alex Roberto. 1986. The Logic of Surprise in International Conflict.
Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath and Company. Print.
———. 2019. The Making of Flawed Democracies in the Americas – the United
States. Chile, Argentina; Peru, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Print.
Langworth, Richard. 2008. Churchill by Himself. New York: Public Affairs. Print.
Linz, Juan J., and Alfred Stepan. 1996. Toward Consolidated Democracy. Journal
of Democracy 7 (2). Print.
CHAPTER 2
Introduction
This chapter is divided into two parts. The first part discusses and evalu-
ates alternative definitions of the state and theories of state creation. The
second one examines and assesses different conceptualizations of democ-
racy and theories of democratization.
The State
Charles Tilly proposes that an organization that controls the population
occupying a defined territory is a state insofar as it is characterized by the
following conditions:1
took place on the fringes of economic Europe. “In the smaller of these
peripheral nation-states, the typical sequence was one of gradual build-up
at the ethnic center, rapid imperial expansion, [and] consolidation within
a more homogeneous territory.”19 Second, democracy in Europe began to
take form only after political, economic, and cultural unification at the
elite level had been attained and channels of contact between the center
and the periphery had been established.
The drive to form a nation requires building a national identity, unify-
ing administrations, and roping in territories that were accustomed to
high levels of autonomy and had resisted centralization.20 Before the era of
mass politics, the transition from state-building to nation-building, and
then to the development of unified cultures, depended greatly on three
factors. States that underwent the Protestant Reformation were markedly
more successful than states that did not experience such change. States
that were not deeply divided along linguistic and ethnic lines were also
more effective.21
Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan address questions similar to those just
articulated. They first differentiate the state from the nation. The nation
lacks autonomy, agents, or rule. Its only resources are derived from the
psychological identity developed by leaders and the people within a state.22
Based on this differentiation, they ask: “Under what empirical conditions
are the logics of state policies aimed at nation-building congruent with
those aimed at crafting democracy?” Conflicts, they explain, are reduced
“when almost all of the residents of a state identify with one subjective
idea of the nation, and when that nation is virtually coextensive with the
state. These conditions are met only if there is no significant irredenta
outside the state’s boundaries, if there is only one nation existing (or
awakened) in the state, and if there is little cultural diversity within the
state.”23 When such conditions are present, governmental leaders can pur-
sue democratization and nation-state policies at the same time.
The United States did not become a state overnight. In Saskia Sassen’s
words, a powerful and legitimate state “evolved out of a loose confedera-
tion—eventually a federation—with extensive decentralized powers resid-
ing at local levels, with a culture of local self-government, and with strong
participatory democracy.”24 An examination of existing studies of the
United States’ state-creation experience, however, reveals that the com-
mon shortcomings they all share are failures to explain the actual evolu-
tion of the United States as a state and the reasons it evolved in the
manner it did.
22 A. R. HYBEL
Democracy
According to Robert Dahl, a contemporary democracy is a political system
that is “completely or almost completely responsive to all its citizens.” A
political system will remain responsive to the preferences of its citizens
only if they have unimpaired opportunities to:
speak freely, voice their opinions, and associate, one could claim that in the
year 1900 the United States was both an exclusive democracy and an illib-
eral democracy, but still some kind of democracy.
The above argument begs the question: How do we justify categorizing
the United States as a defective democracy in 1900 when more than half
of its citizens did not possess the legal right to vote? More directly, why
even label the United States a democracy? Were one to rely on Dahl’s
alternative classification, in 1900 the United States was a competitive oli-
garchy, not a polyarchy. Or if one were to use Guillermo O’Donnell’s
terminology, it was a democratic oligarchy, as less than half of the adult
population who were born in the United States or who were naturalized
citizens and over the age of 21 possessed the right to vote. Though other
states throughout the globe that were permitting only a portion of its
population to participate in the electoral process did not have to cope with
a racial divide, they would also be depicted as a competitive oligarchy or a
democratic oligarchy rather than a polyarchy.
Based on Sartori’s argument and the example just presented, it is clear
that one must first differentiate democratic regimes from nondemocratic
ones. A competitive oligarchy is not a democracy, not even a defective
democracy. This distinction does not preclude determining which
democratic regimes are more or less democratic. In short, a minimum
standard must be designed to determine when a regime begins being, or
stops being, a democracy.
The modern demos is a vast, atomized, and depersonalized mass soci-
ety, incapable of functioning as a collective decision-making body. This
condition forces the members of the demos to rely on representatives to
design policies. In such a world, free elections become the protectors of
the people’s power. Representatives make policies, but free elections force
policymakers to account for the preferences of the demos during the poli-
cymaking process. Without open access to information, however, free
elections would express nothing. To the extent that free elections protect
the power of the people, open access to information ensures that the rep-
resentatives do not undermine such power. In addition to representation,
elections, and access to competing sources of information, the contempo-
rary democratic state is characterized by the presence of political parties.
As Dahl notes, “elections cannot be contested in a large system without
organization. To forbid political parties would make it impossible for citi-
zens to coordinate their efforts in order to nominate and elect their pre-
ferred candidates.”48
30 A. R. HYBEL
not guarantee that the elected officials will be permitted to perform their
assigned roles. Throughout history, there have been many cases in which
elected officials were prevented from assuming office, Congress or the
Judiciary was dismissed, or the holder of the executive office was either
toppled or forced to resign by a group or organization insulated from the
electoral process.64 Those actions engender an analytical problem.
Let us imagine a regime in which there is political competition between
the parties, information flows relatively unhindered, civil rights are fairly
well protected, and public participation is not restricted in any of the
forms identified earlier. At the same time, however, the voters’ level of dis-
satisfaction and the tension between the competing parties have grown
measurably. Then, after repeated failed attempts on the part of the elected
political leaders to resolve their differences, the military intervenes, top-
ples the government, dismisses the Congress, and decides who should rule
or appoint some of their own as the new rulers. Is the regime that was
toppled a nondemocratic regime? Or is it a democratic regime that was
not solid enough to protect itself by resolving the existing tensions, and
thus unintentionally empowered the military to take over the reins of
government?
It is not possible to draw a precise line that separates one category from
the other. However, it is feasible to differentiate between two types of
regimes: one is structured according to democracy’s basic tenets and exists
uninterruptedly for an extended period, but at some point, is toppled by
the military; the other is a regime that, despite its one or many attempts to
adhere to democracy’s basic tenets, is toppled by the military shortly after
its creation. The crucial factor in this comparison is the longevity of the
political regime. The regime in the first case can be characterized as a
defective democracy; the regime in the second case never managed to
achieve the status of democracy. In other words, durability matters.
Theories of Democracy
What are the conditions that enable certain countries, but not others, to
develop stable polyarchies? According to Dahl, a country’s chance to
develop a polyarchy is dependent on whether the following conditions are
present:65
2. Those who control the means of coercion are subject to the demo-
cratic process; and
3. Power, influence, authority, and control are dispersed from a single
center toward a variety of entities;
4. Society is marked by a “relatively high level of income and wealth
per capita, long-run growth in per capita income and wealth, a high
level of urbanization, rapidly declining or relatively small agricul-
tural population, great occupational diversity, extensive literacy, a
comparatively large number of persons who have attended institu-
tions of higher education; an economic order in which production
is mainly carried on by relatively autonomous firms whose decisions
are strongly oriented toward national and international markets, and
relatively high levels of conventional indicators of well-being, such
as physicians and hospital beds per thousand persons, life expec-
tancy, infant mortality, percentage of families with various consumer
durables, and so on;”66
5. People are culturally homogeneous or are at least not segmented
into strong and distinctive subcultures;
6. People are supportive of democratic institutions, particularly in their
political activities and
7. Government is free of threats by foreign powers hostile to
democracy.67
Linz and Stepan identify a similar set of factors. The creation of the
state, they note, is a necessary condition for a regime to become a consoli-
dated democracy, but not a sufficient one. Five other mutually reinforcing
conditions must also be present. They are:68
Linz and Stepan then postulate that a state that has a plurality of
national, linguistic, religious, or cultural societies will have great difficulty
creating and maintaining a stable democracy.69
2 THEORIES OF STATE CREATION AND DEMOCRATIZATION 35
free elections, as time went by the intensity of the external appeals and
pressures weakened.73
Diamond and his co-authors present and assess the relevance of a large
number of potential “causal” variables. Within those variables, they some-
times identify conditions that impact them. They are the following:74
9. International factors:
a. US Policy.
6 §.
Tuntematon mies astui tämänjälkeen puhemies Näppisen
kehoituksesta pöydän taakse ja piti mukaansariipaisevan valtiollisen
esitelmän, jota läsnäolevat kommunismin solut kuuntelivat
lämpimällä mielihalulla.
7 §.
Hyväksyttiin yksimielisesti.