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Inter-American Politics: Limited Thoughts on the Unthinkable

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Daniel Goldrich
Affiliation:
University of Oregon
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Extract

These are four books on inter-American relations, the focus necessarily requiring the authors to make an assessment of intra-national politics as well. With one partial exception (Powelson), none of them is based on anything approaching a theoretical orientation, and the frame of reference is not that of systematic empirical inquiry. Their value then for the student of comparative politics or international relations is extremely limited. All (except Vianna Moog) share a diffuse commitment to the prevailing U.S. value system which constrains their ability to define Latin American political realities. It is to this point that most of the present essay is directed.

Type
Review Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1964

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References

1 Pike, Fredrick B. has performed a similar highly creative service in Chile and the United States: 1880–1962 (Notre Dame 1963)Google Scholar, which focuses more on the psychology of the various social classes than does Powelson's work.

2 See Silvert, K. H., “Introduction” and “The Costs of Anti-Nationalism: Argentina,” in Expectant Peoples: Nationalism and Development, ed. by Silvert, (New York 1963)Google Scholar.

3 The comparative intra-national studies of Juan Linz (Spain) and intra- and international studies of Silvert and Frank Bonilla (Argentina, Chile, Brazil) demonstrate the value of operationalizing such major variables and submitting them to empirical assessment.

4 On this point, see Taylor, P. B., “The Mexican Elections of 1958: Affirmation of Authoritarianism?” Western Political Quarterly, XIII (September 1960), 722–44Google Scholar; and the monthly accounts of the Mexican campaign and other political events in the Hispanic American Report.

5 Almond, Gabriel A. and Verba, Sidney, The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations (Princeton 1963), 500CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 A useful report on legislative and public opinion in Brazil on international and domestic politics is Free's, Lloyd A.Some International Implications of the Political Psychology of Brazilians (Princeton 1961)Google Scholar.

7 See the evidence provided by Halperin, Ernst, “Castroism—Challenge to the Latin American Communists,” Problems of Communism, XII (September-October 1963), 918Google Scholar.

8 New York 1961.

9 The Preindustrial City: Past and Present (New York 1960)Google Scholar.

10 “Political Structure, Ideology, and Economic Development,” a paper prepared for the Carnegie Seminar on Political and Administrative Development, Department of Government, Indiana University, 1962.