Among the most outstanding changes that occurred in Spanish America during the first half of the twentieth century is the transformation in the area of education. Two salient features deserve emphasis. First, this change was quantitative: many more children came to attend school, and a greater proportion of the inhabitants became literate. Second, this increase in schooling came about within a homogeneous institutional framework. It was the Estado Docente – personified in national and provincial governments – which was the principal vehicle for educational services and which determined the contents of the curricula. The purpose of this article is to present a brief sketch of the most significant characteristics of this transformation.

Andrew Thompson's review of the long-running debate on informal empire will be welcomed both by specialists, who need to be reminded from time to time that many trees do sometimes make a forest, and by teachers, who need help in guiding their students through both. The comments that follow are therefore offered in a constructive spirit that is wholly in accord with Thompson's purpose in trying to take hold of a notoriously slippery concept. My aim in citing his work is to identify the batch of established arguments that his essay faithfully represents. The intention is to move the debate forward: the temptation to readvertise familiar positions will be avoided as far as is possible; the risk of drowning the argument in an excess of detail is removed by limitations of space.

This paper will explore the problématique of human rights in processes of political democratisation, specifically in the case of transitions from military to democratic regimes, and mostly in the Southern Cone of Latin America. It is, therefore, a historically-bounded analysis, rather than a more general enquiry into issues of human rights in the contemporary era. The construction of a general theory cannot be undertaken without consideration of the diversity of human rights experiences; democratisation in these countries is but one such experience.