Democratic and Revolutionary Traditions in Latin America

Abstract

This article seeks to identify and explain the historical links between democracy and revolution in Latin America. It first defines and analyses ‘democratic’ and ‘revolutionary’ traditions in the continent. It notes the precocity of nineteenth‐century Latin American liberalism which, stimulated by the independence struggles, carried implications for the subsequent onset of democracy in the twentieth century. It then presents a typology of five twentieth‐century political permutations (social democracy, revolutionary populism, statist populism, socialist revolution, and authoritarian reaction), seeking to tease out the corresponding relationships between the two ‘traditions’. It concludes (inter alia) that the current triumph of liberal democracy in Latin America, while in part attributable to historical precedent, is also significantly contingent, and dependent on the apparent exhaustion of the revolutionary tradition.