Measuring Democratic Change in Latin America

Abstract

rT HE CONTINUING STRUGGLE between democracy and various forms of totalitarianism for control of men's minds and actions does not, as time passes, lose either intensity or interest. The conflict is focused and dramatized by nature of international politics in what we earlier referred to as a bipolarized world. The sharpness of competition makes it important, even imperative, that we study, as carefully and thoroughly as may be, not only form and philosophy of one or another system of political control but also component elements of different types, how and why they change, and what trends may be deduced from as penetrating analysis as is possible. We like to think that United States is a democratic country, perhaps the great exemplar of democratic way of life and government. At times claims become even more grandiose and perfervid. And yet, a hundred miles south of Florida a highly vocal Latin American spokesman-probably more vocal than logicalmaintains that democracy in United States is a sham and a pretense. Fidel Castro holds that Cuba provides genuine illustration of democracy in hemisphere and that progress toward democratic goals is more viable and significant by far in his country than in ours. Such is semantic value of word democracy. In perhaps oversimple fashion, most persons in United States would be willing to define democracy in Lincoln's homely phrase, government by people. More thoughtful ones add some elementary corollaries: majority control but respect for minority rights,