Politics in Latin America

Abstract

This article develops and tests a model of the socioeconomic origins of political change and development by means of an in-depth analysis of the contemporary political history of fifteen Latin American countries. The analysis uses the logical structure of catastrophe theory in order to incorporate the discontinuous changes that are so prevalent in political development. The model is used to determine some of the conditions for the emergence of political polarization, political instability, and authoritarian regimes. The conclusions are that catastrophe theory does provide a useful framework for analyzing political change in Third World countries and that to maintain a stable polyarchy requires a relatively specific combination of political participation, distribution of income, and levels of education.