Recent Trends of the Nation-State in Contemporary Latin America

Abstract

The nation-state in contemporary Latin America has increasingly tended to its growth, autonomization, and supremacy as an apparatus, an institution, an embodiment of public élites, and as the main agency of the structure, operation, and development of national societies. This process has coexisted recently with a crisis of the state threatening its autonomy and capacity. The causes, characteristics, and consequences of the state's ascent, its interventionism and autonomization, and its limits and crises are analyzed. The weight of historical heritage, the contemporary factors and processes, both international and internal, and their interactions are considered. The hypothesis is advanced that the crisis of the nation-state does not exclude, and on the contrary reinforces, the possibility of its continuity and increased interventionism and autonomization under a variety of political types and forms.