Ruth Berins Collier

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1982.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1982.

Ruth Berins Collier and David Collier are political scientists who use comparative historical research to discover and evaluate patterns and sources of political change. Their work is an overall analysis of Chile, Brazil, Uruguay, Colombia, Argentina, Peru, Venezuela, and Mexico, plus case studies of four distinct pairs in that group: Chile/Brazil, Uruguay/Colombia, Argentina/Peru, and Venezuela/Mexico. In addition, the Colliers meticulously describe and discuss their methods for the study including the limitations of their approach. The authors specifically focus on why and how organized labor movements in the first half of the twentieth century were incorporated into the political process in the eight Latin American countries they study. They analyze the role played by political parties, central government control, worker mobilization, and conflict between radical vs. centrist political philosophies and activities.

The question of whether democratization is an elite-led process from above or a popular triumph from below continues to be an area of contention among political scientists. Examining the experiences of countries which have provided the main empirical base for recent theorizing, namely, Western Europe and South America in the 19th and early 20th centuries and again in the 1970s and 1980s, this book delineates a more complex and varied set of patterns. The volume explores the politics of democratization through a comparative analysis that examines the role of labor in relation to elite strategies in both contemporary and historical perspectives. In her detailed analysis, Professor Collier also describes multiple patterns within each historical period, challenges conventional understandings of these events, and recaptures a role for unions and labor-based parties in contemporary processes of democratization.

The question of whether democratization is an elite-led process from above or a popular triumph from below continues to be an area of contention among political scientists. Examining the experiences of countries which have provided the main empirical base for recent theorizing, namely, Western Europe and South America in the 19th and early 20th centuries and again in the 1970s and 1980s, this book delineates a more complex and varied set of patterns. The volume explores the politics of democratization through a comparative analysis that examines the role of labor in relation to elite strategies in both contemporary and historical perspectives. In her detailed analysis, Professor Collier also describes multiple patterns within each historical period, challenges conventional understandings of these events, and recaptures a role for unions and labor-based parties in contemporary processes of democratization.