POLITICAL WAVES IN LATIN AMERICA, 1940-1988

To talk about waves, phases or cycles of democracy and dictatorship is a common way to generalize about Latin American political development, especially about the post Second World War development. Mitchell Seligson, for example, considers that a prevailing view among scholars is that there is a Latin American pattern consisting of political cycles of roughly twenty years' duration. 1 Karen Remmer emphasizes that the recent political development is a redemocratization of the region, forming one of the "cyclical shifts away from authoritarians.,,2 In a similar way, Harold Blakemore generalizes about modern Latin American politics:

Alain Rouquie does not use the democracy-dictatorship dichotomy, but rather a military-civil classification, he also underlines the regional alternations between different ,regimes. According to Rouquie, twelve out of twenty Latin American republics were military regimes in 1954, but only one was left by the middle of 1961 (Paraguay).5 After observing the military wave (or waves) in the 1960s and the 1970s, Rouquie then concludes that: As of 1976-77, democracy seemed to be making some headway once again .. .If one judges merely on the basis of figures, in 1978 twelve electoral consultations took place on the continent. This intense electoral activity seemed to augur a return to representative procedures. 6 Samuel Huntington has also paid attention to the regional political trend in Latin America which he sees as a result either of one of three possible factors, or of a combination of them. These three factors are: simultaneous parallel socioeconomic development; the impact of one "pace-setting" society on its neighbors; or a common external factor? Huntington provides a good starting point for analysis of the causes of the cyclical shifts. However, before a political phenomenon can begin to be explained it must be properly described. A fundamental criterion when labeling a regional political change as, for example, a wave of democracy, is that most of the countries in the region are washed over by this wave.
The aim of this paper is to make a systematic exploration of the proposition that modern political development of Latin American is characterized by swings between dictatorship and democracy. The result of such an exploration is, of course, highly dependent upon the definition of each form of regime or political system. Here an important guiding principle is that the definitions should be useful for comparative empirical analysis. Accordingly, this paper follows in the tradition of Schumpeter and also Huntington.
A political system is defined as democratic to the extent that its most powerful collective decision-makers are selected through periodic elections in which candidates freely compete for votes and in which virtually all the adult population is eligible to vote. 8 For the sake of simplicity, dictatorship or rather authoritarianism, is seen as the negation of democracy, Le. a political system without free and competitive elections. These two simple definitions will be used when testing the wave-proposition by studying, over time, the existence of one of the most crucial components of political democracy -the presidential elections.
The motive for such a study is simply that no systematic examination of the "veracity" of this proposition has been found.

ELECTIONS AND DEMOCRACY
In this paper elections are regarded as a prerequisite for democracy, a view that is not uncontested. With a less instrumental and more "principal" definition of democracy, voting could be seen as just one out of many methods of participation -neither better nor worse than any other. 9 Nevertheless, voting is by far the most common method of measuring and aggregating individual preferences in advanced societies and when elections are free, fair and competitive they normally meet the requirements of a democratic method.
However, non-free, unfair and non-competitive elections are also very common around the world, e.g. in Latin America. Such "elections without choice" do not qualify a regime for being classified as democratic. 10 An effort will be made in this work to identify such elections. Moreover, holding an election which does not allow freedom of choice for voters and/or competition between the candidates, i.e. holding a non-classical election, 11 is one way of breaking down a democracy. In that case, a non-classical election is a regime-shifting election.
Yet, the most common method used to end a period of democracy is the coup d'etat. Nevertheless, it is quite common for the resulting nondemocratic regime to hold elections. Guy Hermet identifies four functions of such state-controlled and non-classical elections: 1. They provide an occasion for the authoritarian government to communicate with the people; 2. They give the government the opportunity to educate and socialize the people; 3. They provide a means for the government to legitimize itself both nationally and internationally; 4. They provide a means for the government to "give public sanction to the rivalries of the different factions of the elite," to "capture new elements whose support is sought by the rulers," or "to weaken the influences of traditional forces such as the religious forces."12 When elections fill only these four functions they are at best held in a context of liberalization of the authoritarian regime. However, as long as they  do not determine who governs and with what policies they do not lead to democracy. The effect of the election on government policies is the third variable distinguishing classical from non-classical elections, the other two being freedom of voters and competition between candidates. 13 If an authoritarian regime holds an election that meets all of these three requirements, then the election is a democratization one.1 4 To sum up, elections are held in both authoritarian and democratic regimes, although with different functions. In a democracy the election actually determines who governs while in a dictatorship it does not, and therefore it cannot be free and competitive. Elections in an authoritari2n regime, however, could form part of a liberalization process leading to a stage where they also determine who governs, i.e. they form democratization elections.

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Since this study concentrates on the shifts between democracy and dictatorship it would be important to identify elections within this latter context. In this paper, however, lack of data and information mean that the concept of democratization-election is simply defmed as a free and competitive election which marks the end of rule by a non-elected government. 15 In order to investigate the wave-proposition, every government since 1940 in the seventeen Latin American republics on the American mainland will be classified as democratic or non-democratic. The classification will be exclusively based on the method used to come to power. When nonelectoral successions or non-free and non-competitive elections of the national political leadership are used the regimes are classified as non-democratic.
Since the political systems of Latin America traditionally are very strong presidential systems, the elections that are studied are those of the chief executive. An exploration of the governments and presidents of Latin America since 1940 shows that most of them have been appointed through national elections.
In Figure 1, no regard is paid to the election being competitive, semicompetitive or non-competitive and it is evident that basing a classification of regimes on these results would be very misleading. Notwithstanding this self-evident objection, the figure hints at the wave-character of Latin American political development. The number of elected governments increased after 1945, decreased after 1954, increased rather dramatically 1956 to 1959, decreased slowly until 1972 and increased steadily after 1982.

ELECTORAL COMPETITION
Obviously, there is much room left for further criteria in this classification. The first one to be included is the indicator of competitiveness: the mere existence of political parties and the existence of one or more opposition candidates participating in the election. Moreover, periods in. which the constitution is disregarded although the elected chief-executive remains in office are considered as non-democratic periods.
Before any further discussion of the political waves in Latin America is undertaken, a few words need to be said about electoral abstention. The elimination from the classification of regimes coming to power through uncontested elections could be very misleading, since abstention by opposition parties might be political tactics. In such a case a non-competitive election is not the result of a non-democratic system, but rather a result of a less than fully institutionalized democratic system. 16 However, all except one of the cases of one-candidate-elections se~m to be cases of "continuismo" rather than "retraimiento," i.e. the incumbent regime uses greater or lesser force to see to it that it stays in power after the election.

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The exception is the presidential election in Colombia 1949 which led to the breakdown of the "oligarchical democracy" and instead paved the way for the G6mez dictatorship. No legal restrictions were put on the Liberal party's participation but, nevertheless, it decided to abstain. There are many possible reasons for this decision, one of which could be that party members were persecuted by the police and army.17 Thus, the election which was held during a state of siege was not a sign of "continuismo," though it cannot be classified as democratic.
Many political regimes which come to power through elections' allow no political opposition, except from marginal electoral competition. Although, the question of real political competition includes more 'than counting votes, one would be very suspicious of the competitiveness of a regime, if one and the same party or candidate gets an overwhelming majority in many elections in a row. In order for opposition parties to be a real challenge to the ruling elite, they should win close to 50 percent of the vote. However, many scholars use a 30-percent limit when identifying competitive regimes. 18 Table 1 shows the minimally competitive elections (two candidates) in which the opposition parties together won less than this proportion of the vote.
Three different types of political regimes are identified in Table 1. The first one includes, above all, the states with long-lasting and extensive political control under one political party or one small political elite. These states are Mexico, Nicaragua and Paraguay. In Mexico, Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) and its predecessor, have dominated and con-' trolled political life since the 1930s, to such an extent that the elections have never been held in order to decide who is going to rule. However, the latest presidential election (1988) was an exception to that rule, since PRI's candidate Carlos Salinas de Gortari only received around 50 percent of the vote.
In Nicaragua, the Somoza family controlled politics through the Partido Liberal Nacionalista (PLN) for more than 40 years . The PLN candidate won less than 70 percent of the vote (61,7%) in only one of the six presidential elections held during that period (1947). However, this election had no political effect, since "Tacho" Somoza ousted the winning candidate a few months after the election. 19 Similarly, in Paraguay Alfredo Stroessner has controlled politics through a totally dominating political party -Partido Colorado. Presidential elections with at least one legal opposition candidate have been held every five years since 1958. On every occasion Stroessner has won more than 70 percent of the vote.  El Salvador [1956][1957][1958][1959][1960][1961][1962][1963][1964][1965][1966][1967] can also be added to these cases of regimes with closely restricted political competition. During this period the country was governed by the military and its party, PRUD (Partido Revolucionario'de Unificaci6n Democratica), which in 1960 became PCN (Partido de Concili-aci6n Nacional). In the 1956 presidential election the "official" candidate won more than 90 percent of the vote. The election held six years later (1962) was even more non-competitive, although the regime tried to prove the existence of competition by presenting the number of blank votes to the public. 20 The second type of semi-competitive regime includes Bolivia 1956-1964, Guatemala 1944-1950 and Venezuela 1947. The elections in Guatemala in 1944 and in Venezuela in 1947 were held after the overthrow of long-lasting dictatorships. The overwhelming majority won by Gallegos in Venezuela and Arevalo in Guatemala should, therefore, be ascribed to widespread political support and the lack of opportunity of choice, rather than political repression. 21 The elections in Bolivia 1956 and 1960 were also characterized by lack of alternatives. The revolutionary-populist party MNR (Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario), which led the revolution in 1952, kept a strong grip on the Bolivian society fora long time, until internal party splits paved the way for a new military coup in 1964. 22 The elections in Peru, 1939, and Colombia, 1958, constitute a third type of semi-competitive elections. On both occasions the political elite arranged a controlled and smooth transition from military to civilian rule, characterized by limited political competition under formal democracy. In Colombia, the two dominating parties -the Liberals and the Conservatives -reached a historic compromise, in that they went to the presidential election with one joint candidate, representing the Frente Nacional. 23 This compromise explains the winning candidate's large proportion of the votes in the 1958, 1962, and 1966 elections.
In the light of the above, it is difficult to determine a given proportion of electoral competition above which an election and, consequently, a regime, unmistakably, can be identified as democratic. However, the 30 percent limit, which has been used here, serves as a guide when describing the political swings in Latin America. Among those regimes coming to power through support of over 70 percent of the voters, El

ELECTORAL PARTICIPATION
The second dimension of the democracy definition guiding this study is political participation. In a political system with periodic elections this dimension is often operationalized as electoral participation. A prerequisite for extensive electoral participation is universal suffrage. Consequently, a regime that does not give as many as possible the opportunity to vote is non-democratic. Common factors which regulate enfranchisement in Latin America are> sex, literacy and age. 24 Since age is in some sense a necessary regulation, existing in every democracy, this factor is left aside. However, requirements concerning literacy and gender can not be seen as necessary in order to elect political representatives. Accordingly, an electoral system which eliminates half the national population from voting because of its sex is considered as non-democratic.
The literacy requirement is also a non-democratic control, although with very variable effects. Ecuador before 1979, for example, eliminated  For abbreviations see Figure 1 half of its potential electorate through the use of this control, whereas Chile before 1970 eliminated only ten to fifteen percent using the same requirement. 25 Electoral control through the use of literacy requirements is not included in Figure 2 owing to the different effect this measure has across countries. This means that especially Ecuador until 1979 and Guatemala until 1966, but also Peru until 1980 and Brazil until 1982, are treated generously in this classification. When voting participation figures are analyzed in the next section, however, the undemocratic effect of this requirement will be revealed. Figure 2 shows a different picture of the political waves than the earlier one. The figure indicates a long and almost steadily growing wave of democracy from the end of the Second World War to 1958. Within this fourteen-year period thirteen Latin American regimes guaranteed women the right to vote and also gave them the opportunity to use their right. All of the states, except Paraguay, Nicaragua, and Mexico, were democratized at some time during this period. From the year 1945 to the year 1959 the total number of formal democracies increased from one to thirteen. If democracy is· viewed from an electoral competition and limited participation perspective, it is obvious that the 1950s and the 1980s are the heydays of democratization in Latin America. r ! Table 3 Voter participation in presidential elections: the first election with participation rates above 20%, and participation rates in the previous election (% oftotal population)

VOTER PARTICIPATION
The mere existence of universal suffrage does not reveal how effective the electoral participation is, or, in other words, how inclusive the regime is. 26 Usually this dimension of democracy is measured by, for example, the proportion of registered voters, voting age population, or total population, voting in different elections. Participation data from Latin America is often presented as percentages of registered voters or total population. Since the registration procedure as such is an effective method of electoral control, often used by Latin American regimes, this study focuses on the latter indicator. 27 Figures showing the proportions of the total population also throw light on regimes using literacy requirements in the elections. Voting participation statistics from Guatemala, Ecuador an Peru, for example, show that this requirement has been a tremendously effective method for depriving the majority of the people of their right to vote.
Political statistics of Latin America show that the proportion of registered voters voting in presidential elections is often fairly large. The pattern is changed, however, when the proportion of the whole population is measured. Table 3 shows the first election in each Latin American country in which voting participation figures reached above 20 percent. The 20 percent limit is arbitrarily chosen, but it is hard to imagine how to identify "rule by the people" when "the people" consists of less than one fifth of the total population.
The table illustrates that the voter participation breakthrough in many Latin American countries is related to the introduction of female suffrage. Yet, in at least Peru and Ecuador the crossing of the 20 percent threshold did not occur until the literacy requirement was also abandoned (1979 and 1980 respectively). In only one of the Latin American states -Paraguaydid voter participation exceed 20 percent before women were enfranchised. Data from the non-competitive and strictly controlled presidential elections in that country, however, hardly reflect deliberate voting. One could also suspect that, in addition to unreliable statistics, severe political repression together with compulsory voting have modified the Paraguayan figures considerably. 28 In both Colombia and El Salvador, voter participation figures once again sank below the 20 percent threshold, shortly after the increase caused by the first women votes. Besides institutional restrictions, a primary cause of this decrease is probably the violent political culture of these two countries, resulting in political apathy among the majority of the people.

Figure3
Regimes in Latin America with chief executives appointed through competitive elections under male and female suffrage, and with voter participation rates above 20% of the total population, 1940-1988  Figure 3 shows that, before 1947, Uruguay was the only Latin American nation whose government built its power on effective political competition and participation. Venezuela experienced a short period of democracy during 1947 and 1948, but during the following three years, the regime in Montevideo was once again the only competitive-participatory regime. During the 1950s, democracy developed along the two dimensions in many Latin American countries. However, there was no dramatic change, since only seven out of the seventeen countries under study were qualified formal. democracies at the end of the decade. The wave of democracy, pronounced when only the competition dimension was considered, is more difficult to detect when the concept of democracy is qualified. Furthermore, the regional political development during the 1960s and 1970s can be identified as a gradual change rather than a sudden wave of dictatorship. Viewed from a democracy perspective, including the competition as well as the qualified-participation dimension, the 1980s stand out as the great period of democracy in Latin American post World War II history. At the end of the last decade, only Venezuela, Costa Rica, and with a bare margin Colombia, met the four democracy requirements used here (elected president, universal suffrage, 30% opposition, 20% voter participation), while at the time of writing (May 1989) the requirements are met by 'at least thirteen states.
Brazil is still a doubtful case to some extent, since the president is not elected directly by the people. However, the congressional election in 1982, upon which the composition of the electoral college was founded, was competitive and involved a high participation rate. Panama was an uncertain case between September 1985, when president Barletta resigned and was replaced by Eric Delvalle, and March 1988, when the military, headed by General Noriega, ousted Delvalle and replaced him by another civilian (Solis Palma).
The number of institutional democracies in Latin America increased to thirteen (or· fourteen, depending on the classification of Brazil) in December 1988, when Carlos Salinas de Gortari took over as president of Mexico. Salinas is the first president in Mexico appointed through elections meeting all the requirements of democratic elections used in this study. 32 CONCLUSIONS In this paper an effort is made to describe the regional political development in Latin America since 1940, often depicted as a cyclical alternation between democracy and dictatorship. A pure electoral definition of democracy, borrowed from Huntington and Schumpeter is used, resulting in different classification schemes (Figures 1-3) depending on how the concept of democracy is operationalized.
If competitiveness is considered to be the most important aspect of democracy, then Latin America has experienced two marked waves of democracy since World War II -one in the 1950s and one in the 1980s. On the other hand, if electoral participation is considered to be as important a dimension as competition, then only the latter period could be characterized as a wave of democracy in Latin American political history.
Consequently, one simple conclusion drawn from this study is that scholarly descriptions of Latin American political development as regional shifts between democracy and authoritarianism do not stand up against a close scrutiny using a universal and two-dimensional definition of democracy. Previous democratic periods have, in most of the countries, been "democratic" in a much more narrow sense than the present one.
If more criteria of democracy had been included, the "graphs" of Latin American political history since 1940 would probably have changed a little. As already mentioned, it is impossible to identify which elections have been totally free and which elections have actually determined who governs, since important questions about electoral fraud, the degree of civilian supremacy over the military, the degree of political violence, etc. are not asked in this study. Until further systematic research of Latin American political development shows something else, however, a last cautious conclusion is that an incremental political development seems to run parallel with the quite superficial cyclical shifts. From a regional and an "electoral" point of view, Latin American democracy is more widespread and firmly based on the people in the 1980s than it was in previous democratic periods.
To suggest an incremental development, however, is not to say that democracy is the determined goal of Latin American political history. Such predictions are too risky in the light of the breakdowns of the old democratic regimes in Chile and Uruguay in the 1970s as well as the abundance of deep political, economic, and social problems which continuously threatens the consolidation of the "new democracies."