Politics in Latin America

This course has been replaced by POLS3095 from 2025 onwards. For more information, please visit https://cass.anu.edu.au/recent-changes-cass-programs This course explores the patterns of political and economic change in modern Latin America. It begins with the rise of industrialisation, state-led development (ISI) and the emergence of populism in the 1930s-40s, the wave of military coups of the 1960s-70s, the processes of democratisation and neoliberalism of the 1980s-90s, and the regional turn to the Left plus the emergence of a post-reform agenda in the 2000s. Covering five countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, and Venezuela), this course will investigate the causes and consequences of populism, revolution, military authoritarian and bureaucratic authoritarian rule, democratisation, and neoliberalism. It will also consider topics such as the 'weak democracy syndrome' plus critical issues for Latin American democracy and development such a violence and insecurity, inequality, social inclusion/exclusion, popular participation, social mobilisations, and the rise of indigenous politics. The course compares a variety of theoretical approaches (modernisation, cultural, institutionalist, personal-leadership, and post-structuralist interpretations) in order to explain both change and continuity, and the differences that exist across the countries that have been chosen for in-depth analysis.