ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a study of how the Argentine and Chilean Congresses operated at the turn of the 20th century. For both countries involved, the four decades of social and political modernization from about 1890 to 1930 were tumultuous and significant. They were tumultuous because the governing elites had to deal with protest from the working classes, a new social actor generated by industrialization and urbanization who aspired to political participation and social equality through the institutionalization of rights. At the same time, new political parties emerged and suffrage expanded, changing the ways in which politics had been carried out until then. This period was significant in itself, but also because in Argentina, these years led up to a coup that inaugurated a period of over 40 years of pendular movement from dictatorship to democracy, while in Chile, on the other hand, after various coup attempts and a military regime, there began a period of democratic continuity that lasted until 1973.
