ABSTRACT
In North America government has usually been considered something of a necessary evil requiring elaborate checks and balances. In Latin America the state historically held an importance that it lacks in the classic models. The state was viewed as a powerful and independent agency in its own right, and frequently autonomous from the class and interest-group struggle. The executive is constitutionally given extensive powers to bypass the legislature, and judicial review until recently has been largely outside the Latin American legal tradition. In the situation of a supreme court passing upon the constitutionality of executive or legislative acts, the US inspiration is clear. Political theory in Iberia and Latin America, in contrast, viewed government as good, natural, and necessary for the welfare of society. With the neoliberal changes of the 1990s, there has been a change in the procedures about which much of Latin American politics revolve.
