ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that New Regimes are able to institutionalize political order successfully to the extent that they centralize power in a manner that contains demands of elites as well as popular groups. Governments that come to power by revolution are faced with the immediate, pressing challenge of establishing and maintaining political order. The Mexican experience supports our thesis that power must be centralized along a variety of dimensions before New Regimes are institutionalized. The legislature, in turn, is limited primarily to legitimization of presidential actions. The relationship between the government and business is nonetheless complex. Upon obtaining power the Bolivian Revolutionaries set out to expand and centralize power, in similar ways to their Mexican predecessors. Bolivian miners could paralyze the economy, which gave them considerable political leverage, especially when the government hesitated to rule through repression. The experience of the two Latin American countries demonstrates that international conditions shape conflict containment directly and indirectly.
