ABSTRACT
The role of leadership is especially important in situations where democracy has been little more than an abstract ideal or where its interpretation is changing rapidly, as occurs when there is a sudden expansion of political participation. The story of democracy in Latin America often seems to be a contradiction between support in principle and failure in practice. Throughout the century and a half since independence, pluralistic or liberal democracy has been the most consistent and widely shared notion of the desirable political system. Cultural themes are found among both some of the oldest and the most attempts to explain Latin American politics, US writings during the early decades of the twentieth century often attributed the unstable and frequently undemocratic nature of Latin American politics to a "Latin temperament". Whereas popular democracy had been a novel idea in Argentina in 1916 when Yrigoyen came to power, it was well established in Chile in 1970 upon the election of Salvador Allende.
