ABSTRACT
A leading exponent of corporatism in Latin America is political scientist Howard J. Wiarda. He argues here that “there is a distinct Latin American/Southern European counterpart to the great sociological paradigms formulated by Marx, Durkheim, or Weber.” In Wiarda’s view, Latin America’s corporatist tradition is antithetical to democratic and liberal values, having remained largely untouched by the liberal revolutionary currents that transformed the West. As such, Latin America remains “locked in this traditional pattern of values and institutions that has postponed and retarded development.”
Instead of examining Latin America in terms of Western development, therefore, the region must be taken on its own terms, without imposing a particular model of change along U.S. or European lines. Wiarda thus questions the convergence thesis that Latin America will automatically pass through the Western stage of development. Rather, he notes that “many traditional societies, and particularly those of the Iberic Latin nations, have proved remarkably permeable and flexible, assimilating at various points more ‘modern’ and ‘rational’ elements, but without losing their characteristics.”
