ABSTRACT
This chapter takes the case of the state and discusses it from the four different viewpoints: functionalist, interpretive, radical humanist, and radical structuralist. State elites in Latin America installed exclusionary or inclusionary corporatist regimes. A regime that has hegemony can prevent the development of a pluralistic social and political order by preventing the public manifestation of conflicts and cleavages, which result in the suppression of autonomy. The term organizational pluralism is used to refer to the number and autonomy of organizations that must be considered in order to characterize conflicts among a given group of persons. The degree of organizational pluralism that exists within the political system of a country can be mainly explained by: the amount of latent conflictive pluralism; the nature of the socioeconomic order; the nature of the political regime; and the concrete structure of the political institutions. State capacities to pursue specific kinds of policies constitute the most fruitful area for the study of state capacity.
