ABSTRACT
Analysts of (North, sic) American politics have long been in substantial agreement that the elections of 1800, 1828, 1860, 1896, and 1932 marked critical turning points in the nation's development. Much of the early literature on critical elections in the United States was atheoretical. Elections in Latin America not only fail to carry the definitive legitimacy they do in North America but there are also other legitimized routes to power. The Latin American tradition has long included an admiration for, and afforded a certain legitimacy to, the grand heroic act, the successful definance of the system, the charismatic person (Peron, Castro) who goes outside the system and overcomes it. Historians Stanley J. and Barbara H. Stein have written that "a generous estimate of political participation of the male population in all the Latin American nations would probably approach 2 to 4 percent during most of the nineteenth century."
