International Relations of the Americas (577.001)

Version of 11/15/11

International Relations of the Americas (577.001)

The American University, Washington, D.C.

Fall 2011

Instructor: Dr. Brian Norris (, 202 306 2677)

Meeting time: Wednesdays, 8:10 – 10:40 PM

Location: SIS 102

Office hours: by appointment

Course Overview

This course is a graduate level introduction to the origins and nature of the modern Latin American nation state and the international relations that derive from this political entity. The analytical framework and factual content that this course provides will serve as a basis for students’ more specific individual research projects dealing with political, economic and social issues in the region. The course is appropriate for terminal masters’ students, law students, doctoral students and upper level undergraduates. The content is appropriate for students with a practical policy orientationor for those with a more analytical focus.

The term ‘international relations’ refers to both conflictive and cooperative interactions among modern nation states. Many questions regarding the international relations of the Americas suggest themselves: Why did Brazil, the U.S. and Central American states take differing policy stances toward Honduras during its constitutional crisis of 2010? Why do both Brazil and the 19 countries of Spanish America have some of the highest levels of social inequality in the world despite the fact that the former taxes at a relatively high rate while the countries of the latter do not? Does this social inequality affect international relations? How could the French install a monarch in Mexico in 1862, 39 years after the U.S. declared its Monroe Doctrine? Why, after being one of the hemisphere’s wealthiest countries at the beginning of the 20th century, did Argentina suffer one of the worst sovereign debt defaults in recent history in 2001? Why do Bolivia and Uruguay exist as independent states in the first place?

Comparative politics can supply some answers to these and other questions. Comparative politics is not just a matter of knowing something about more than one country or region of the world; it is the study of institutions, political culture, public policies, and development using as broad a base of experience from as different societies as possible. Understanding causality in politics poses special problems because the underlying phenomena are inherently complex, and it is not possible to run controlled experiments in which some variables can be held constant. Comparative politics tries to get around this problem by using data from a variety of similarly-situated societies and seeking relationships that vary systematically between countries, both statically and over time. You cannot understand any given society, including your own, unless you understand how it differs from others. While traditionally employed at a global level, systems of logic and methods from comparative politics can be fruitfully employed to answer questions about the international relations of the Americas.

Learning Objectives and Learning Outcomes

The course has three principal learning objectives: I. understand the origins and natureof the modern nation state in Latin America and how these factors affect international relations; II. understand differing analytical frameworks and methods for studying political, economic and social phenomena in the region; and III. develop anindividual student research project. Information related to I. will be conveyed through broadly focused readings from history, political science and sociology and will be discussed at our weekly meetings(weeks 1-12). Learning objective II.will be accomplished by two means. First, we will read theoretical and methodological pieces interspersed with our historically-based, factual readings. Second, each student will present to the class one book review of a relevant study (eligible studies marked with † below, weeks 2-12). Presentations should summarize the main arguments of the piece, place the piece within the context of a larger body of academic literature and give an evaluation of the sources and methods used. The presentation will be accompanied by a 3-page, double-spaced paper handed in at the beginning of the class on the day of the presentation.

A midterm exam will be given during the first hour of class 7 (October 12) to assure that students have kept up with readings. Graduate students will have a supplemental “methods” section on the midterm.

Students will develop an approved individual research projectdue on Dec. 11. This project will count for 40% of your individual course grade. The topic and methodology should be approved by me no later than Oct 5. You will present preliminary findings to the class on selected dates to be announced and will hand in a 2 page summary and bibliography to me on that same day that you present to the class. Final papers are due at our last meeting on Dec 11 and you will do a 7-minute presentation on your principal findings. Undergraduates will produce a 10 page paper and graduate students will produce a 20 page paper (exclusive of notes).

Weekly meetings

The professor will begin each class with a short lecture to put the week’s readings in context. A few days before the class discussion questions for the readings will have been sent out via Blackboard. Any student may be called upon to respond to any of the discussion questions during the class meeting, so please come to class prepared to answer. If a book review is due during the class, the student responsible will present it at the appropriate time and will lead class discussion on the work.

Book Review

Book reviews should be between 2 ¾ and 3 pages, double-spaced and exclusive of notes. I will deduct a letter grade for reviews that do not conform to these length requirements. The review should summarize the main argument of the piece, place it in context within a larger body of literature and discuss the sources and methodology employed.

Class participation

Students are expected to attend all classes and I will take attendance at each class. Students are expected to participate actively in class discussions.

Grading

Class participation 20%

Midterm 30%

Book review and presentation 10%

Final paper40%

Academic Integrity

Standards of academic conduct are set forth in the University's Academic Integrity Code. By registering, you have acknowledged your awareness of the Academic Integrity Code, and you are obliged to become familiar with your rights and responsibilities as defined by the Code. Violations of the Academic Integrity Code will not be treated lightly, and disciplinary actions will be taken should such violations occur. Please see me if you have any questions about the academic violations described in the Code in general or as they relate to particular requirements for this course.

Emergency Preparedness for Disruption of Classes

In the event of an emergency, American University will implement a plan for meeting the needs of all members of the university community. Should the university be required to close for a period of time, we are committed to ensuring that all aspects of our educational programs will be delivered to our students. These may include altering and extending the duration of the traditional term schedule to complete essential instruction in the traditional format and/or use of distance instructional methods. Specific strategies will vary from class to class, depending on the format of the course and the timing of the emergency. Faculty will communicate class-specific information to students via AU e-mail and Teaching 3 Blackboard, while students must inform their faculty immediately of any absence. Students are responsible for checking their AU e-mail regularly and keeping themselves informed of emergencies. In the event of an emergency, students should refer to the AU Student Portal, the AU Web site (www. prepared. american.edu) and the AU information line at (202) 885-1100 for general university-wide information, as well as contact their faculty and/or respective dean’s office for course and school/ college-specific information.

Books

Students are not required to purchase books for this class. Books containing required readings will be placed on 2 hr. or 1-day reserve in the basement of the AU library. Many readings will be placed on E-Reserves and accessible through our course Blackboard page.

General Works of Reference

Bethell, Leslie, ed.,The Cambridge History of Latin America, Vols. 1-10, (Cambridge University Press, 1984).(This collection is the standard work of historiography for Latin America.)

Palmer, R.R., andJoel G. Colton,A History of the Modern World(Knopf, 1984).(This is the Whig version of history; nonetheless this classic textbook offers a very good overview of political, social and economic history in Europe since Greek Civilization. It has an excellent bibliography.)

Diamond, Larry, Jonathan Hartlyn, Juan Linz, and Seymour Martin Lipset, Democracy in Developing Countries: Latin America (Lynne Rienner, multiple editions). This is the standard set of case studies for democracy in Latin America. This multivolume series also includes Asia and Africa.

Keen, Benjamin, Latin American Civilization, 7thedition (Westview Press, 2000).(This is an excellent anthology of primary sources from The Conquest to present.)

Holden, Robert, and Eric Zolov, Latin America and the United States: A Documentary History (Oxford, 2011).(This is an excellent anthology of primary sources and other documents about with U.S./Latin American relations.)

Handbook of Latin American Studies.Since 1937. A multi-volume annotated bibliography of studies on Latin America published annually. Includes books and book chapters, but not journal articles. Though online, printed volumes—especially from earlier decades—can provide a useful overview of different bodies of literature.

**required reading

*recommended

†eligible for student presentation and recommended (entire book)

1 Introduction: Different Approaches, Aug. 31

**Morse, Richard, “The Heritage of Latin America” (pp. 123-177) in Louis Hartz, ed.,The Founding of New Societies(Hacourt, Brace and World, 1964).

**Prezworski, Adam, and Curvale, “Do Politics Explain the Economic Gap Between the United States and Latin America?” (pp. 99-133), in Francis Fukuyama, ed.,Falling Behind: Explaining the Development Gap between Latin America and the United States(Oxford, 2008).

**†Lewis, Oscar, “A Day with Fernanda in San Juan” (pp. 3-25) inLa Vida: A Puerto Rican Family in the Culture of Poverty—San Juan and New York(Random House, 1966).

**Fukuyama,“The Primacy of Culture,”(read only the first section, less than one page)Journal of Democracy6:1 (1995) 7-14. (

*Inglehart, R., and W. E. Baker. "Modernization, Cultural Change, and the Persistence of Traditional Values." American Sociological Review 65, no. 1 (2000): 19-51. (Inglehart makes a case for survey research. See anything from Mitch Seligson/USAID for an application of this methodology to Latin America. Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture, 1963, is the original version.)

*Acemoglu, D., S. Johnson, and J. A. Robinson. "Reversal of Fortune: Geography and Institutions in the Making of the Modern World Income Distribution." Quarterly Journal of Economics 117, no. 4 (2002): 1231-1294.

2 Colonial History and Intro to Political Development, Sept. 7

**Elliott, J.H., “The Spanish Conquest and Settlement of America” CHLA 1, pp. 149-206, CHLA I.

**Brading, David, “Bourbon Spain and its American Empire” CHLA I, pp. 389-440.

**Johnson, H.B., “The Portuguese Settlement of Brazil” CHLA I, pp. 249-286.

**Mauro, Frederic, “Portugal and Brazil: Political and Economic Structures” CHLA I, pp. 441-468.

**†Elliott, J.H.,Spain and Its World 1500-1700 (New Have: Yale, 1989), read one of chs. 1, 2 or 3.

*†de Madariaga, Salvador,The Rise of the Spanish American Empire(Macmillan, 1947).(An old classic for those interested in grand narrative)

*†de Abreu, Capistrano,Chapters of Brazil’s Colonial History: 1500-1800 (Oxford, 1997), Chs. 3, 5, 6.

*Murra, John, “Andean Society before 1532” CHLA I.(Murra is the foremost expert on the economic institutions of Incan Empire.)

*Keen, Benjamin, Latin American Civilization, 7thedition (Westview Press, 2000).(This is an excellent anthology of primary sources from The Conquest to present.)

3 Independence and Early Republican History, Sept 14

**Lynch, John, “The Origins of Spanish American Independence” CHLA III, Ch. 1, pp. 3-50.

**Bethell, Leslie, “The Independence of Brazil” CHLA III, Ch. 4, pp. 157-196.

**Bushnell, David, and Neill Macaulay, TheEmergence of Latin America in the 19th Century 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1994), Chs. 2-3, pp. 13-54.

**†de Madariaga, Salvador,The Fall of the Spanish American Empire(Macmillan, 1947), Chs. 12, 13, pp. 170-204, and notes, pp. 362-66.

†Harvey, Robert, Liberators: Latin America’s Struggle for Independence, 1810-1830 (Longitude, 2002, a narrative focused on the personalities who fought the wars of independence).

4 Political Development and State Development in Latin America, Sept 21

Introduction to Political Development

**†Huntington, Samuel P., Political Order in Changing Societies (Yale, 1968), pp. 32-59 (Modernization/Poverty Thesis and critique).

**†Veliz, Claudio, The New World of the Gothic Fox: Culture and Economy in English and Spanish America (University of California, 1994), Ch. 1, pp. 1-21, “Prefatory Metaphors.”

*Lipset, Seymour Martin. "Some Social Requisites of Democracy: Economic Development and Political Legitimacy." The American Political Science Review 53, no. 1 (1959): 69-105.

*Nils Gilman, Mandarins of the Future: Modernization Theory in Cold War America (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), chap. 1, “Modernization Theory and American Modernism.”

*Elliott, J.H., “Going Baroque”The New York Review of Books, 41:17, 1994.

*Cardoso and Falleto, Dependency and Development in Latin America (Berkley, 1979).

The State

**Francis Fukuyama, State-Building: Governance and World Order in the 21st Century (Cornell University Press, 2004), pp. 1-23.

**†Centeno, Miguel,Blood and Debt: War and the Nation State in Latin America (Pennsylvania State Press, 2002), Chs. 1, 2, 3, pp. 1-166 (read only two chapters).

**†Huntington, Samuel P., Political Order in Changing Societies (Yale, 1968), 308-334 (the Mexican and Bolivian revolutions compared).

**†Scott, James C., Seeing like a State (Yale, 1998), pp. 117-30 (Brasilia).

*Fukuyama, Francis, The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution (Farrar, Strauss, Giroux, 2011), pp. 355-372 (Patrimonialism Crosses the Atlantic).

*World Bank, World Development Report, 1997: The State in a Changing World, chaps. 1-3, pp. 19-60.

*Dominguez, Jorge I., “Samuel Huntington and Latin America” in Miguel Angel Centeno and Fernando Lopez-Alves, eds., The Other Mirror: Grand Theory through the Lens of Latin America (Princeton and Oxford, 2001), Ch. 7.

*Tilly, Charles, Coercion, Capital, and the European States (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1990), pp. 1-5, 14-95, 187-91 (the state makes war and war makes the state).

5Democratic Development in Latin America, Sept 28

**Huntington, Samuel P., “Democracy’s Third Wave,” in Diamond and Plattner, The Global Resurgence of Democracy (Johns Hopkins, 1996), Ch. 1, pp. 3-25.

**Guillerno O’Donnell and Philippe C. Schmitter, Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Tentative Conclusions about Uncertain Democracies (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984), pp. 3-14, 65-72.

**Linz, Juan J., "The Perils of Presidentialism," in Diamond and Plattner, The Global Resurgence of Democracy (Johns Hopkins, 1996), Ch. 9, pp. 124-42.

**†Mainwaring,Scott, and Matthew S. Shugart, Presidentialism and Democracy in Latin America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), Ch. 1, pp. 12-54.

**Mainwaring, Scott and Timothy R. Scully, “Introduction: Party Systems in Latin America,” inBuilding Democratic Institutions: Party Systems in Latin America (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995), Ch. 1, pp.1-36.

*Nohlen, Dieter. “Electoral Systems and Electoral Reform in Latin America,” in ArendLijphart and Carlos Waisman, eds. (Boulder, CO: Westview 1996).

*Diamond, Larry, Jonathan Hartlyn, Juan Linz, and Seymour Martin Lipset, Democracy in Developing Countries: Latin America, 2nd ed. (Lynne Rienner, 1999), Ch. 1, “Introduction.”

*Hartlyn, Jonathan, and Arturo Valenzuela, “Democracy in Latin America since 1930” CHLA VI, pp. 99-163.

*†Webre, Stephen Andrew.José Napoleón Duarte and the Christian Democratic Party in Salvadoran Politics, 1960-1972 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1979).

6 National Identity, Ideology, and Religion, Oct 5(deadline to have research topic approved)

**Gellner, Ernest, Nations and Nationalism (Cornell, 1983), Chs. 1, 4, pp. 1-7, 39-52 (This is a touchstone work of theory on nationalism. Read against Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities.)

**Masur, Gerhard,Nationalism in Latin America (Macmillan, 1966), Ch 3, pp. 32-61 (An easy introduction to nationalism in Latin America).

**†Centeno, Miguel, Blood and Debt: War and the Nation State in Latin America (Pennsylvania State Press, 2002), Ch. 4, pp. 167-215.

**Alba, Nationalists without Nations (Praeger, 1968), Ch 4, pp. 62-82.

**† David Browning.El Salvador: Landscape and Society(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), pp. 78-138, “The Landscape of Conquest” (a detailed study of social change and assimilation in El Salvador).

7Identity cont’d(MIDTERM), Oct. 12

**†Speir, Fred, Religious Regimes in Peru: Religion and State Development in a Long-Term Perspective and the Effects in the Andean village of Zurite(Amsterdam, 1994), Chs. 6, 7.

**†Martin, David, Tongues of Fire (Blackwell, 1990), 49-59, “Profiles of Evangelical Advance in Latin America.”

**Philpott, Daniel, “The Catholic Wave,” in Larry Diamond, et al, World Religions and Democracy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 2005).

*Safford, Frank, “Politics, Ideology and Society in Post-Independence Latin America”CHLA III, Ch. 9.

*Hale, Charles, “Political and social ideas in Latin America, 1870-1930” (CHLA IV, Ch. 10).

†Brading, D. A. The First America: The Spanish Monarchy, Creole Patriots, and the Liberal State, 1492-1867 (Cambridge University Press, 1991).

8 Political Development in the 20th Century: Mexico (Case 1), Oct. 19

**Bushnell, David, and Neill Macaulay, The Emergence of Latin America in the 19th Century 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1994), Ch. 4 “Mexico in Decline (1821-55)”.

**Katz, Friedrich, “Mexico: Restored Republic and Porfiriato, 1867-1910” CHLA V, Ch 1.

**D. C. Levy & K. Bruhn, “Mexico,” in Diamond, et al, Democracy in Developing Countries, pp. 5 19-573.

**Krauze, Enrique, “Looking at Them: A Mexican Perspective on the Gap with the United States,” in Fukuyama ed., Falling Behind. [electronic book available through AU library]

9Political Development in the 20th Century: Brazil (Case 2), Oct. 26

**Fausto, Boris, “Brazil: the social and political structure of the First Republic, 1889-1930” (Cambridge History of Latin America, vol. V, chapter 21).

**Lamounier, Bolivar, “Brazil,” in Diamond et al Democracy in Developing Countries, pp. 131-189

*Roett, Riordan, The New Brazil (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 2010).

*Bushnell, David and Neill Macaulay, The Emergence of Latin America in the Nineteenth Century (2nd edition, Oxford University Press, 1994, chapters 7 and 11).

†Cardoso, F.H., The Accidental President of Brazil (Public Affairs, 2006)