Latin America

Book Review: Bureaucratic Authoritarianism

What is bureaucratic authoritarianism? This was a question that I did not know the answer to, prior of my in depth exploration of the novel “Bureaucratic Authoritarianism” written by Guillermo O’Donnell in 1988. Bureaucratic authoritarianism is often known as a type of regime that has been understood as a form of bureaucratic and technocratic military rule that seeks to curtail popular mobilization. It is also built upon a political coalition and a policy orientation that entails strong ties to international economic actors. In his novel, O’Donnell ventures to explain how and why the elimination of the popular sector from politics, and the associated regressive move of income toward the middle and upper classes in Argentina between 1966 and 1973, greatly increased the bureaucratic authoritarianism. O’Donnell directly challenges modernization theory and proposes a hypothesis to explain why high modernization in late industrializing countries leads to non-democratic political systems. He also argues that transitions from one system to another are caused by the social and political tensions produced by industrialization and by changes in social structure at both elite and mass levels. These socio-economic changes are linked to the absolute (not per capita) size of the modern sector. At a general level his framework emphasizes the point of focusing on the interaction between crucial features of politics in Argentina, which includes those of dominant collation, regime and policy. While, at a more specific level, he focuses on the economic problems that were associated with different levels of industrialization and the perception of threat as a driving force behind the evolution of bureaucrat...

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... came to the conclusion to, was what about the role of the popular sector? The growing political role of the popular sector also could have been a factor in the creating of bureaucratic authoritarian regimes. But this was an idea that O’Donnell did not venture to draw more detail to.

In conclusion, the novel “Bureaucratic Authoritarianism” was one the provided me with a tremendous amount of historical background and in-detail knowledge of the economic and political situation in Argentina from 1966-1973. I came to the conclusion that this novel on bureaucratic authoritarianism was motivated by the effort to understand these regimes in order to remove them. Unlike some other activists in Latin America, however, O’Donnell sought to dislodge these bureaucratic regimes through non-revolutionary means and with the goal of establishing political democracy, not socialism.