Frederick C. Turner

Argentina: Economic Disaster and the Rejection of the Political Class

The Argentine economic crisis of 1999-2003 caused GDP to drop precipitously and levels of poverty and unemployment to rise greatly. Although more profound, this crisis resembled three others since 1966, and it led Argentines overwhelmingly to reject the members of their political class. In 1999, the confidence of Argentine citizens in politicians and political institutions was already very low, reflecting in part the earlier crises and the fact that income distribution in the country had become far more unequal in the 1990s. Causes for the economic crisis include economic policies, political constraints, and the structure of Argentine society and values. Although some economic growth has returned under the presidency of Nestor Kirchner since 2003, the depth of the rejection of the political class is so great that it may lead to some change in Argentine values.

Protestantism and Politics in Chile and Brazil

Although Protestant missionaries in Latin America have written numerous accounts of their endeavors for over a hundred years, more systematic and theoretically oriented studies of Latin American Protestantism have begun to appear only in the 1960s. Sociologists have approached this subject in search of new data and insights for the field of religious sociology, and both Protestant and Catholic critics have evaluated Latin American Pro-

Catholicism and Nationalism in Latin America

Historians have long s~~~u t~d on the relationship between religion and the elusive concept of nationalism, but social scientists have only recently begun to construct more precise measures for their interaction.’ Evaluating the connection between nationalism and religion has been an intriguing intellectual ~x~~°~,~s~, and now. as each of these forces s-Ag-~lif icantly affects contemporary processes of social development. their relationship also involves a area of empirical theory. By studying the links between these we can learn more

Opening the Mexican political system: Public opinion and the elections of 1994 and 1997

Over the past decade, the proliferation of election surveys has worked to undergird the electoral system in Mexico and to make electoral fraud more difficult. In the presidential elections of 1994, significant controversies arose as to survey methodologies, but by the congressional elections of 1997 the fierce debates over methodologies had subsided. Substantively, the surveys confirm the accuracy of the vote count in 1998, allow profiles of voters to be constructed for the three most important parties and mark declines in the support of the once dominant Partido Revolucionario Institucional.

The rush to the cities in Latin America: Government policies have more effect than we recognize

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the effect of government policies in Latin America that causes rush to the cities. In Latin America, as elsewhere, rapid migration to urban centers has not simply resulted from the decisions of independent citizens or the indifference of government policymakers. A principal cause remains the attractiveness of city life that is enhanced by a host of decisions and programs of national and municipal governments. A central problem is that, without tight governmental regulation of urbanization of the sort found in the Soviet Union or China, programs designed to improve the quality of life for urban residents also induce substantial migration from rural areas, thus exacerbating the crowded conditions in the cities that the original urban programs were designed to ameliorate. The growth in city size has been and will continue to be large indeed