Why did so many Latin American leftists believe they could replicate the Cuban Revolution in their own countries, and why did so many rightists fear the spread of Communism? Cognitive-psychological insights about people's distorted inferences and skewed interest calculations explain why the left held exaggerated hopes and why the right experienced excessive dread. The resulting polarization provoked a powerful backlash in which the right uniformly defeated the left. To forestall the feared spread of revolution, the military in many countries imposed authoritarian regimes and brutally suppressed left-wingers. Overly worried about the advance of Cuban-inspired radicalism as well, the United States condoned and supported the installation of dictatorship, but Latin American elites took the main initiative in these regressive regime changes. With a large number of primary and secondary sources, this book documents how the misperceptions on both sides of the ideological divide thus played a crucial role in the frequent destruction of democracy.
Rezensionen / Stimmen
'Revolution and Reaction is an excellent book by a leading scholar.' Scott Mainwaring, Democratization
Sprache
Verlagsort
Zielgruppe
Produkt-Hinweis
Illustrationen
Worked examples or Exercises; 1 Tables, black and white; 3 Line drawings, black and white
Maße
Höhe: 229 mm
Breite: 152 mm
Dicke: 19 mm
Gewicht
ISBN-13
978-1-108-72883-6 (9781108728836)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Klassifikation
Kurt Weyland utilizes a distinctive theoretical approach that draws on cognitive-psychological insights to elucidate crucial political phenomena. He is the author of four books and approximately fifty journal articles and book chapters. His previous book about waves of democratization, Making Waves, (Cambridge, 2014), won the book award from American Political Science Association's Comparative Democratization section.
Autor*in
University of Texas, Austin
Part I. Theoretical Considerations: 1. Introduction; 2. The difficulty of accounting for reverse waves; 3. A theory of reactionary waves; Part II. Revolution and the Reactionary Backlash in Latin America: 4. Diffusion effects of the Cuban Revolution; 5. Waves of radicalization and reaction; 6. The imposition of institutional authoritarianism; 7. Horizontal diffusion and vertical promotion in the autocratic wave; Part III. Comparative Perspectives and Theoretical Conclusions: 8. Reactionary waves across history; 9. Conclusion: theoretical reflections.
