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A Qualitative Comparative Approach to Latin American Revolutions

Department of Sociology, Georgetown University, Washington, DC 20057, U.S.A.

Much qualitative analysis does not employ careful causal inference, and the quantitative alternative cannot be applied successfully where there are few cases, as in the study of social revolution. I apply Boolean algebra to 28 Latin American national cases since 1956, to explain the revolutionary successes in Cuba and Nicaragua and the failures or absence of revolution elsewhere. I reject various one-sided explanations of these patterns, including theories that focus only on the strengths of guerrilla movements or only on United States' military assistance or its withdrawal. Boolean analysis indicates that the convergence of five elements produced two revolutions in Latin America: (1) the attempt at guerrilla warfare, (2) guerrilla successes in securing high levels of peasant support, (3) guerrilla achievement of substantial military strength, (4) at the national level, the presence of a patrimonial praetorian regime, and (5) the withdrawal of U.S. support for that regime. Revolutionary failure or absence in the region's other 26 cases can be reduced to three basic sub-patterns, in which one or more of these five elements were absent.

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