The troubled history of democracy in Latin America has been the subject of much scholarly commentary. This volume breaks new ground by systematically exploring the linkages among the historical legacies of large landholding patterns, agrarian class relations, and authoritarian versus democratic trajectories in Latin American countries. The essays address questions about the importance of large landownders for the national economy, the labor needs and labor relations of these landowners, attempts of landowners to enlist the support of the state to control labor, and the democratic forms of rule in the twentieth century.“Represents a belated but welcome attempt to relate Latin American to a familiar corpus of grand theory: that propounded by Barrington Moore in his influential Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. . . . The book is a good idea, well executed, and will be read with interest—even by those who have little time for Barrington Moore in particular, or grand theory in general.”—Latin American Studies“A thorough and rigorous text of the Moorean paradigm for Latin America. Here we have an extraordinarily valuable and diverse set of essays on the historical formation of Latin American political cultures and the importance of agrarian structures therein.”—Nils Jacobsen“This is a book that has been waiting to be written for some time. The contributors include some of the giants in the field [who] will inspire others to write on this subject.”—Mitchell A. Seligson