Political Convergence in South America

Sammanfattning: This case study considers what appears to be a political convergence in Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay. Four political transitions that have occurred in all three countries are studied: the military coups of 1964, 1973 and 1976, the transitions back to democracy, the implementations of liberal economic reforms, and the recent turns leftwards. Three different types of explanations are presented, each representing a different view on the question of structure versus agency. These explanations build on theories of diffusion, theories of political cycles and the impact of external factors. Each type of explanation is then analysed separately, resulting in three different analyses. I argue that diffusion seems to have the best explanatory potential, although political cycles also deliver reasonable explanations, whereas the external factors studied – the US and the IMF – fail to give a satisfactory explanation on either transition. In parity with the conclusions of Graham Allison’s Essence of Decision, the most important insight of this thesis is, however, the importance of the perspective for how we understand the problem.