Since its initial publication in 1964, this book has been widely consulted by those interested in political leadership in Argentina. While the work thus is familiar to Argentina specialists and others concerned with the study of Latin American political elites, this English translation makes the findings accessible to a considerably wider audience.
The book is a study of the socioeconomic and political characteristics of various elite groups over a twenty-five year period. By describing the leaders of government and of politically powerful institutions and interest groups over the span of a generation, the book provides valuable insight into Argentine politics from the década infame of the 1930s through the Perón era to the Frondizi period of the early 1960s. As is often the case with empirical studies, this work supports some and refutes other aspects of the conventional wisdom about the distribution of power in Argentina.
Imaz chose the years 1936, 1941, 1946, 1951, 1956, and 1961 as a sample of the quarter-century. For each sample year, he gathered as much data as possible about the top leadership in government, major political parties, the military, and the church, as well as the top figures among entrepreneurs, landowners, and labor leaders. The type and amount of data vary somewhat by group, but generally includes at least such characteristics as ethnicity or national origin, education, age, and occupational and family background.
Despite its basis in the quantitative analysis of “hard” data, the book is far from a mere compilation of facts and statistical manipulations. The quantitative data appear within a generally well-developed historical context and are related to relevant sociological theory, making the book of interest and value regardless of the reader’s background in quantitative methodology. Some of the chapters, such as those on the military and the rural interests, are particularly well developed in their historical and theoretical background; others, such as the one dealing with government officials, are considerably more sketchy. Among the many items of particular interest in the book is a comparison of recruitment criteria in the major political parties.
The author’s major conclusion is that Argentina has no “ruling elite;” rather, there are a variety of elites who differ not only in background but also in perspectives, tactics, and goals. Where society is thus “split into water-tight compartments, where different sources of legitimacy are upheld simultaneously by contending groups using mutually exclusive arguments” (p. 55), there can be little agreement or compromise and each group is “fully convinced that it is the depository of all truth” (p. 249). When no single group has the power to govern alone, the result is the politics of impasse which has been so evident in Argentina in recent years. Yet this has occurred in a nation which ranks high on many of the usual indicators of modernization and development and where—as the data in this study clearly show—there has been widespread social and economic mobility. As Imaz concludes: “The problem, the terrible problem, lies in that Argentina’s basic political development is not sufficient to support its superstructure of modernity” (p. 256).
This edition contains a brief historical introduction by the translator, who also has added a number of footnotes to those of the author. Imaz has written an appendix covering political events between 1964 and 1968, and an index also has been added. Missing from this translation is the “introductory note” of the Spanish edition; this is unfortunate, for its discussion of problems encountered in data-gathering would be of value to anyone considering similar research.
