The fundamental problem with this collection of articles on Peruvian society and polity is that there is little, if any, real connection between the theme of the volume, as expressed in its title, and the book’s overall content. In fact not until we arrive at the penultimate chapter (beginning on page 428!) entitled “Corporatist Participation under Military Rule in Peru” do we confront, for the first time, any extended discussion of the so-called “Corporatist Revolution.” Rather than focusing upon corporatism (nationalism, on the other hand, to the editor’s credit is a more generally treated theme) the editor, David Chaplin, has produced a useful, if slightly dated, “social science reader” designed to introduce university students to the dynamics of continuity and change within Peruvian society since World War II.
This is not to say that some of these articles, most of which were first published in the late 1960s, are not generally of a high caliber. Certainly Julio Cotier’s “The Mechanics of Internal Domination in Peru,” which the editor wisely uses to introduce the volume, is by now a classic analysis of the post-war political system of this Andean nation in formation. Well known, too, are the contributions of William F. Whyte, Shane Hunt, Luigi Einaudi, Carlos Astiz and others, all of whom form something of a “who’s who” in Andean scholarship during the 1960s. On the other hand, the only new contributions one finds here are excerpts from David Collier’s excellent recent work on the politics of squatter settlements and Scott Palmer’s study of corporatism which provides the volume’s somewhat ill-chosen title. For those interested in a more recent selection of Peruvian scholarship which, in fact, centers upon the societal transformations of the so-called Peruvian Revolution of 1968, one would more profitably turn to Abraham Lowenthal’s The Peruvian Experiment: Continuity and Change under Military Rule (Princeton, 1975).
