SBU Prof Pens Book on Argentina

Joel Horowitz, Ph.D., a noted scholar on Argentina and professor of history at St. Bonaventure University, has written a new book about Argentina’s government in the early 20th century.

“Argentina’s Radical Party and Popular Mobilization, 1916-1930” examines democracy’s first appearance in a country that appeared to satisfy all the criteria that political development theorists of the 1950s and 1960s identified as crucial. This experiment lasted in Argentina from 1916 to 1930, when it ended in a military coup that left a troubled political legacy for decades to come.

“This book sheds new light on a crucial chapter in the struggle for democracy in Argentina. Drawing on approaches from political and labor history, Horowitz’s study examines the complex negotiations between party leaders, state officials and working people that shaped public life during the heyday of Radical Party rule,” said Eduardo Elena, history professor at the University of Miami. “In the process, it questions familiar assumptions regarding cronyism and popular politics associated with the Argentine republic in the early 20th century.”

Horowitz, who spent more than 15 years working on the book, has studied Argentina’s government and society since he was in graduate school more than 30 years ago.

“It is intriguing to try to understand how a democracy works or, in fact, fails,” Horowitz said. “It is usually assumed in the United States that all you need to do is have elections and there will be a democracy that works. Unfortunately, sometimes it fails and it is important to try to discover why.”

Horowitz challenges previous interpretations that emphasize the role of clientelism and patronage. He argues that they fail to account fully for the Radical Party government’s ability to mobilize widespread popular support. Horowitz compares the administrations of Hipólito Yrigoyen and Marcelo T. de Alvear he shows how much depended on the image Yrigoyen managed to create for himself: a secular savior who cared deeply about the less fortunate and the embodiment of the nation.

Later successes and failures of Argentine democracy, from Juan Perón through the present, cannot be fully understood without knowing the story of the Radical Party in this earlier period.

Published by Penn State University Press, the book will be released in January.

Formerly a contributing editor of the Handbook of Latin American Studies, which is prepared by the Library of Congress, Horowitz has been a member of the St. Bonaventure faculty since 1989. He was promoted to full professor in 1999. He holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania and master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of California at Berkeley.