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IN THE EARY 1970s, AT THE HEIGHT OF BRAZIL'S 'ECONOMIC miracle', the possibility was mooted by some within the regime of an evolution towards a stable authoritarian system based upon a permanent ruling party capable of governing by consent. The most immediate model in the Latin American context was the ruling Mexican Partido Revolucionario Institucional (Institutionalized Revolutionary Party); hence the term 'Mexicanization' to express this concept. However, objective assessments of the prospects were somewhat sceptical. In 1974 President Geisel launched a process of 'liberalization', hoping to gain enough popular support through the ruling party, ARENA, to allow a measured relaxation of the repressive controls established after 1964. The process of change thus inaugurated led in little over a decade to the collapse of the regime, and the installation of a civilian, José Sarney, as president in March 1985. As I shall argue below, every move the regime made in its attempt to build a majority party backfired, and, ironically, it was the opposition MDB, whose development was blocked and harassed at every turn, which came nearest to emulating the PRI as a genuinely popular party with cross-class support, a broad national base, and a fund of legitimacy, deriving from its opposition role.

The processes of liberalization in Brazil since 1974 and Mexico since 1977 reveal similar weaknesses in the two political systems. In each case liberalization was intended to strengthen the regime rather than promote meaningful access to power for the opposition, but it set in motion unintended dynamics which greatly weakened each regime, leading to the withdrawal of the military from power in Brazil and a decline in the dominance of the PRI in Mexico

Comments on "Resurgent democracy, rhetoric and reality" by Edward Herman and James Petras, published in New Left Review 154. According to the author, the new civilian regimes in South America are led by people from the right or centre-right of the political spectrum. The new rulers represent unified and capable bourgeoisies well aware of their needs and well equipped to pursue them. Despite the history of military interventions in several countries of the region, significant changes have taken place and current civilian regimes exhibit traces of a new potential to build and exercise bourgeois hegemony