The politics of inflation typically have been cast as reflecting an underlying “collective-action problem,” in which actions that would benefit the entire group are irrational from the viewpoint of each individual. Everyone would be better off without inflation. But in the absence of a mechanism that would permit social groups such as workers and owners to construct a lasting bargain, each group finds itself structurally obliged to push for higher money incomes, even if each one knows that any temporary gains in real income will be inflated away. Brazilian inflation has been described in these terms (Franco 1989). This article will suggest instead that the attitudes of one key Brazilian social group may be better understood as a case of “rent seeking.” In other countries, financial capital as a net-creditor sector opposes inflation. But because of Brazil's unique set of financial regulations, Brazilian bankers and upper-income investors have reaped substantial economic benefits from inflation in recent decades. Although they might prefer as citizens to have lower inflation, their rational economic interests give them few strong reasons to make sacrifices in the interest of solving society's “collective-action problem.” Because not all important actors desire stabilization, bringing prices down becomes intrinsically more difficult than if the problem were simply one of finding a means of overcoming mutual distrust to reach a cooperative solution.

The observation that redemocratization in Latin America is a fragile process has become a commonplace in the social science literature of the past few years. The social movements crucial to the return of procedural democracy have, we are told, lost their momentum to the very forces they helped to restore. Electoral democracy has returned in many places with neoclientelistic overtones that are eroding the gains in consciousness achieved in the nonelectoral years (Hagopian 1993). The absence of a common enemy, most often an authoritarian military regime, has tended to mask less visible but often equally pernicious enemies in the form of violence that is nonofficial but tolerated nonetheless (Pinheiro 1992). And although procedural democratic practices may have returned for the middle classes, nothing inherent in the transition to democracy guarantees either procedural or substantive democracy for the lower classes (Huggins, ed., 1991; O'Donnell 1992; Fox 1994a).

As a preeminent enduring regime in the world today, Mexico provides a compelling case study regarding the nature and locus of power. Since the 1970s, accounts of politics in postrevolutionary Mexico have assumed that ongoing domination has resulted from centralized, relatively homogeneous power transmitted outward through corporatist mechanisms. The process of transmission replicated the dynamics of the center through a combination of skillful management and efficient coercion. Even now, as researchers are emphasizing the breakdown of corporatism and the complexity and nuance of current Mexican politics, they continue to codify the past according to the terms of the 1970s analysis and view the present through this lens. But while social scientists in the 1970s were right to characterize the postrevolutionary Mexican regime as authoritarian and hegemonic, they were wrong about the nature of hegemony. In constructing a state-centered and center-centered understanding of politics, social scientists then and now have misunderstood the nature of power and domination in Mexico and the reasons for the endurance of the Mexican regime.

Strikes have important effects on the workers and employers directly involved as well as significant indirect effects on consumers, economic growth, electoral outcomes, policy making, and political stability. Moreover, strikes form patterns that illuminate long-term social processes, the dynamics of economic and political conflict, and the functioning of industrial relations systems. Because strikes are important as both causes and symptoms of social change, an extensive literature has arisen on patterns of strike activity. To date, however, this literature has focused mainly on advanced industrial countries. To prepare the way for analyses of strike patterns in Latin America, more research is needed on the ways in which Latin American strike statistics have been collected and reported. This research note will report the results of such research for Argentina. The first section will assess the quality of strike statistics covering a century of Argentine history. The second section will compare four sources of data on Argentine strikes since the return to democracy in 1983, focusing on particularly useful data published by the Consejo Técnico de Inversiones (CTI) in Buenos Aires. The third section will make the CTI statistics available for research and will employ them to assess some widely held assumptions about labor militancy in Argentina during the period from 1984 to 1993.

Several databases now provide information on large-scale companies in Latin America. This information is being made available on a commercial basis to clients (mainly financial institutions interested in emerging markets in Latin America). The information is also available to academics, however, and promises to be a rich source that thus far has been undervalued by Latin Americanists. This research note will explore the possibilities generated by one database, Economática in São Paulo.