Cases of Reform: An Overview

Abstract

Nearly all expansions of suffrage to the rural poor in Latin America coincided with land reforms. This book argues that politicians seeking to secure political power both extended suffrage and attempted land reform to gain the support of the previously disenfranchised rural poor. This chapter presents a comparative overview of most Latin American countries before exploring the dynamics of these reforms in more depth in case studies on Chile, Venezuela, and Brazil. Information on the removal of restrictions on suffrage details the evolution of the right to vote in Latin America. Necessary preconditions for reform such as illiteracy and the demand for reform help to establish whether politicians and their parties could expect new voters to support parties that implemented land reform.