Transnational Politics in Central America

Political theorists tend to write about the countries of Central America (Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama) either as individual nation-states or as the pawns and victims of international intervention. In doing so, they forget or ignore that these countries developed close historical and sociological links and even tried to build a single nation in the early nineteenth century.

Luis Roniger traces the dialectical tug of war that unfolded between the process of distinct state consolidation and processes of transnational engagement and disengagement in the region. Eschewing well-trod theoretical approaches that do not account for the existence of transnational dynamics before the current stage of globalization, this landmark book identifies recurring trends of state fragmentation and attempts at reunification or social and political association in the region over the past two centuries. Luis Roniger, Reynolds Professor of Latin American Studies at Wake Forest University, is the author of fourteen books, including The Legacy of Human Rights Violations in the Southern Cone; Democracy, Clientelism, and Civil Society; and The Politics of Exile in Latin America.