Three things distinguish this edition from the first one. First, each chapter was rewritten and, to varying degrees, reorganized in order to improve the exposition and, in Part II, to make the treatment of each type of politics more complete and the comparisons of countries more meaningful. An entire chapter has been devoted to Mexico, for example, and the discussion of the Allende regime has been moved from the chapter on revolution to the one that deals with democratic reform politics in order to stimulate a discussion of the limits of constitutional government. Second, insights gleaned from recent scholarship are added in several places, including the sections on the Church, the military, authoritarian government, and economic dependency. And third, the analysis has been updated with the addition of new material on the 1982 Brazilian elections, the Argentine military's rise and fall between 1976 and 1983, the Nicaraguan revolution and its aftermath, and the world financial crisis and its impact on the region in the early 1980s.

The book was never intended to serve primarily as a summary of current events, but rather as an introduction to some of the fundamentals of Latin American politics and public policy. That remains its purpose. Nothing has happened to alter these fundamentals.