economic development, and increasingly for many, for democracy. Ever since
they acquired independence from Spain at the beginning of the third decade of
the nineteenth century, Central Americans have sought their destinies in a
broad, worldwide process of state diffusion and "state making and nation
building." ¹ In the earliest years, an attempt was made at federation of the five
former colonies and ended in breakup. Even within that failed experiment, a
process of separate state formation went forward and continues to this day,
although it has gone through several distinctive stages.

State diffusion became altogether apparent in the wake of World War II with
the disintegration of the European overseas empires. More recently, the end of
the cold war has brought additional states into existence. Even in Central
America, state diffusion has only recently stabilized, though its main outlines
were formed in 1821. The two Central American states that this book leaves
aside are creations of the twentieth century. Panama gained its definition by
seceding from Colombia in 1903, and Belize was admitted to membership in
the Organization of American States (OAS) in 1990 without any protest from
Guatemala, which had previously asserted claims to the territory of Belize.
State diffusion and formation processes know no end, so one cannot say
whether any new states may come into existence, either through fragmentation
or integration, in the region, but territorial definitions now seem to be settled.

Diffusion occurs also as a result of the imitation by states of those institutions
and practices of others that have proven successful. In recent history, dramatic
examples of this type of political diffusion are provided by the acceptance of
the mechanisms of market economics and political democracy in the formerly
socialist states of eastern Europe and elsewhere. In the late 1980s and early
1990s, the Central American states were adopting structural adjustment pro-
grams that diffused economic and political practices thought to be conducive
to sound economic development in the future.

Meanwhile, a state formation process goes on within each country, in which
a variety of capacities, characteristics, and procedures are acquired or devel-
oped. In Central America following World War II, for example, there was an
explosion of government bureaucracy, as new tasks were taken on by public
authorities. More recently, a spread of democratic culture has brought more
citizens in many countries into electoral systems.

Accompanying these processes of diffusion and formation is a third process:
the maintenance of the position of the state in the international system. Any
given state has a position relative to other states that is based on its capabilities.
In a strict sense, there is no hierarchy, but states nevertheless rank as more or
less powerful, as differing in prestige, as rich or poor. One compelling assump-
tion of theory in international politics is that "states seek to ensure their
survival," ² meaning that a minimal objective of authorities responsible for the
conduct of foreign policy is to maintain the positions of their respective states.
Just as with state formation, it is possible for a state to lose position as well as

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