Neoliberalism and the Dynamics of Capitalist Development in Latin America (original) (raw)
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Critical Social Policy, 2018
The rejection of neoliberalism in Latin America at the time of the new millennium led to the emergence of a wave of 'post neoliberal' governments that sought to renegotiate the relationship between state and market and pioneer new forms of inclusive welfare. Supported by income from an export boom and a commitment to raising taxes, these governments attempted to implement a new economic model which bore some similarities to social democracy, alongside greater emphasis on recognition and identity politics. We ask here what accounts for the difficulties of institutionalising Leftist governance in Latin America and, in so doing, we draw attention to the embeddedness of the idea of neoliberal governance, globally and regionally. Whilst the weaknesses of the Left are real, the return of neoliberalism, now on the horizon in Latin America, fundamentally reflects the fact it is the global status quo.
Latin American Perspectives, 2007
The role of ideas has been neglected, in comparison with the role of interests and institutions, in the literature on neoliberal reform in Latin America. While ideas were not the primary cause of neoliberal reform, their development, articulation, and dissemination are a significant part of the story of the rise and fall of the "Washington Consensus." The neoliberalism of the 1980s and 1990s lost credibility and capacity to provide politically feasible policy guidelines because it was based on an elitist, exclusionary pact among small groups of experts and elites representing the interests of transnational capital. Only by understanding the origins and limitations of the ideas behind neoliberal reform can a new, more inclusive economic model for Latin America be created.
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This review-essay offers an extended engagement with Fernando Ignacio Leiva’s Latin American Neostructuralism, one of the most important contributions to contemporary Latin-American political economy. It situates Leiva’s critique of neostructuralism against the wider backdrop of Latin America’s contradictory turn to the Left since the late 1990s, and compares the treatments of change in Latin-American capitalism over the course of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries developed by the schools of classical structuralism, neostructuralism, and neoliberalism. The essay finds that Leiva’s critique of neostructuralism and his explanation for its influence on large segments of the region’s Left is the best work on the topic currently available in English. Leiva systematically demolishes neostructuralism’s claim to be a progressive alternative to neoliberalism. At the same time, it is argued that Leiva’s theoretical framework is compromised by its uncritical adoption of categories from French regulation-theory, and its nostalgia for elements of classical structuralism and its associated development-model of import-substitution industrialisation. Further, it is found that Leiva’s implicit attachment to certain myths propagated by the Marxism of the Second and, especially, Third internationals regarding the national bourgeoisie’s role in Third-World capitalist development leaves him unduly dogmatic about the necessity, and unduly optimistic about the possibility, of building a progressive stage of capitalism in Latin America today. The same mythologies prevent Leiva from drawing the appropriate conclusions as regards the urgent necessity of rebuilding the socialist project in Latin America and internationally.
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Over the last two decades, academic debates around neoliberalism in Latin America have shifted from evaluations of the drawbacks and virtues of the application of neoliberal policies for achieving socioeconomic development , towards discussions imagining and implementing alternatives. After thirty years of neoliberal reform, even neoliberal advocates have increasingly recognised the pernicious effects that the process of neoliberalization have had on people's lives. The fleeting left and centre-left moment brought renewed hopes and expectations of a post-neoliberal future. However, post-neoliberal states could not solve the contradictions of neoliberalism and told us much about its resilience and adaptability.
Development and Change 39 775 797, 2008
The term neoliberal is widely used as shorthand to describe the policy environment of the last three decades. Yet the experience of the Latin American region suggests that it is too broad a descriptor for what is in fact a sequenced, fragmented and politically indeterminate process. This article examines the evolution of social protection in the region, and argues for a more grounded, historical approach to neoliberalism, and for some analytic refinement to capture the different 'moments' in its policy evolution, its variant regional modalities, and its coexistence with earlier policies and institutional forms. It suggests that totalizing conceptions of neoliberalism as imposing an inexorable market logic with predetermined social and political outcomes fail to capture the variant modalities, adaptations and indeed resistance to the global diffusion of the structural reforms. This article outlines the systems of social welfare prevailing in Latin America prior to the reforms, and then examines the principle elements of what has been termed the 'New Social Policy' in Latin America, engaging three issues: the periodization of neoliberalism; the role of the state; and the place of politics in the neoliberal reform agenda. This article originated in a paper presented to the ESRC study group on Social Policy organized by Christopher Abel and Colin Lewis, hosted by the Institute for the Study of the Americas, University of London. It draws on a study of the gender dimensions of Mexico's conditional cash transfer programme (see Molyneux, 2006, 2007) to provide some of the background context.
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Dispatches from Latin America: On the frontlines against neoliberalism
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Description From the laboratory of neoliberalism—popularly known as" globalization"—Latin America has transformed itself into a launching pad for resistance. As globalization began to spread its devastation, robust and thoughtful opposition emerged in response—in the recovered factory movement of Argentina, in the presidential elections of indigenous leaders and radicals like Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales, against the privatization of water in Bolivia. Across Latin America, people are building social movements to take back control of their ...
Post‐neoliberalism in Latin America: Rebuilding and Reclaiming the State after Crisis
Development and Change, 2012
The idea that states should take on an enhanced role in the pursuit of development is once again becoming increasingly pronounced in the global South. In Latin America, the 'return of the state' is associated with neostructuralism or post-neoliberalism and the rise of the New Left. Post-neoliberal projects of governance seek to retain elements of the previous export-led growth model whilst introducing new mechanisms for social inclusion and welfare. In addition to being a project of growth based on exports and expanded social spending, post-neoliberalism has a distinctive political character. This article explores the pillars of the new governance project, emphasizing the citizenship claims associated with it, along with some of the tensions that arise from export-dependent growth, budget limitations, a weak tax base and the difficulties of managing enhanced social expectations. In making their argument, the authors draw on the examples of Bolivia, Ecuador and Argentina.