Peter Kingstone

Partisanship and Policy Choice What's Left for the Left in Latin America?

Leftists seem to be on the rise in Latin America, but it is unclear to what extent this impacts policy. Thus, a crucial question hangs over this apparent “shift” in regional preferences: does the left have any real options to offer? Or in Latin America in an age of globalization, “whats left for the left?” The contending perspectives are compared, and then the evidence is evaluated using a series of econometric models. In sum, no discernible policy differences between the left and the rest were found. In the conclusion, the implications of this result for Latin American democracy are discussed.

Brazil's Second Chance: En Route toward the First World

The article reviews the book “Brazils Second Chance: En Route Toward the First World,” by Lincoln Gordon.

The political economy of Latin America: reflections on neoliberalism and development after the commodity boom

Peter Kingstone é um dos mais consistentes latino-americanistas contemporâneos. Suas conexões intelectuais com os temas de economia política da América Latina têm origem em sua análise sobre a política industrial brasileira, mais especificamente, acerca da abertura da economia brasileira após mais de sessenta anos de clausura, e que assistiu a uma inédita comunhão de interesses entre empresários e governo para levar adiante o projeto de desenvolvimento do país2 -um caso de exceção na literatura até então. Adiante em suas investigações, o autor concentra sua análise em uma das mais importantes questões à região: como superar a pobreza e da desigualdade que, a despeito dos avanços recolhidos, ainda grassa na América Latina? A busca por respostas se materializa em argumento principal de The Political Economy of Latin America: Reflections on Neoliberalism and Development (2011), ao transformar a incômoda incógnita em uma reconstrução do fortemente contestado conjunto político e econômico conhecido como neoliberalismo, entendendo-o como produto histórico, descendente direto do esgotamento do projeto de desenvolvimento latino-americano baseado na industrialização por substituição de importações (ISI), e refletindo sobre o papel deste na conformação de instituições por toda a região. Sob o ponto de vista dos críticos às análises estrangeiras, soa esquizofrênico explicar os problemas da América Latina aos latino-americanos, no entanto, Kingstone não se perde em referências relacionas exclusivamente ao seu imediato alcance, ou em uma fria e pedante análise da pobreza -ao mais puro estilo colonial aplicado às Ciências Sociais. Não. Escrevendo de maneira leve e fluída, não transforma os termos relacionados à economia em um empilhado de termos ininteligíveis, tampouco faz com que preconceitos sejam reproduzidos. O plano do livro, divido em cinco capítulos, conduz o leitor pelo turning point dos paradigmas de desenvolvimento da América Latina3, desde o desgaste da ISI durante a década de 1980 até o presente. O capítulo dois retoma as origens do projeto estruturante de ISI e o dado de realidade histórica, retomando Raúl Prebisch mas deixando de 1. Pesquisador do Núcleo de Pesquisa em Relações Internacionais da Universidade de São Paulo (NUPRI/USP) e Doutorando em Integração da América Latina pela mesma Universidade. fchagasbastos@usp.br.

Economic Exclusion and the Shifting Patterns of Violence in Argentina and Brazil

As of 2012, the prospects for democracy 1 and peace in Latin America remain uncertain. Some countries suffer from serious political conflicts that threaten the integrity of the state and/or the regime. Mexico’s vicious drug war, Ecuador and Bolivia’s precarious balancing of procedural democratic forms with growing indigenous mobilization, Colombia’s virtual civil war, and Venezuela’s toxic polarization all stand as critical examples of the region’s democratic frailties. By contrast, Argentina and Brazil stand out as relatively positive cases of democracy and political stability, despite appearing earlier as among the least likely to succeed in the third wave of democratization. Disastrous economic performance and incompetent governance into the early 1990s raised doubts about the longevity of their respective democratic experiments and the possibility of containing political violence. Yet, as of 2012, the two countries are among the more stable in the region, with Brazil tagged as a rising global power.

The Politics of Freeing Markets in Latin America: Chile, Argentina, and Mexico. By Judith A. Teichman. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001. 288p.

The politics of neoliberal reform in Latin America has produced a number of impressions that are more or less widely held, but not necessarily entirely accurate. For example, many critics of the neoliberal reform process see it as a creature of Washington and Wall Street—views of economic development imposed on vulnerable, debt-ridden Latin American governments. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank play crucial roles as carriers of the “Washington Consensus” and enforcers of its policy prescriptions. In this view, insulated technocrats—often with U.S. economics degrees—implement these essentially unpopular programs without consultation, oversight, or any societal participation. “Delegative democracy” and populations battered by a decade or more of debt and inflation help explain the extent to which these unelected and unaccountable technocrats have been able to promote this agenda. A narrow electoral coalition, anchored by wealth holders and conservative ideologues, has maintained the political space for these insulated technocrats to continue, despite deep opposition from societal groups such as labor.

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Financial globalization and foreign capital flows have come to occupy great attention in Latin America in the mid-1990s. In political terms, the increased importance of foreign capital has held out both promises and threats for Latin American democracy. On the one hand, foreign investment and financial liberalization have held out the possibility of financing new growth and replacing the now exhausted sources of state financing for industry. Similarly, these new inflows of capital have also helped support financially strapped governments, allowing them to maintain key services and political support while substantially cutting overall spending. On the other hand, substantial and sometimes rapid capital inflows also posed risks — as the Mexican peso crisis and resulting ‘tequila effect’ dramatically revealed. When financial flows reverse their direction, the resulting payments problems can force politically difficult choices over who should bear the costs.