William Glade

Privatization in rent-seeking societies

Abstract Four Latin American countries have devoted particular attention, though not equal action, to privatization policies, the implementation of which has shed considerable light on the dynamics of rent-seeking societies. The fact that democratization, in some form, is also underway in each of the four has intensified the interplay of forces that shape the implementation of privatization programs. The experiences of Mexico and Chile, in particular, demonstrate how important it may be to “privatize” the private sector by reforming macroeconomic policies and opening the economy to external competition before, or at least concurrently with, tackling the privatization of the public sector. The obstructive force of rent-seeking behavior is shown most clearly in the Argentine case, while the Brazilian experience is useful, along with that of Mexico, as a reminder that rent-seeking dynamics are not necessarily incompatible with structural transformation and high rates of growth.

Latin America and the international economy, 1870–1914

Introduction The half-century following the wars of independence in Latin America, that is to say, the period from the 1820s to the 1860s or 1870s, had been generally disappointing in terms of economic growth, although here and there, in the niches of a somewhat ramshackle but nevertheless changing structure, modest material and organizational gains were made. Over the region as a whole, the uneven diffusion of commercialization during the colonial period had left a complex mosaic of capitalist and non-capitalist relations of production, ranging from reciprocal labour networks, slavery, other compulsory labour regimes and debt peonage to share-cropping and various forms of tenant farming, wage labour and small-scale commodity production by artisans and smallholders. Communal ownership of land still existed alongside privately held properties both large and small, while other rural holdings were controlled by ecclesiastical and public authorities. Gradually, however, over the course of several decades, relationships more compatible with capitalist modes of interaction gained ground as long established colonial mechanisms for allocating resources fell into disuse and the world capitalist system expanded. A half-century of incremental change had not been enough to transform the economic organization of Latin America, but it did sufficiently alter conditions for the more sweeping institutional and technological developments of 1870–1914 to get under way. The regulatory systems established during the colonial period were being dismantled at the same time as public administration was breaking down and new, sometimes contested, national boundaries were being drawn. These developments disrupted local commerce and in many instances halted the former inter-regional (but by then inter-country) currents of trade within Latin America, while the strong gravitational pull of the expanding North Atlantic economies reoriented economic life towards a slowly growing participation in global trade no longer determined by Iberian commercial policy.

Issues in the Genesis and Organization of Cultural Diplomacy: A Brief Critical History

ABSTRACT Cultural Diplomacy did not begin until the later 1930s as a permanent function at the State Department. However, owing to circumstances then prevailing in the world, it, along with public diplomacy, became increasingly important in the 1940s−1960s. This Golden Age came to an end thereafter not only because of new conditions at home and abroad, but also because of the way the practice of cultural diplomacy was structured into the foreign policy machinery and subordinated to other ends. Changing fiscal priorities also had a hand in diverting resources into alternative uses. However, the challenges facing the United States, and the West in general, since 9/11 have the potential for restoring cultural policy to a place of prominence in the armamentarium of policies for dealing with the rest of the world—though its revival is by no means assured.

Institutions and Inequality in Latin America: Text and Subtext

of assorted populist political parties and movements. By the 1960s, participatory development had become almost a zeitgeist, and distributional concerns had ostensibly come to suffuse many of the development programs launched during that first United Nations Development Decade, including the Alliance for Progress. It is relevant to recall that, quite early in the postwar flowering of development studies, Viner (1952) had suggested that the chief aim (and test) of development should be the reduction of mass poverty. Both the US Agency for International Development (AID) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), for example, took up an interest in land tenure reform and peasant organizations, encouraging new programs to modify agrarian structure, while community development efforts and credit cooperatives were initiated under the auspices of the Peace Corps among others. Programs designed to strengthen labor unions were instituted in an effort to repair industrial relations systems long subordinated to the directives of political parties and/or governments. The Social Progress Trust Fund, set up under the aegis of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), and the Social Development division of the Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLA) became increasingly active, and the Employment Programme of the

Economic Policy Making and the Structures of Corporatism in Latin America

Quite unmistakably, we have in recent times been witnessing an intellectual Parousia of corporatism, corresponding apparently to the renewed flourishing in objective reality of this system of economic organization. In its earlier incarnation, the distinguishing attributes of the phenomenon were widely discussed and debated, most often under the rubric of fascism. Even then, many observed, as did von Beckerath in the Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, that “it is difficult to isolate by abstract analysis the distinctive feature of fascism. Viewed either negatively or positively, it has elements in common with other systems of national organization.”1 There were, for instance, clear corporatist traits in the structural configuration that Keynes felt, in the mid-twenties, would eventually come to characterize advanced western capitalism, even in the liberal democracies.2

Institutional Adjustment and Economic Development: Insights from the Etiology of Privatization

The year 1917 was pivotal in the emergence of economic development policy, for in that year two countries embarked on radically new paths of growth in which social and political reconstruction was linked with statemanagement of economic relationships. Although, as Alexander Gerschenkron and others have noted, late industrializers on the Continent and in Japan had already resorted to state intervention and/or development banking to accelerate and redirect change into patterns different from what the market, unaided, would have supported,1 the Soviet Union and Mexico, as precursors of mid-century developments, went much beyond the earlier cases. Differing from each other in the route chosen, as a policy pioneer, each was caught up in years of path-dependent experimentation and adaptation. Neither country had precedents to emulate, neither could draw on technical assistance from multilateral agencies or aid from leading countries, and each had to chart its new course before development studies had provided empirical and theoretical guidelines.