Download or read book State Capitalism written by Joshua Kurlantzick and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-03-08 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The end of the Cold War ushered in an age of American triumphalism best characterized by the "Washington Consensus:" the idea that free markets, democratic institutions, limitations on government involvement in the economy, and the rule of law were the foundations of prosperity and stability. The last fifteen years, starting with the Asian financial crisis, have seen the gradual erosion of that consensus. Many commentators have pointed to the emergence of a powerful new rival model: state capitalism. In state capitalist regimes, the government typically owns firms in strategic industries. Not beholden to private-sector shareholders, such firms are allowed to operate with razor-thin margins if the state deems them strategically important. China, soon to be the world's largest economy, is the best known state capitalist regime, but it is hardly the only one. In State Capitalism, Joshua Kurlantzick ranges across the world--China, Thailand, Brazil, Russia, South Africa, Turkey, and more--and argues that the increase in state capitalism across the globe has, on balance, contributed to a decline in democracy. He isolates some of the reasons for state capitalism's resurgence: the fact that globalization favors economies of scale in the most critical industries, and the widespread rejection of the Washington Consensus in the face of the problems that have plagued the world economy in recent years. That said, a number of democratic nations have embraced state capitalism, and in those regimes, state-backed firms like Brazil's Embraer have enjoyed considerable success. Kurlantzick highlights the mixed record and the evolving nature of the model, yet he is more concerned about the negative effects of state capitalism. When states control firms, whether in democratic or authoritarian regimes, the government increases its advantage over the rest of society. The combination of new technologies, the perceived failures of liberal economics and democracy in many developing nations, the rise of modern kinds of authoritarians, and the success of some of the best-known state capitalists have created an era ripe for state intervention. State Capitalism offers the sharpest analysis yet of what state capitalism's emergence means for democratic politics around the world.

Download or read book State Capitalism and Democracy in Latin America written by Atilio Borón and published by Lynne Rienner Pub. This book was released on 1994-12-31 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This text examines the obstacles Latin American countries face in their efforts at democratic reform, including political institutions, a strong authoritarian tradition, the influence of neoliberal economic policies, the shortsightedness of the ruling classes and hopelessness among the poor.

Download or read book Barrio Democracy in Latin America written by Eduardo Canel and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The transition to democracy underway in Latin America since the 1980s has recently witnessed a resurgence of interest in experimenting with new forms of local governance emphasizing more participation by ordinary citizens. The hope is both to foster the spread of democracy and to improve equity in the distribution of resources. While participatory budgeting has been a favorite topic of many scholars studying this new phenomenon, there are many other types of ongoing experiments. In Barrio Democracy in Latin America, Eduardo Canel focuses our attention on the innovative participatory programs launched by the leftist government in Montevideo, Uruguay, in the early 1990s. Based on his extensive ethnographic fieldwork, Canel examines how local activists in three low-income neighborhoods in that city dealt with the opportunities and challenges of implementing democratic practices and building better relationships with sympathetic city officials.

Download or read book Global Capitalism Democracy and Civil Military Relations in Colombia written by William Aviles and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through the lens of global capitalism theory, William Avilés examines democratization and civil-military relations in Colombia to explain how social and international forces led to the ostensibly contradictory outcome of democratic and economic reform coinciding with political repression. Focusing on the administrations in power from 1990 to the present, Avilés argues that the reduction in the institutional powers of the military within the state reflected changes in the structure of the global economy, the emergence of globalizing technocrats and politicians, and shifts in U.S. foreign policy strategies toward "democracy promotion." These same factors explain Colombia's establishment of a low-intensity democracy—a structure of elite rule in which the strategies of coercion (state and para-state repression) and consensus (competitive elections, civilian control over the military) maintain control and legitimacy. In the age of capitalist globalization, a low-intensity democracy is most concomitant with neoliberalism, establishing the political and economic environment most suitable to the investments of transnational corporations.

Download or read book Capitalism and Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe written by Grzegorz Ekiert and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2003-09-15 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume presents a shared effort to apply a general historical-institutionalist approach to the problem of assessing institutional change in the wake of communism's collapse in Europe. It brings together a number of leading senior and junior scholars with outstanding reputations as specialists in postcommunism and comparative politics to address central theoretical and empirical issues involved in the study of postcommunism. The authors address such questions as how historical 'legacies' of the communist regime be defined, how their impact can be measured in methodologically rigorous ways, and how the effects of temporal and spatial context can be taken into account in empirical research on the region. Taken as a whole, the volume makes an important contribution to the growing literature by utilizing the comparative historical method to study key problems of world politics.

Download or read book Sustaining Civil Society written by Philip Oxhorn and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Devoting particular emphasis to Bolivia, Chile, and Mexico, proposes a theory of civil society to explain the economic and political challenges for continuing democratization in Latin America"--Provided by publisher.

Download or read book Reinventing State Capitalism written by Aldo Musacchio and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2014-04-22 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The wave of liberalization that swept world markets in the 1980s and 90s altered the ways that governments manage their economies. Reinventing State Capitalism analyzes the rise of new species of state capitalism in which governments interact with private investors either as majority or minority shareholders in publicly-traded corporations or as financial backers of purely private firms (the so-called “national champions”). Focusing on a detailed quantitative assessment of Brazil’s economic performance from 1976 to 2009, Aldo Musacchio and Sergio Lazzarini examine how these models of state capitalism influence corporate investment and performance. According to one model, the state acts as a majority investor, granting the state-owned enterprise (SOE) financial autonomy and allowing professional management. This form, the authors argue, has reduced many agency problems commonly faced by state ownership. According to another hybrid model, the state uses sovereign wealth funds, holding companies, and development banks to acquire a small share of equity ownership in a corporation, thereby potentially alleviating capital constraints and leveraging latent capabilities. Both models have benefits and costs. Yet neither model has entirely eliminated the temptation of governments to intervene in the operation of natural resource industries and other large strategic enterprises. Nevertheless, the longstanding debate over whether private ownership is superior or inferior to state capitalism has become irrelevant, Musacchio and Lazzarini conclude. Private ownership is now mingled with state capital on a global scale.

Download or read book Democracy and the Left written by Evelyne Huber and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2012-09-01 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although inequality in Latin America ranks among the worst in the world, it has notably declined over the last decade, offset by improvements in health care and education, enhanced programs for social assistance, and increases in the minimum wage. In Democracy and the Left, Evelyne Huber and John D. Stephens argue that the resurgence of democracy in Latin America is key to this change. In addition to directly affecting public policy, democratic institutions enable left-leaning political parties to emerge, significantly influencing the allocation of social spending on poverty and inequality. But while democracy is an important determinant of redistributive change, it is by no means the only factor. Drawing on a wealth of data, Huber and Stephens present quantitative analyses of eighteen countries and comparative historical analyses of the five most advanced social policy regimes in Latin America, showing how international power structures have influenced the direction of their social policy. They augment these analyses by comparing them to the development of social policy in democratic Portugal and Spain. The most ambitious examination of the development of social policy in Latin America to date, Democracy and the Left shows that inequality is far from intractable—a finding with crucial policy implications worldwide.

Download or read book Development Democracy and Welfare States written by Stephan Haggard and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2008-09-14 with total page 508 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Comparing the welfare states of Latin America, East Asia and Eastern Europe, the authors trace the origins of social policy in these regions to political changes in the mid-20th century, and show how the legacies of these early choices are influencing welfare reform following democratization and globalization.

Download or read book The Capitalist Revolution in Latin America written by Paul Craig Roberts and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1997-04-17 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The political and social upheavals that have transformed the economies of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union during the past ten years have sparked considerable interest and speculation on the part of Western observers. Less noted, though hardly less dramatic, has been the revolutionary spread of free market capitalism throughout much of Latin America during the same period. In a wide-ranging survey that illuminates both the history and present business climate of the region, Paul Roberts and Karen Araujo describe the economic transformation currently taking place in Latin America. And as they do so, they also reexamine many of the prevailing orthodoxies concerning international development and the regulation of markets, and point to the success of privatization and free enterprise in Mexico, Argentina, and Chile as harbingers of the economic future for both hemispheres. The potential strength of the economies of Central and South America has always been obvious, the authors point out. Abundant natural resources, combined with vast expanses of fertile land and a sophisticated and relatively cohesive social culture, are found throughout the region. But the authors show that the Latin American nations were slow to discard the economic and social climate that they had inherited from their Spanish colonial masters, who had ruled by selling government jobs--creating a network of privilege--and by suppressing through over-regulation the development of markets for goods, services, and capital. The prevalent cultural attitude in Latin America was hostile to commerce, trade, and work--indeed, it was more socially acceptable to court government privilege than to compete in markets. The authors further show that U.S. aid packages to the region actually reinforced this culture of privilege and further hampered the growth of a free economy. Not until the 1980s did the picture begin to change, largely in response to the economic crises brought on through catastrophic national debts and hyperinflation. The book describes the efforts of the Salinas, Pinochet, and Menem governments to combat the established interests of the local elites and the international development agencies, to privatized state industries, and to established independent markets. In this new climate, private capitalists and entrepreneurs are feted and celebrated, and productivity has risen to levels unimagined only a few years before. But this dramatic economic turnaround, the authors show, is a mixed blessing for the U.S. For if it provides us with a vast new market for our goods, it has also created a powerful new competitor for capital investment. To keep American and foreign capitalists investing in America, the government needs to make changes, which the authors outline in a provocative conclusion. Central and South America have a combined population of 460 million people, a potential market greater than the United States and Canada combined or the European Community. Thus the rise of free market capitalism in Latin America is of vital interest to the United States. The Capitalist Revolution in Latin America provides an insightful portrait of this dramatic economic turn-around, illuminating the economic consequences for our own society.

Download or read book The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation in Latin America and Beyond written by Lorenzo Fusaro and published by . This book was released on 2022 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through this edited collection, the contributing authors examine the pertinence and actuality of Marx's general law while analyzing past and present issues in political economy in Latin America and beyond.

Download or read book The Third Wave written by Samuel P. Huntington and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2012-09-06 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between 1974 and 1990 more than thirty countries in southern Europe, Latin America, East Asia, and Eastern Europe shifted from authoritarian to democratic systems of government. This global democratic revolution is probably the most important political trend in the late twentieth century. In The Third Wave, Samuel P. Huntington analyzes the causes and nature of these democratic transitions, evaluates the prospects for stability of the new democracies, and explores the possibility of more countries becoming democratic. The recent transitions, he argues, are the third major wave of democratization in the modem world. Each of the two previous waves was followed by a reverse wave in which some countries shifted back to authoritarian government. Using concrete examples, empirical evidence, and insightful analysis, Huntington provides neither a theory nor a history of the third wave, but an explanation of why and how it occurred. Factors responsible for the democratic trend include the legitimacy dilemmas of authoritarian regimes; economic and social development; the changed role of the Catholic Church; the impact of the United States, the European Community, and the Soviet Union; and the "snowballing" phenomenon: change in one country stimulating change in others. Five key elite groups within and outside the nondemocratic regime played roles in shaping the various ways democratization occurred. Compromise was key to all democratizations, and elections and nonviolent tactics also were central. New democracies must deal with the "torturer problem" and the "praetorian problem" and attempt to develop democratic values and processes. Disillusionment with democracy, Huntington argues, is necessary to consolidating democracy. He concludes the book with an analysis of the political, economic, and cultural factors that will decide whether or not the third wave continues. Several "Guidelines for Democratizers" offer specific, practical suggestions for initiating and carrying out reform. Huntington's emphasis on practical application makes this book a valuable tool for anyone engaged in the democratization process. At this volatile time in history, Huntington's assessment of the processes of democratization is indispensable to understanding the future of democracy in the world.

Download or read book Dependent Capitalisms in Contemporary Latin America and Europe written by Aldo Madariaga and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-08-02 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book contributes to the current revival of dependency approaches for the analysis of global capitalism. Reflecting on contemporary uses of the “Dependency Research Program” (DRP) and a refined analytical toolkit, it makes two distinctive contributions to this revival: the analysis of new “situations of dependency”, and the understanding of the “mechanisms of dependency”. The individual chapters draw from a wide range of cases and data from Latin America and Europe and imbricate concepts and ideas from the DRP with those of other approaches, from post-Keynesian economics to structural economics, institutional economics, regulation theory, comparative capitalisms, business politics, economic geography and critical finance studies, providing a rich array of possibilities for virtuous inter-disciplinary cross-fertilization. This volume is a valuable contribution for those interested in understanding how global capitalism works in Latin America, Europe and beyond.

Download or read book Citizens Power in Latin America written by Pascal Lupien and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2018-04-01 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines why some democratic innovations succeed while others fail, using Venezuela, Ecuador, and Chile as case studies. Citizens’ Power in Latin America takes the reader into the heart of communities where average citizens are attempting to build a new democratic model to improve their socioeconomic conditions and to have a voice in decisions that affect their lives. Based on groundbreaking fieldwork conducted in Venezuela, Ecuador, and Chile, Pascal Lupien contrasts two models of participatory design that have emerged in Latin America and identifies the factors that enhance or diminish the capacity of these mechanisms to produce positive outcomes. He draws on lived experiences of citizen participants to reveal the potential and the dangers of participatory democracy. Why do some democratic innovations appear to succeed while others fail? To what extent do these institutions really empower citizens, and in what ways can they be used by governments to control participation? What lessons can be learned from these experiments? Given the growing dissatisfaction with existing democratic systems across the world, this book will be of interest to people seeking innovative ways of deepening democracy.

Download or read book Capitalist Development and Democracy written by Dietrich Rueschemeyer and published by . This book was released on 1992 with total page 387 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The authors offer a fresh and persuasive resolution to the controversy arising out of these contrasting traditions. Focusing on advanced industrial countries, Latin America, and the Caribbean, they find that the rise and persistence of democracy cannot be explained either by an overall structural correspondence between capitalism and democracy or by the role of the bourgeoisie as the agent of democratic reform. Rather, capitalist development is associated with democracy because it transforms the class structure, enlarging the working and middle classes, facilitating their self-organization, and thus making it more difficult for elites to exclude them. Simultaneously, development weakens the landed upper class, democracy's most consistent opponent.

Download or read book State Capitalism Contentious Politics and Large Scale Social Change written by Vincent Pollard and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2011-03-22 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through a careful analysis of the former Soviet Union and China, and South Asian societies of India and the Phillipines, this volume examines the creation of a state capitalism, its roll in economic development, and its impact on social change.

Download or read book Challenges to Democracy in Latin America and the Caribbean written by Mitchell A. Seligson and published by LAPOP. This book was released on 2008 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: