Abstract
The Latin American republics have accumulated between them, over more than a century and a half of independent political life, a wealth of experience of the relationship between states and markets. They offer examples which range from the extreme liberalism of the Murillo Toro regime in Colombia in the 1850s, which abstained from the organisation of its own military capacity, called upon its supporters to defend it if so inclined when it faced revolt, and duly fell from power, to the extreme interventionism of the pre-revolutionary regime in Cuba, which abolished the market in the dominant sugar sector, and the extreme utopianism of the Cuban revolution in its Guevarist phase, which attempted to abolish money in favour of moral incentives. With direct regard to the comparative theme to which this volume is addressed, Latin America since the Second World War has given birth to a distinctive development strategy, import-substituting industrialisation, and endowed it with a body of theory through the efforts of Raul Prebisch and other economists associated with the United Nations’ Economic Commission on Latin America (ECLA).1 One of the consequences of the deep regional economic crisis in the 1980s has been the profound questioning of this model of state-led development. In Latin America at least, the turn to the market has been as much a result of internal developments as either an imposition from outside, or a response to prevailing fashions in official international development circles.
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Notes
For an accessible account, see Joseph Love, ‘Raul Prebisch and the Origins of the Doctrine of Unequal Exchange’, Latin American Research Review, 15, 3 (1980) 45–72.
For a brief account of some of the consequences, see William Dixon, ‘Progress in the Provision of Basic Human Needs: Latin America, 1960–1980’, Journal of Developing Areas, 21, 2 (1987) 129–40.
See Stephen Krasner, ‘Manipulating International Commodity Markets: Brazilian Coffee Policy 1906 to 1962’, Public Policy, 21, 4 (1973) 493–523.
More generally, see Steven Topik, The Political Economy of the Brazilian State, 1889–1930 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986).
Seymour Martin Lipset and Stein Rokkan, ‘Cleavage Structures, Party Systems, and Voter Alignments: An Introduction’, in S. Lipset and S. Rokkan (eds), Party Systems and Voter Alignments: Cross-National Perspectives (Glencoe, NY: Free Press, 1967).
The classic study here is Theodore Moran, Multinational Corporations and the Politics of Dependence: Copper in Chile (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1974).
The best comparative discussion on the issues discussed briefly in the following paragraphs is John Sheahan, Patterns of Development in Latin America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987).
See David Lehmann, Democracy and Development in Latin America (London: Polity Press, 1990), pp. 36–7.
Peter Evans, ‘Class, State, and Dependence in East Asia: lessons for Latin Americanists’, in F. Deyo (ed.) The Political Economy of the New Asian Industrialism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987), p. 210.
As should be clear, the contrast proposed is structural, rather than merely geographic. The logic of the argument is reinforced by the case of the Philippines, where traditional elites were similarly kept in power. As a consequence, a ‘Latin American’ pattern of development ensued, leading in the end to the creation of a ‘hyper-autonomous’ state under Marcos. For an illuminating study, see Gary Hawes, The Philippine State and the Marcos Regime: The Politics of Export (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987).
For an account of the resentment this attitude caused in Brazil, see Stanley Hilton, ‘The Armed Forces and Industrialists in Modern Brazil: The Drive for Military Autonomy (1889–1954)’, Hispanic American Historical Review, 62, 4 (1982) 629–73.
Leslie Bethell and Ian Roxborough, ‘Latin America between the Second World War and the Cold War: Some Reflections on the 1945–8 Conjuncture’, Journal of Latin American Studies, 20, 1 (1988) (167–89), 176–7.
For a similar argument, applied to the case of Turkey in the 1970s, see Henri Barkey, ‘State Autonomy and the Crisis of Import Substitution’, Comparative Political Studies, 22, 3 (1989) 291–314.
See Alfred Stepan, State and Society: Peru in Comparative Perspective (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978);
and David Becker, The New Bourgeoisie and the Limits of Dependency: Mining, Class and Power in “Revolutionary” Peru (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983).
For a persuasive case study, see Douglas Bennett and Kenneth Sharpe, ‘Agenda Setting and Bargaining Power: The Mexican State versus Transnational Automobile Corporations’, in R. Kronish and K. Mericle (eds) The Political Economy of the Latin American Motor Vehicle Industry, (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1984).
Gordon White and Robert Wade, ‘Developmental States and Markets in East Asia: An Introduction’, in G. White (ed.) Developmental States in East Asia, (London: Macmillan, 1988) p. 9.
See Nora Hamilton, The Limits of State Autonomy: Post-Revolutionary Mexico (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982).
For a brief comparison of Mexico and El Salvador which follows the logic suggested here, see Enrique Baloyra, El Salvador in Transition (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1982), pp. 18–22.
Paul Cammack, ‘The Brazilianization of Mexico?’, Government and Opposition, 23, 3 (1988) 304–20.
See G. O’Donnell and P. Schmitter, ‘Tentative Conclusions About Uncertain Democracies’, in G. O’Donnell, P. Schmitter and L. Whitehead, eds, Transitions from Authoritarian Rule (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), vol. IV,
and J. Malloy, ‘The Politics of Transition in Latin America’, in J. Malloy and M. Seligson (eds) Authoritarians and Democrats: Regime Transition in Latin America (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1987).
For my critique, see P. Cammack, ‘The Politics of Democratization’, in B. Galjart and P. Silva (eds) Democratization and the State in the Southern Cone: Essays on South American Politics (Amsterdam: CEDLA, 1989).
Rhys Jenkins, ‘The Political Economy of Industrialization: A Comparison of Latin American and East Asian Newly Industrialising Countries’, revised version of paper originally presented to 46th International Congress of Americanists (Amsterdam, 1988), mimeo, 1990, p. 51.
This view has recently been forcefully advocated by Joel Migdal, Strong Societies and Weak States: State-Society Relations and State Capabilities in the Third World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988).
A recent review of this perennial topic is Karen Remmer, ‘Democracy and Economic Crisis: The Latin American Experience’, World Politics, 42, 3 (April 1990) 315–35. Her optimistic conclusion is weakened by two issues which she does not address, the first that the comparison she makes is between out-going authoritarian regimes and established or in-coming democratic regimes, the second that whatever can be said of the comparisons between these regime types, the overall performance regardless of regime type has been poor.
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© 1991 Michael Moran and Maurice Wright
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Cammack, P. (1991). States and Markets in Latin America. In: Moran, M., Wright, M. (eds) The Market and the State. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-21619-2_8
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