The Rise of Developmentalism in Latin America: Beyond the Washington Consensus?

Abstract

Contemporary literature on Latin America has often addressed the central theme of the rise of the so-called pink tide. This catch-all term has been used to characterise the rise of left or LOC regimes across the continent. Therefore, Latin Americanists now analyse regimes such as Lula (and Dilma Rousseff) in Brazil, the Kirchners in Argentina, Tabaré Vasquez in Uruaguay, Michelle Bachelet in Chile, Evo Morales in Bolivia, Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, Alan García in Peru, Lugo (the ‘Red Bishop’) in Paraguay, Mauricio Funes in El Salvador, and Rafael Correa in Ecuador. This is in stark contrast to earlier decades, where individuals such as Alberto Fujimori, Carlos Menem, Carlos Andrés Pérez, Gonzalo Sànchez de Lozada, and FHC ruled across Latin America. The criteria and content of this rise of the pink tide has been concerned with the nature and degree of state intervention, policies for reforming governance and democracy, the scale and content of welfare programmes, the degree of equality — especially in terms of income and wealth, and regional and international policy stances (Lievesley and Ludlam, 2009a: 5). Many of these left or LOC regimes mentioned previously have been experimenting in these areas in ways that represent radical or reformist deviations from neoliberalism, a form of political economy that dominated the continent in the 1980s and 1990s.