After a year of record gas revenues in 2006, Bolivia has achieved a fiscal surplus for the first time in three decades. In a period in which high oil prices have given Chavez more room to manoeuvre to shift its policy towards nationalisation and authoritarianism (see recent LACG Blog), there is the suspicion that windfall revenues may allow the Morales administration to take the same turn in Bolivia.

 

A new ODI Opinion argues that this is unlikely to be the case and that Evo Morales is actually departing from Chavez-type policy-making, acting more pragmatically and to some ...   more »

Massimiliano Cali is a Research Officer in the International Economic Development Group. He works on economic geography, trade and development; spatial inequalities in developing countries; agricultural economics; Latin America and South Asia.

Email: m.cali@odi.org.uk

Some commentators of current Latin American political issues (see for example the article by Jorge Castañeda in the last number of Foreign Affairs) have recently focused their attention on the distinction between two types of left emerging in the continent: a populist extremist left and a social-democratic moderate left. The populist left, exemplified by Chavez, Kirchner, Morales, Humala and López Obrador, which Castañeda defines as the “wrong” type, would only be driven by its interest in holding tightly the reins of power with no real interest in the development of their countries. On the other hand the moderate social-democratic left, the “right” left, represented by Bachelet, Lula and Vázquez, would be involved in more responsible and sustainable policy-making.    more »