Javier Santiso’s new book Latin America’s Political Economy of the Possible (MIT Press: Cambridge Massachusetts, 2006) is a more thoughtful consideration of current trends in Latin American economics and politics than other commentators have mustered in this fraught year of electoral campaigns. It is also written with passion and demonstrates an enviable facility with the history, literature and politics of the Latin American region. However, it doesn’t quite live up to the praise on the back cover from notable academic luminaries. There are some substantive limitations of the book, and some which are more stylistic.
Most fundamentally, while purporting to be a political economy analysis of the recent trajectory of Latin America, the cases studies on Chile, Brazil and Mexico largely assume away the political underpinnings and implications of the economic achievements detailed. The underlying assumption seems to be that the ‘political economy of the possible’ (a new, more pragmatic vision of the political economy which adapts policy to national circumstances while putting aside revolutionary or other ideological rhetoric) is present when leaders achieve pro-market economic / social reform without causing a collapse of democratic institutions, rather than looking in a more nuanced way at both the political constellations which made reform possible and detecting potential implications of the economic decisions on the underlying political system (including parties and institutions). This is particularly true in the chapter on Lula / Brazil (Chapter 5) which assumes that the ability of the administration to achieve / sustain fiscal and monetary reform means that there is a political economy of the possible, despite the fact that a) social reforms (as the author admits on pages 134-135) have not achieved as much as the administration intended and b) there have been consequences of the economic reforms on the PT and other Brazilian political institutions (as hinted to by the mention of the 2005 corruption scandal on the same page). There is some suggestion of the fact that economic changes have been disruptive to Argentine democracy on pages 56-57 which makes the interesting and crucial point that: “Recent events in Argentina thus revive its history of political instability, but with an important nuance: it now takes place within a democratic framework” but this argument could be greatly expanded on in the context of other Latin American nations analysed within the text.
In terms of the quality of the argumentation, there are some internal contradictions. First, the author claims that the movement towards the political economy of the possible does not represent another swing in the paradigm pendulum, something Latin America has always been prone to. Yet there is little evidence to prove that this is the case – might not the current trends in three countries studied (or at least in Brazil and Mexico) be reversed in forthcoming elections, as was the case in Argentina, Bolivia and Venezuela (as is briefly hinted to on page 181)? It is unclear why the current system will stick when others did not. Secondly, there is some confusion in the temporal element of the argument. The author says that the embrace of democracy means that electorates have shifted their view towards the future – i.e. they are willing to wait until the next electoral cycle comes around to express their displeasure with current leadership. Several pages later, however, the author says that the fact that Latin American economies have engaged with global financial markets makes them regimes of the moment, responding immediately to the desires of markets. This immediacy of current Latin American political economy is reinforced in Chapter 8, which argues that Latin American electorates and leaders are interested in the present rather than making myths about the past of future. There are smaller points as well: the discussion of Latin American default begins by saying that “Another prevailing but incorrect stereotype regarding Latin American countries is their reputation as serial defaulters that repeatedly fail to honor their debts,” (pg. 60) arguing that Latin America’s default history is no worse than that of previous European defaulters, but says on the next page to say “…this is a region where, during the twentieth century and especially in the last two decades, the majority of suspended debt payments were concentrated.” (pg. 61)
Finally, and less importantly, there are also some stylistic issues with the book in so far that it doesn’t quite know who the audience is. It is not a ‘classic’ academic text as it lacks citations and footnotes and falls a bit short in developing the argument by careful analysis of evidence, nor is it a popular read. It falls somewhere in the middle, which is frustrating for the reader that knows the case studies and underlying literature (and is familiar with the author’s previous excellent work), and probably frustrating for a reader that knows less about the topic as well. There are also, in several places, careless typos and translation errors, which potentially show that the book was rushed to publication prior to the 2006 elections in Brazil and Mexico which are mentioned in the book as forward looking events.
Overall then, the book presents an intriguing thesis about the future of Latin America’s political and economic trajectories, but one which potentially needs both more time and more research to see whether its argument is borne out.
