This is an interesting attempt to create a textbook around a conceptually focused set of articles produced by the author/editors and six other chapter writers. All are well-seasoned and published observers of the Latin American political scene, and thus, at a minimum, they have produced an informative set of essays. But from the point of view of a usable textbook, the work strikes me as being considerably more.
Basically, the book takes the view that a systematic analysis of public policy making constitutes an illuminating way of getting at some of the larger issues of contemporary Latin American politics. To this end, the editors have organized six case-specific studies of policy making within the framework of a set of introductory and concluding essays that give theoretical and conceptual unity to the volume. Indeed, one of the book’s major achievements is the degree of theoretical coherence given to what would otherwise be a set of disparate case materials.
In the first section, there is a discussion of a variety of approaches to the study of policy making that blends nicely standard political science approaches with some more regionally focused approaches, such as dependency theory and corporatism. This is followed by a useful presentation of the major actors in the policy-making process. These are well- constructed chapters that strike a good balance between purely analytical and regional-specific materials.
The middle of the book is made up of six case studies that deal with specific policy areas in different countries. These are broken down and organized around three themes of policy making—in military regimes, democratic regimes, and postrevolutionary regimes. Thematically. the cases deal with welfare policies, agrarian reform, and foreign policy. Each of these chapters stands well in its own right.
The final section tries to identify patterns of policy making and then assess the impact of policy in a number of socioeconomic areas. While no startling conclusions emerge, the book does provide a good way to introduce students to the policy approach to political analysis. All in all, this is a book that would work well as a supplemental text in a variety of introductory courses in history and political science that focus on contemporary Latin America.
