Catherine Conaghan and James Malloy have written a brilliant book about two of the most important challenges facing Latin America today: economic development and democratization. Their work is carefully researched and cleverly argued; their findings are highly original and not a little disturbing.
As the authors show, beginning in the 1970s, leading business interests in the central Andean nations of Ecuador, Bolivia, and Peru became increasingly dissatisfied with the military governments they had earlier done much to put in place. Although government policies were part of the cause, what the economic elite really wanted was more predictable and regular access to government decision making, something the military governments had generally denied to this group. With its great power and influence, the elite was now ready to take its chances in a democracy, banking on the notion that it could sufficiently determine political and policy outcomes to protect and advance its own interests.
At the same time, business leaders were captivated by the new economic religion of neoliberalism, that U.S.-born body of thought that saw universal salvation in free markets. The elite were attracted for many reasons: its deep fear of government’s ever-lengthening reach in state-led economies, the long-term floundering of individual nations’ economies, the failure of all previous economic programs to do much good, and the new theory’s self-assured and appealingly clean philosophical purity.
Contrary to the endless stream of pronouncements about the post-Cold War world, however, democracy and free-market economies are not goals in perfect harmony. Indeed, Malloy and Conaghan demonstrate the near-impossibility of enacting or sustaining neoliberal economic experiments in an authentic democracy. Neoliberal programs demanded huge sacrifices from already hard-pressed families; therefore, such programs almost never could be popular. Candidates who favored neoliberalism got elected only if they were vague and disingenuous about their economic agendas. Once in office, executives had to marshal the available political support and neutralize the opposition to force these unpopular programs through legislative approval. Economic policymaking had to be removed from the democratic process altogether and handed over to a small coterie of U.S.-educated technocratic “experts.” True believers, these “experts” arrogantly refused to listen to any advice or modify their plans, no matter what the social cost, insisting that they alone were capable of understanding the arcane world of economics. To these “experts” (the “Chicago boys,” or just “the boys”), all enemies of neoliberalism were selfishly motivated, too weak, or simply not bright enough to fathom the obvious advantages of the new theory.
Reading this insightful and important book reawakened in this reviewer an ugly fear. Elite commitment to democracy in Latin America has always been provisional-permitted only so long as wealth and economic policy preferences are not threatened. In the 1980s and 1990s, the elite in Latin America could happily embrace democracy because their policy preferences were being fully and universally adopted. But now, popular patience with neoliberalism is fast running out. As protests increase, I fear the return of the classic historical pattern. I look for the elite to withdraw their commitment to democracy and invite the military to discipline those making “irresponsible” demands for social justice. For democracy in Latin America, the worst may be yet to come.
