The focus for students of Latin America in the past decade has been on the political forces of the left and the so-called 'pink tide' presidencies attempting to bring about social and economic change in the region. However, there has been far less attention paid to the rightwing political forces resisting such change. Such opposition is being orchestrated by political parties, business, the private media and other social and cultural institutions and is linked to the 'soft power' of US dip...

This book explores the links between European integration and globalisation, and examines the potential for social transformation in the context of the global economic crisis and the resulting EU reforms.Divided into three parts, this book offers both empirical and theoretical analyses of social integration, supranationality and global competition. Drawing on Critical Political Economy research, Neo-Gramscian, Open Marxist, Regulationist and Post-structuralist scholars subject a wi...

The Brazil-United States relations represent a huge potential, but in recent decades have suffered from lack of communication and understanding between academics and policymakers from both countries. This book goes a long way towards demystifyingthis relationship. Covering from the final decades of the 19th century until the period of the Rousseff and Obama administrations,the work apprehends the political, economic and diplomatic contexts that define the present day.

Neoliberalism - the doctrine that market exchange is an ethic in itself, capable of acting as a guide for all human action - has become dominant in both thought and practice throughout much of the world since 1970 or so. Its spread has depended upon a reconstitution of state powers such that privatization, finance, and market processes are emphasized. State interventions in the economy are minimized, while the obligations of the state to provide for the welfare of its citizens are diminish...

Evo Morales rode to power on a wave of popular mobilizations against the neoliberal policies enforced by his predecessors. Yet many of his economic policies bare striking resemblance to the status quo he was meant to displace. Based in part on dozens of interviews with leading Bolivian activists, Jeff Webber examines the contradictions of Morales' first term in office.

Grassroots social movements played a major role electing left-leaning governments throughout Latin America. Subsequent relations between these states and "the streets" remain troubled. Contextualizing recent developments historically, Dangl untangles the contradictions of state-focused social change, providing lessons for activists everywhere.

Few discussions in modern social science have occupied as much attention as the changing nature of welfare states in western societies. Gosta Esping-Andersen, one of the most distinguished contributors to current debates on this issue, here provides a new analysis of the character and role of welfare states in the functioning of contemporary advanced western societies.Esping-Andersen distinguishes several major types of welfare state, connecting these with variations in the histori...

Over the past few years, something remarkable has occurred in Latin America. For the first time since the Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua in the 1980s, people within the region have turned toward radical left governments - specifically in Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador. Why has this profound shift taken place and how does this new, so-called Twenty-First-Century Socialism actually manifest itself? What are we to make of the often fraught relationship between the social movements and go...

This textbook provides a historical survey of economic and political development theory and practice from 1945. Against the background of changes in global politics, it explores how the project of international development has been shaped in a series of wider contexts. Divided into two historical parts: the Sovereign Order, post 1945 to the early-1980s, and the Liberal post-Cold War Era from the 1980s to the present day, it examines:the evolution of ideas of international dev...

Dictatorship in South America explores the experiences of Brazilian, Argentine and Chilean experience under military rule.Presents a single-volume thematic study that explores experiences with dictatorship as well as their social and historical contexts in Latin AmericaExamines at the ideological and economic crossroads that brought Argentina, Brazil and Chile under the thrall of military dictatorshipDraws on recent historiographical currents from...

Until recently, dominant theoretical paradigms in the comparative social sciences did not highlight states as organizational structures or as potentially autonomous actors. Indeed, the term 'state' was rarely used. Current work, however, increasingly views the state as an agent which, although influenced by the society that surrounds it, also shapes social and political processes. The contributors to this volume, which includes some of the best recent interdisciplinary scholarship on state...

In this compelling and comprehensive look at the rise of Evo Morales and Bolivia’s Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS), Linda Farthing and Benjamin Kohl offer a thoughtful evaluation of the transformations ushered in by the western hemisphere’s first contemporary indigenous president. Accessible to all readers, Evo’s Bolivia not only charts Evo’s rise to power but also offers a history of and context for the MAS revolution’s place in the rising “pink tide” of the political left. Farthi...