“Latin America, this immense country of visionary men and historic women, which their obstinacy with no ends join with the legend.”
Gabriel García Márquez, 1.982
We understand by development the progressive evolution of an economy toward better levels of life. To get this we try to imitate development models from modern societies, where institutional and structural differences affect market functioning: in Latin America there are more imperfect competition market, in contrast with developed societies markets, that work with lesser imperfection levels.
But in both kinds of societies at least there must be an institutionalized economic society for a democracy to be consolidated.
Modern consolidated democracies require a set of socio-politically crafted and socio-politically accepted norms, institutions, and regulations, which we call economic society, that mediates between state and market, neither in a command economy nor in a pure market economy. Democratic consolidation requires the institutionalization of a socially and politically regulated market. This requires an economic society, which in turn requires an effective state.
In Latin America the ineffectiveness of the state traduces in high levels of inequality that reduces the impact of economic development for a variety of reasons: unequal access to credit; unequal educational opportunities; distributional conflicts; crime and violence increase; and, weaker property rights.
The wave of democratization in the 1980s brought, at a basic level, some equalization in citizenship, and potentially in differences in power. However, inequalities in the application of the rule of law remained large in most of the region, even under democratic auspices.
While the late arrival of competitive democracy is a relevant fact, the evolution of the institutional structure in the region in response to, and in defense of, the predominant elite interests has been a fundamental cause of the persistent inequality, rather than the type of regime in place.
The democratization in Latin America show us on the one hand, an authoritarian legacy and the dynamics induced by fragmented social structures and weak states led to the delayed and halting consolidation of democracy, with periodic bouts of unconstitutional threats and authoritarianism (especially during the Cold War period). On the other, when democracy did return to the region in the 1980s, it proved insufficient to transform the region to one with genuinely equal citizenship and effective, inclusive states.
Democratization constituted an important shift in the political opportunity structure, but it was not a sufficient condition for change. What else we can do to get better levels of life for our citizens?
In Latin America everything can happen in an original and different way, or what we know as the “magical realism”. The magical realism is a Latin American literary movement that describes the region as an integrated and original community, with a lot of array.
That’s why we will discuss the differences between the Latin American development and democratization process and the western and industrialized economy’s development and democratization process.
Gabriel García Márquez, 1.982
We understand by development the progressive evolution of an economy toward better levels of life. To get this we try to imitate development models from modern societies, where institutional and structural differences affect market functioning: in Latin America there are more imperfect competition market, in contrast with developed societies markets, that work with lesser imperfection levels.
But in both kinds of societies at least there must be an institutionalized economic society for a democracy to be consolidated.
Modern consolidated democracies require a set of socio-politically crafted and socio-politically accepted norms, institutions, and regulations, which we call economic society, that mediates between state and market, neither in a command economy nor in a pure market economy. Democratic consolidation requires the institutionalization of a socially and politically regulated market. This requires an economic society, which in turn requires an effective state.
In Latin America the ineffectiveness of the state traduces in high levels of inequality that reduces the impact of economic development for a variety of reasons: unequal access to credit; unequal educational opportunities; distributional conflicts; crime and violence increase; and, weaker property rights.
The wave of democratization in the 1980s brought, at a basic level, some equalization in citizenship, and potentially in differences in power. However, inequalities in the application of the rule of law remained large in most of the region, even under democratic auspices.
While the late arrival of competitive democracy is a relevant fact, the evolution of the institutional structure in the region in response to, and in defense of, the predominant elite interests has been a fundamental cause of the persistent inequality, rather than the type of regime in place.
The democratization in Latin America show us on the one hand, an authoritarian legacy and the dynamics induced by fragmented social structures and weak states led to the delayed and halting consolidation of democracy, with periodic bouts of unconstitutional threats and authoritarianism (especially during the Cold War period). On the other, when democracy did return to the region in the 1980s, it proved insufficient to transform the region to one with genuinely equal citizenship and effective, inclusive states.
Democratization constituted an important shift in the political opportunity structure, but it was not a sufficient condition for change. What else we can do to get better levels of life for our citizens?
In Latin America everything can happen in an original and different way, or what we know as the “magical realism”. The magical realism is a Latin American literary movement that describes the region as an integrated and original community, with a lot of array.
That’s why we will discuss the differences between the Latin American development and democratization process and the western and industrialized economy’s development and democratization process.
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