Left Behind. Latin America and the False Promise of Populism by Sebastian Edwards (review)

Latin American countries are rife with poverty and inequality. Despite many efforts to modernize and industrialize their economies, economic and social indicators across the region are wanting. In Left Behind, Sebastian Edwards takes a look at the economic history of Latin America to explain why it is that economic performance in this part of the globe is subpar and consequently why quality of life for millions of Latin Americans is dismal. The thrust of the argument—substantiated at length throughout the book—is that weak political institutions are at the core of these countries’ inability to develop.

Before proceeding forward with some of the details of Edwards’ argument and the structure of the book as a whole, it is worth pointing out a central weakness in the book’s main claim. In a nutshell, Edwards asserts that Latin American countries could not effectively modernize their economies because the neoliberal reforms of the 1990s and 2000s were incomplete. Discontentment with the economic performance and dissatisfaction with incumbent governments motivated citizens to vote left of center politicians into office. Edwards claims that neither the neoliberal reforms nor the populist response that followed have been able to put in place the policies required to alleviate poverty and produce sustained growth. Thus presented, the argument is sound.

Nevertheless, the author then devotes a considerable amount of the book to castigate populist and neopopulist regimes—something that is explicit in the subtitle of the book. Granted, populist governments of the 1950s, just as the neopopulist ones of the 2000s, have a poor track record in improving social and economic conditions, and have done so in a framework of fiscal profligacy. However, traditional parties and presidents are equally responsible as populist ones for allowing poverty and inequality to grow rampant. In fact, one could suggest that traditional presidents are even more responsible for the region’s economic misfortunes, having been in power longer. Edwards’ lambasting of populism, and his concomitant apology of the Washington Consensus, seems to tilt the blame toward the Left while exonerating the Right from their political responsibility. Corruption and ineptitude are certainly not the exclusive prerogative of Leftist governments. Similarly, prudence and responsibility are by no means defining characteristics of the Right only. As Levitsky and Roberts (The Resurgence of the Latin American Left, 2011) point out, there is a great deal of variance among Leftist governments: from Bachelet’s rather orthodox macroeconomic policies mixed with aggressive poverty alleviation programs to Chávez’s—and now Maduro’s—rather cryptic twenty-first-century socialism plagued with shortages and corruption. Indeed, there is no causal relationship between ideological position and success of economic policies, as may be implied from the author’s pertinacious criticism of populism. Thus, certain parts of the book seem to have an ideological bias. Nevertheless, Edwards makes it abundantly clear that Latin American politicians, as a whole, have a great debt toward their citizens for their utter incapacity and unwillingness to implement policies that provide universal welfare, and is dead-on right by identifying institutional weakness as the source of Latin America’s economic malaise.

With a thorough historical analysis, Edwards shows that Latin American governments have had lackluster performances that, time and again, have failed to put their countries in the path of economic development. From their independence in the nineteenth century to the Alliance for Progress and the Import-Substitution Industrialization years to the Washington Consensus, different governments—both from the Left and the Right—have perpetuated what Acemoglu and Robinson (Why Nations Fail, 2012) dubbed extractive institutions. That is, political and economic institutions that enrich a few powerful groups in society at the expense of the majority of the population. As such, while part one of the book presents the historical overview of the region’s political economy, part two delves in detailed analyses of the Chilean, Mexican, and Argentinean...