Democracy and Development in Latin America

Guardians of the Nation? Economists,Generals, and Economic Reform in Latin America. By Gary Biglaiser. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002. Pp. 256. $45.00 cloth, $23.50 paper.)

Presidents Without Parties: The Politics of Economic Reform in Argentina and Venezuela in The 1990S. By Javier Corrales. (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2002. Pp. 384. $55.00 cloth.)

Politicians and Economic Reform in New Democracies: Argentina and the Philippines in The 1990S. By Kent Eaton (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2002. Pp. 320. $58.50 cloth.)

Latin American Macroeconomic Reform: The Second Stage. Edited by José Antonio González, Vittorio Corbo, Anne O. Krueger, and Aaron Tornell. (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2003. Pp. 442. $95.00 cloth.)

Privatization and Democracy in Argentina: An Analysis of President-Congress Relations. By Mariana Llanos. (New York: Palgrave, 2002. Pp. 232. $65.00 cloth.)

Democracy: Government of The People Or Government of The Politicians? By José Nun. (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000. Pp. 128. $55.00 cloth, $17.95 paper.)

Democracies in Development: Politics and Reform in Latin America. By J. Mark Payne, Fernando Carillo, and Florez Daniel Zovatto. (Washington, D.C.: IADB and IDEA, 2002. Pp. 339. Np.)

Post-invasion Panama: The Challenges of Democratization in The New World OrdeR. Edited by Orlando J. Pérez. (Lantham, MD: Lexington Books, 2000. Pp. 208. $55.00 cloth.)

Neoliberalism and Neopanamericanism: The View from Latin America. Edited by Gary Prevost and Carlos Oliva Campos. (New York: Palgrave, 2002. Pp. 288. Np.)

The Politics of Market Reform in Fragile Democracies: Argentina, Brazil, Peru, and Venezuela. By Kurt Weyland. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002. Pp. 336. $39.50 cloth.)

Most of the books under review deal with democratization, democracy, and market reform. They offer a considerable variety of perspectives. Weyland, Corrales, and Eaton have produced the most theoretically ambitious works of political science considered here. They are principally concerned with market reform policies in the early 1990s. Weyland and Corrales also bring their accounts relatively up to date with discussion of more recent events. All three works are substantially about Menem's Argentina. So is Llanos's study, which is not comparative, but is convincing in what it covers. Biglaiser's work is also a serious attempt to understand the politics of economic reform, mainly from the perspective of the military governments of the Southern Cone that ruled in the 1970s and early 1980s. The best general discussion of some central topics in the politics of Latin American development occurs in Payne et al. The editors provide an excellent compilation of information on Latin America's diverse patterns of democratic institutionalization, plus some thorough analysis of key topics, and an intelligent and balanced commentary. The González collection, which constitutes the proceedings of a conference of economists and financial professionals, is very interesting in places, although some of it is inevitably rather technical. It is, though, something of a miscellany. Several chapters in the work have nothing much to do with the second stage of macroeconomic reform in Latin America. Even so, the volume contains chapters that, in a very sophisticated way, deal with issues that should be at the heart of any discussion of the politics of macroeconomic policy in the region.

Nun offers what is essentially an extended essay, which makes a number of provocative and interesting points of a philosophical nature while advocating essentially social democratic values. The work is very well worth reading. The Pérez and the Prevost and Campos volumes are edited collections that contain some interesting pieces. However, they are comparatively light in comparison with the other works under review, and the Prevost and Campos volume is essentially a miscellany. The Pérez collection at least focuses on Panama and has the merit of adding to a rather limited amount of scholarly material on that country.

The Payne volume introduces a central problem. Latin American democracy has...