Models of Economic Liberalization
Business, Workers, and Compensation in Latin America, Spain, and Portugal

This book shows that liberalizing governments across Ibero-America often forge alliances with protected actors such as unions and domestic business.

Sebastián Etchemendy (Author)

9781107630321, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 27 March 2014

374 pages, 28 b/w illus. 47 tables
23.4 x 15.6 x 2.1 cm, 0.58 kg

“Models of Economic Liberalization is an essential addition to the economic development literature. In it, Sebastián Etchemendy provides an original theoretical framework to understand cross-national variation in the political compensation of economic actors during economic liberalization processes…Etchemendy’s research has important implications for the literature of economic reform in both developing and industrialized countries, and powerful ramifications for the modes of transition from ISI to open economies. It is a must read for scholars who aim to build on the existing literature in this field.” -Sebastián Royo, Suffolk University, ILRReview

This book aims to explain the variation in the models of economic liberalization across Ibero-America in the last quarter of the twentieth century, and the legacies they produced for the current organization of the political economies. Although the macroeconomics of effective market adjustment evolved in a similar way, the patterns of compensation delivered by neoliberal governments and the type of actors in business and the working class that benefited from them were remarkably different. Etchemendy argues that the most decisive factors that shape adjustment paths are the type of regime and the economic and organizational power with which business and labor emerged from the inward-oriented model. The analysis spans from the origins of state, business and labor industrial actors in the 1930s and 1940s to the politics of compensation under neoliberalism across the Ibero-American world, combined with extensive field work material on Spain, Argentina and Chile.

Part I. The Intellectual Terrain: 1. Overview: models of economic liberalization in ISI economies
2. From state to society: neoliberal reform and a theory of compensation in ISI economies
Part II. The Political Economy of Business Adjustment: 3. Compensating business insiders: the origins of statist and corporatist models in Spain and Argentina
4. Statist and corporatist models of business adjustment in Spain and Argentina: sectoral case studies
5. Exceptions that prove the rule: variations within countries in models of business adjustment
Part III. The Political Economy of Labor Adjustment: 6. Compensating labor insiders: the origins of statist and corporatist models in Spain and Argentina
7. Statist and corporatist models of labor adjustment in Spain and Argentina: sectoral case studies
Part IV. The Market Model: 8. The market path to economic liberalization: Chile in the comparative framework
Part V. Comparative Perspectives in Ibero-America: 9. Models of economic liberalization in Brazil, Portugal, Peru, and Mexico
10. Conclusions: legacies for the liberalized economies and varieties of capitalism in Ibero-America.

Subject Areas: Political economy [KCP], Comparative politics [JPB], Hispanic & Latino studies [JFSL4]