Search results

This chapter studies the evolution of the relationships between the US imperialism and Venezuela in the last 100 years. The main purpose is to insert the present form of these links in their historical perspective. The first section is about the implications of Venezuela’s integration into the world economy through oil exports. The second one discusses the effects on the Venezuelan economy of the post-WWII economic expansion. The third and fourth sections deal with the consequences of the world economy changes since the 1980s on Venezuelan society. The last three sections explain the contradictions generated by the development of the Chavista transition project within the local ruling classes and with the US imperialism itself.

This chapter argues that despite the proverbial claim that populism is ill-defined and has too broad a conceptual net, the literature on the subject tends to converge toward four core elements of populism that provides a conceptual and analytical unity. Furthermore, the conceptual core of populism explains why the concept has been able to encompass a wide range of populist manifestations without becoming an empty analytical shell. Also, the conceptual cores have helped provide the empirical basis that has given rise to a diverse and innovative literature that seeks to measure and compare cross-nationally populism.

This chapter explores how scholars have conceptualized the relationship between Latin American populism and democracy. It analyzes different approaches to populism such as modernization and dependency theory, and current approaches that focus on discourse analysis and/or political strategies. The chapter focuses on the current wave of radical populism to explore the continuities and differences between “classical” populism of leaders such as Juan Perón, the “neopopulism” of Alberto Fujimori, and the radical populism of Hugo Chávez, Evo Morales, and Rafael Correa.

The Latin American region experienced an electoral shift to the political left during the 2000s but this leftist shift did not radically alter the political economy of the region. Following Jessop’s (2008) strategic-relational approach to theorizing about the state, this paper focuses on the perspective that the structure of the state is both an outcome of prior social struggles and a structuring mechanism for the social actors that attempt to enact political and economic reforms.

After demonstrating what this has historically meant for the types of state that have existed in Latin America during the past century by reviewing some of the literature on the corporatist and bureaucratic-authoritarian states and clientelism, this paper argues that the neoliberal reforms of the 1980s and 1990s constituted a new type of state – the Latin American neoliberal state. This analysis is then focused on the literature that seeks to describe the new lefts in the region, while continuing to focus on the role of the neoliberal state in structuring these new lefts’ terrain of struggle.

Understanding the new lefts in Latin America and the types of reforms that they are capable of making requires that we better understand this new type of state. Due to the structural limitations imposed by the neoliberal state, the lefts are not able to radically alter the region’s political economy.

In this chapter, the author argues that Austrians are perhaps uniquely placed to be effective practitioners of causal inference techniques on observational data. This is because, while the methods are easy to implement, their validity and value lies in a detailed, “analytical/historical” narrative to accompany the findings. This is true for several reasons. (1) all the models have identifying assumptions (e.g., no spillovers and parallel trends) that are best addressed by an exposition of the institutional/economic/historical milieu in place before and after the treatment under study; (2) determination of external validity also requires detailed institutional and historical knowledge; and (3) researchers often want to know the mechanisms producing the reduced form result that comes out of most causal inference studies. Here again, institutional and historical learning is crucial. My conclusion is that Austrians should add the tools of causal inference with observational data to their arsenal of analysis. This would be good both for their publication prospects and for the profession at large.