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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.

First, this paper aims to uncover how much marketing research based on data gathered in Latin America has been published in high quality business and marketing academic journals over the past decade. Second, it seeks to present recommendations on best practice in conducting and publishing such research derived from a Delphi study of authors who succeeded in doing so.

The paper undertakes a systematic review of the literature to identify the relevant published papers coupled with a Delphi study of the authors of those papers.

Over the last decade only 22 papers were published in high quality journals in the marketing area based on data gathered in Latin America. The reasons for this scarcity explored in the Delphi study derive both from the way in which high quality journals operate as well as from how authors conducting research in that area of the world design their studies and subsequently present them in manuscripts submitted to journals. Key recommendations include: focusing on novelty rather than replications, ensuring that studies have implications beyond Latin America, and positioning the research appropriately.

The main implication is that research conducted in Latin America is publishable in high quality journals if approached in the appropriate manner.

This is, to the authors' knowledge, the first study to analyse the challenges involved in conducting and publishing marketing research based on data gathered in Latin America in high quality journals as well as the first to present solutions to those challenges.

The purpose of this paper is to deploy an export dependency index to identify the sectors and countries in Latin America which are most exposed to fluctuations in Chinese demand. Bilateral trade between China and Latin America has grown very quickly in the past decade. As a consequence, economic relationships with Latin America intensified tremendously, as growing demand for resources drove China into relatively unexplored frontiers.

The Index measures the relative exposure of Latin American exporters to shifts in demand from China and is scaled from 0 to 1 (the higher the score, the more exposed an exporter is to disruptions of trade with China). The authors undertook the analysis using six-digit trade figures from the United Nations COMTRADE database (Harmonized System 2007 nomenclature) to ensure granularity and consistency and contrasted their results across two points in time, 2008 and 2014. The analysis was very comprehensive, covering the products that accounted for 80 per cent or more of all exports to China in 2014, for all countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.

According to our estimates, dependency on China increased overboard across Latin America for all countries and all sectors between 2008 and 2014. Absolute dependency levels were highest in Costa Rica, Colombia, Uruguay, Venezuela, Brazil, Panama, Peru, Chile, Guyana and Argentina. Of these, the largest exporters to China, namely, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Colombia and Venezuela, featured high dependencies concentrated around just four commodities: soy in the form of soybeans and soybean oil; crude oil; copper in the form of copper ore, copper cathodes and unrefined copper; and iron ore. These four commodities accounted for 80 per cent of the regions’ total exports to China.

This is one of few studies that look into Latin America’s commodity export dependency on China at such granular level.

The objective of this chapter is to identify the key characteristics of Global Services businesses that will thrive and achieve success in the future. These factors are integrated into three main pillars, which we refer to as the Triple-Win. The first and most obvious pillar is technology as a tool. The second pillar is the design and sustainability of the business model, without which the previous factor would be merely a cost and not an investment. And last but not the least, there is the purpose which gives meaning to the proposal, focusing on the human being and their environment. The DIDPAGA business model sits at the intersection of these three elements.

This chapter addresses the relationship between foreign interventions and the democracy of the intervened country. In other words, I discuss how foreign interventions have affected the quality of the democratic institutions of the country that is being intervened. Latin America has been chosen for this endeavour, and more specifically, three countries have been chosen as case studies: Nicaragua, Cuba and Brazil. Furthermore, I analyze two types of foreign interventions: military and economic interventions. Nicaragua, Cuba and Brazil have experienced both types of interventions. In order to do this comparison, I look at the predominant interventionists in Latin America: the United States and China.

While sharing fundamental similarities with other colonial and post-colonial experiences, Latin America has a unique history of having been the proving ground for early Spanish and Portuguese imperial projects, of having experienced a relatively long duration of – but also historically early end to – these projects, and of negotiating a particular and complex trajectory of internal and external post-colonial relations. What can the study of this distinct colonial and post-colonial experience contribute to a broader program of postcolonial sociology? Conversely, what can a revitalized postcolonial sociology contribute to the study of Latin America? This article develops provisional answers to these questions by reviewing major currents in South and North American scholarship on the Latin American colonial and post-colonial experience. Some of this scholarship self-consciously identifies with broader movements in postcolonial studies; but much of it – both historical and contemporary – does not. By bringing together diverse strands of thought, this article sheds new light on what postcolonialism means in the Latin American context, while using the comparative leverage that this set of often overlooked cases provides to contribute to a new program of postcolonial sociology.

This chapter studies how entrepreneurship research has evolved at the Latin American level. Using the database available in the Web of Science Core Collection, a period-by-period bibliometric analysis is carried out to identify possible changes in research trends over time. On the one hand, the results show that in the period 2000–2006, research focuses mainly on rural development, community development and financial resources. On the other hand, in the period 2007–2013, the research priority is related to international entrepreneurship, private capital raising and studies based on the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM). Finally, during the period between 2014 and 2020, research focused mainly on self-employment, family businesses, promotion of angel investor networks, venture capital, and female entrepreneurship. The results of this study may be of interest to academics, researchers, and policymakers to understand the evolution of this topic in recent decades and to promote entrepreneurship and innovation in the region.

Purpose—Through a case study of Pan American World Airways (Pan Am), this chapter sets out to explore the roots of 20th century globalization and the postcolonial nature of the trading relations involved.

Design/methodology/approach—Drawing on Foucault’s broad notion of “the archive” a critical hermeneutics approach is used to examine a series of company-produced texts, including minutes, travelogues, company narratives, annual reports, film, diaries, and published histories.

Findings—The chapter argues that Pan Am contributed to the “idea of Latin America” and, in the process contributed to practices of dependency that served the interests of the United States. Drawing on a case study of Pan Am, the chapter further argues that multi-national corporations help to establish the contours of international trade by influencing the very character and boundaries of the territories traded in, with troubling implications for the countries traded in.

Research limitations/implications—As a detailed case study extension of the findings to other global trading arrangements needs to take into account to social-political context and relational histories of the players involved.

Practical implications—The chapter generates insights into the role of rhetoric in developing trading relationships and its roots in embedded notions of postcolonial thinking and generalizations.

Originality/value—The chapter contributes to an understanding of the role of language and the social construction of national identities involved in the development of international business.

The board of directors of a firm is a governing body exercising key top-level decisions. Due to the involvement of the controlling families, boards of directors of family firms have been found to behave differently than those of other organizations. Besides family control, national and/or regional contexts have been suggested to influence how companies are governed. Boards of directors of family firms have been studied mostly in developed regions and knowledge from developing regions such as Latin America is scarce. This chapter summarizes the main findings about boards of directors in family firms and compares this research with our knowledge from Latin America. It discusses the different challenges and opportunities that owners of family firms and boards of directors face in the Latin American context. Finally, it suggests that research on boards of directors of family firms in Latin America has a very promising future as it still has to validate and/or contextualize findings in developed regions, overcome some theoretical and empirical limitations, explore some salient characteristics related to the institutional context in depth, and provide recommendations linking board characteristics and firm performance.