Development from Within

Toward a Neostructuralist Approach for Latin America

Dados Bibliográficos

ID2831402
AutoresChristian Anglade (University of Essex, autor correspondente), Osvaldo Sunkel
Ano1995
Volume75
Fascículo3
Páginas509
Data de publicação1995-08-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoHispanic American Historical Review (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0018-2168 • E-ISSN: 1527-1900
EditoraJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/2517286
OpenAlexW4236450820
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas19

The collection of essays that comprises this book is welcome because, in the midst of analyses and recommendations currently dominated by neoliberal theory, it represents an attempt to revive the structuralist school.From the early days of CEPAL, this school has exerted a profound influence in Latin America.Most contributions offer valuable surveys of those areas of policy that have generated debate and contention since the 1950s, both within the structuralist school and, more recently, between structuralists and neoliberals.Such debate has led to the heterodox-versus-orthodox confrontation that has characterized the Latin Ameri can scene since the economic crisis came into the open in the early 1980s.The debates on macroeconomic issues, industrialization policies, agriculture, trade, the labor market, technology, capital formation, and the environment are well presented, and for this reason alone the book can certainly be recommended.The orientation of this structuralist revival is also clearly formulated, both through the book's criticism of early structuralism and through its own policy rec ommendations.This is where some of the ideas the book presents are debatable.There is, admittedly, no easy solution to Latin America's economic crisis, and any attempt at constructing a model of crisis management is bound to face serious difficulties and to engender contradictions.Yet we might have expected this con certed effort by some of the best-known neostructuralists to do better than simply glide over some of the key issues in contention.I will briefly consider only two of them here.The first is the problem of what is supposed to lie at the heart of a develop ment process.The neostructuralists' response is clearly in supply-side economics.Demand and markets are not critical (p.8).The overemphasis put on them in the past by a Keynesian growth strategy is mostly responsible for the crisis.It should be replaced by a Schumpeterian approach concerned with innovation and improvements in supply.In contrast with the previous approach, for which the leitmotiv was local market development (p.280), the new emphasis should be unambiguously outward oriented.In adopting this neoliberal recommendation, how can the neostructuralists ar gue at the same time that the local market is too developed and that some basic equity problems must be solved?Many earlier structuralists have pointed out that Latin American markets are imperfect, not in the supply terms recognized by the neostructuralists but in terms of highly skewed patterns of income distribution, which effectively keep so many people outside those markets.This is a problem not only in the moral terms of equity but also in its negative direct effect on the size of the domestic market and on supply patterns, geared to luxury durables rather than wage goods

Context (archaeology) · Economics · Geography · Industrialisation · Latin Americans · Market economy · Natural resource · Political science · Prologue · Economic Theory and Policy · International Relations in Latin America