Modern Panama

Michael L. Conniff and Gene E. Bigler (a scholar and a diplomat, respectively), examine Panamanian history from the early 1980s to the administration of President Juan Carlos Varela up to 2018. They ask how the country has fared during and since the transition from client of the United States to independent republic managing the Panama Canal by itself. Theirs is a largely positive assessment. Politically, Panama ended the tumultuous Manuel Noriega era with a U.S. invasion, but, as other scholars such as Orlando Pérez have noted, an invasion out of which Panama emerged with a strengthened democracy. Panamanians have since demilitarized and have held a half-dozen fair and free elections. While the country experienced significant corruption, its civil liberties have been healthy overall. Panama's economy, meanwhile, has grown steadily and diversified beyond serving the canal, partly due to research centers such as the City of Knowledge and to land on which Panama has built in the former Canal Zone. Aided by their government's responsive management of the economy, Panamanians have become among the richest of Latin Americans—though with staggering inequality. They have also proven themselves competent technocratic and meritocratic managers of the canal itself, expanding it with new locks, improving its technology, and increasing its traffic and tolls. For the United States and Panama, this has constituted “a win-win outcome,” especially with new law enforcement and trade agreements (p. xiii). Conniff and Bigler conclude Panama has become the “crossroads of the Americas,” self-consciously building this identity into its foreign relations by offering transportation-related services to the world

Democracy · Development economics · Economic history · Economics · Economy · Government (linguistics · Latin Americans · Panama · Panama canal · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Cuban History and Society · History · Law · Public Administration

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