Social Democracy and Latin America

Perhaps one of the most striking aspects of the current crisis and reorganization of Latin American political forces is the growing internationalization of the ideological forms of politics. Two aspects of this phenomenon must be distinguished: on the one hand, the marked offensive directed at the subcontinent by European-based international movements such as social democracy, Christian democracy, and, more recently, liberalism and, on the other, the receptivity toward these various currents on the part of local organizations and parties. The increasing importance of international activities in the region has given rise to complex relations and interdependencies as political projects and forces from the developed capitalist world have diversified the Latin American political scene (Maira, 1981: 167; see also Portantiero, 1980: 11-20). That major parties and movements with deeply rooted traditions now seek to pattern themselves along international ideological lines and that many new ones are emerging with social democratic or Christian democratic outlooks and trappings from the outset suggest a series of questions about the kinds of factors that have led to this situation and the prospects for its development. Furthcrmore, the idea that the export of ideologies and political currents is impossible is only partly correct and amounts to the same thing as claiming that onc cannot export oil to Kuwait or coffee to Brazil. Export presupposes the existence of importers, and the latter in turn suggests a certain lack of natural, institutional, or ideological resources at home. Thus the export or import of ideologies and political currents is a matter of the presence or absence of certain economic, social, and political conditions. (This, of course, is but one more case of the ongoing external/internal dialectic that must be

Democracy · Development economics · Economic history · Economics · Latin Americans · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Social democracy · Sociology · Latin American socio-political dynamics · Law

• The reregulation of capital flows in Latin America

  Open Access•Pedro Pereira Da Silva•Review of International Political…•2021

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