The Market and the Masses in Latin America

Policy Reform and Consumption in Liberalizing Economies

AvAndy Baker

Häftad, Engelska, 2010

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Beskrivning

What do ordinary citizens in developing countries think about free markets? Conventional wisdom views globalization as an imposition on unwilling workers in developing nations, concluding that the recent rise of the Latin American left constitutes a popular backlash against the market. In this book, Baker marshals public opinion data from eighteen Latin American countries to show that most of the region's citizens are enthusiastic about globalization because it has lowered the prices of many consumer goods and services while improving their variety and quality. Among recent free-market reforms, only privatization has caused pervasive discontent because it has raised prices for services like electricity and telecommunications. Citizens' sharp awareness of these consumer consequences informs Baker's argument that a political economy of consumption has replaced a previously dominant politics of labor and class in Latin America.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum:2010-07-19
Mått:154 x 230 x 20 mm
Vikt:530 g
Format:Häftad
Språk:Engelska
Serie:Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics
Antal sidor:358
Förlag:Cambridge University Press
ISBN:9780521156233

Utforska kategorier

Statsvetenskap och politisk teori inom Samhälle och politik

Mer om författaren

Andy Baker is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Colorado, Boulder. His research on mass political behavior, political economy, and electoral systems has been published in the American Journal of Political Science, DuBois Review, Electoral Studies, World Politics, and various edited volumes. He has also been a contributor on two National Science Foundation grants and a recipient of two Social Science Research Council fellowships. He received his PhD from the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 2001 and previously taught at the University of Houston and Northeastern University, Boston.

Recensioner i media

'Studies of public opinion toward economic policy in Latin America conceive of citizens overwhelmingly as economic producers, not consumers as well. Andy Baker's well-crafted and compelling book challenges us to do otherwise, lest we fail to grasp how consumer interests shape opinion on neoliberal reform … In fact, Latin Americans feel differently toward separate features of market reform, such as privatization or free trade policy. Baker shows consumer interests better explain this variation than do market considerations … Baker offers both materialist and ideational lenses to explain why some Latin Americans are more neoliberal than others. He builds on studies of bounded rationality … to interrogate the cognitive processes through which people gather and weigh information when forming policy preferences. The result is an empirically rich and theoretically stimulating examination of contemporary public opinion in Latin America, replete with findings at odds with the conventional wisdom on the subject.' Comparative Political Studies

Innehållsförteckning

Part I. Introduction and Theory: 1. Consuming the Washington consensus; 2. Theoretical framework: the top-down and bottom-up sources of public opinion; Part II. Mass Beliefs about Market Policies in Latin America: 3. The economic consequences and elite rhetoric of market reform in Latin America; 4. Are Latin Americans neoliberals?; 5. Are the poor neoliberals?; Part III. Mass Support for Reform in Brazil: 6. The economic consequences and elite rhetoric of market reform in Brazil; 7. How many Brazilians support market reforms?; 8. Which Brazilians support market reforms?; Part IV. Conclusion: 9. The politics of consumismo in Latin America.