Hierarchical Capitalism in Latin America

Ben Ross Schneider is Ford International Professor of Political Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He taught previously at Princeton University and Northwestern University. Schneider's teaching and research interests fall within the fields of comparative politics, political economy and Latin American politics. His books include Politics within the State: Elite Bureaucrats and Industrial Policy in Authoritarian Brazil (1991), Business and the State in Developing Countries (1997), Reinventing Leviathan: The Politics of Administrative Reform in Developing Countries (2003) and Business Politics and the State in Twentieth-Century Latin America (Cambridge, 2004). He has also published on topics such as economic reform, democratization, technocracy, administrative reform, education policy, the developmental state, business groups and comparative bureaucracy in journals such as Comparative Politics, Governance, the Socio-Economic Review, the Journal of Latin American Studies, Latin American Politics and Society, and World Politics.

“In this rich and agenda-setting study, Ben Ross Schneider shows how perverse economic and political complementarities undermine equitable development in Latin America. While a fountain of wealth and opportunity in other parts of the world, in the hierarchical Latin American variety of capitalism institutional complementarities reinforce inequality and political domination by business elites and insiders. The study presents a stark challenge, and alternative, to those who advocate simple solutions such as continued liberalization or renewed state intervention.” – Torben Iversen, Harold Hitchings Burbank Professor of Political Economy, Harvard University

• Part I. Theory and Frame: 1. Hierarchical capitalism in Latin America; 2. Comparing capitalisms: liberal, coordinated, network, and hierarchical; Part II. Business, Labor, and Institutional Complementarities: 3. Corporate governance and diversified business groups: adaptable giants; 4. Corporate governance and MNCs: how ownership still matters; 5. Labor: atomized relations and segmented markets; 6. Education, training, and the low skill trap; Part III. Politics, Policy, and Development Strategy: 7. Business group politics: institutional bias and business preferences; 8. Twenty-first-century variations: divergence and possible escape trajectories; 9. Concluding considerations on institutional origins and change.