Customer Reviews

Latin America's Political Economy of the Possible: Beyond Good Revolutionaries and Free-Marketeers

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Santiso's Political Economy of the Possible is a refreshing and insightful book, a must-read for academic experts and policy makers interested in understanding the development trajectory of Latin America. More importantly, drawing on Albert Hirschman's legacy, it provides potent insights to better understand the evolution of development thinking and reform paradigms towards a new approach to economic policymaking in developing countries and emerging markets. As Santiso rightly underscores, developing countries in general and Latin American countries in particular have been scarred by the use, misuse and abuse of development paradigms, from the import-substitution industrialization model to the prescriptions of the Washington consensus. Beyond its substance, this book is also elegantly written using many literary references which make it a delight to read.

Javier Santiso's exceedingly well written analysis of Latin America's new market economies is the rare book that is both interesting to specialists and accessible to a broader audience beyond academia. This feat is especially remarkable because the author examines complicated economic topics that are too often discussed with virtually impenetrable technical jargon. By contrast, Santiso uses clear, elegant language. Together with Santiso's profound theoretical and substantive command, this gift of presentation turns the book into a great introduction to the contemporary political economy of the region.

Specifically, this volume offers a refreshing, well-informed analysis of economic policy reform in Latin America during the last two decades. Providing a valuable overview of the region's political economy, it is stimulating for specialists, useful for a broader audience, and especially recommended as a text for upper-division undergraduate courses and introductory graduate seminars.

Kurt Weyland, University of Texas at Austin
(excerpt of academic review published in LATIN AMERICAN POLITICS & SOCIETY 49:2 [Summer 2007], pp. 201-5.

Latin America has developed a lot over the past decade or so, but its politics are still heavily influenced by old fashioned ideas. Radicalism of the kind espoused by Fidel Castro or Hugo Chavez still holds sway among many progressives, for example. Many conservatives, meanwhile, still tend to exaggerate the importance of market forces, despite the shortcomings of liberal reforms of the 1980s and 1990s. In this book Javier Santiso, eschews such simplistic and ideologically-based approaches. He persuasively argues instead in favour of a "political economy of the possible", arguing that recent progress - achieved notably in countries such as Chile and Brazil - has come about where political leaders have embarked on a path of cautious pragmatism and reform.

"The book of Javier Santiso is a pleasure of reading and a trully
learning, full of insisghts, on the profound transformations
experienced by Latin America over the past two decades. Well written,
it is a very much classical "essay", a type of book not any more very
much in favour in the academia that forgot that very much can be
learnt from a book written with metaphors and trespassings towards
other social sciences and litterature. In this regards this book is
milestone, Santiso showing the difficult transition from an utopian
framework (that prevailed both in the right and left of the continent
in the past) to possibilism, defined as a combination of convictions
and preferences anchored in the social, political and economic
realities. A fascinating approach towards the continent".
Alfredo Joignant
Diego Portales University, Chile

For economists and political scientists and people interested in Latin America this book will be a real discovery. It gives a refreshing, outside the box view of the region, explaining some of the major changes that have shaped economic development in the region over the last decade. This book actually explains how right and left policies have merged to give way to "centrist" policies in some countries. Politicians thought to be revolutionaries or right wing governments have settled for policies that can advance their causes, realizing that macroeconomic stability was key to deliver those policies or that inequality was one of the major challenges facing the region. From Chile to Brazil, from Colombia to Mexico, the region is changing stereotypes and Santiso does a great job at explaining why and how this has happened. A great read overall for those interested in the region.

The book is a very good analysis of the impact of the reform of the 90s in Latin America, its actual situation, and future outcomes. The book clearly draws a borderline between those who have been persistent into deepen economic and institutional reforms, and those who decided that needed to take a different path after applying some of the adjustments at the beginning. The role of the political economy is an essential part of this book, so in his analysis it is of importance the rol played by politics, the interaction of different players, as well as the process of marutity of democracies.
What is missed in the book is an analysis for Colombia and Peru. Two countries that are performing extremely well in the last decade and have an enormous potential. Maybe in the next book?

This book by Javier Santiso celebrates the seminal work of Albert O. Hirschman, but I would argue that Hirschman deserves much, much better. The analysis covers old ground in ways that are not especially insightful or compelling for the specialist in Latin American political economy. For newcomers, the book will be very tough going. The author has adopted a writing style full of cultural, philosophical, and literary references, and as a result he frequently sacrifices clarity for illusion. Perhaps most troubling, he skims over important events such as the impact of the North American Free Trade Agreement on Mexico in superficial and misleading ways. There is nothing new here, despite the clear skill of the author in tapping his friends/colleagues for blurbs that say there is. I am especially offended by Santiso's use of a praiseful blurb from Hirschman himself, to whom the book is a tribute. Honestly, what else would we expect Hirschman---a true scholar and gentleman---to say? The book's sloppy analysis is bad enough, but the author's blatant self-promotion in the name of tribute is even worse.

I agree completely with the first reviewer.
I was asked to make a review for a journal (Agenda - Australian National University) and enthusiastically accepted. But very soon realized it was not worthy.
Reading the book was a complete waste of time, but writing the review was a good exercise, though.
If you still have doubts, don't you wonder why the price in Amazon has been reduced 33%, after only one year of being published, and there are more than 50 second hand books available starting from $12? This is the market saying "Very poor book". Markets do not lie, even under pragmatism.