Privatization in Latin America

As import-substitution industrialization yields to increasing market liberalization in Latin America in the 1990s, privatization assigns new roles to both the public and private sectors. After the decade of the debt crisis, a much weakened State will reorient its policy efforts to the difficult issues of limited fiscal and monetary choices, regulation of newly privatized firms, and long-postponed social programs. However, privatization represents a mhallenge for the private sector as much as it is an issue for the public sector. Foreign and domestic capital will be asked to play a critical role in revitalizing battered economies. New players, from penny-capitalists to pension funds, and new institutions, including dramatically altered banking systems and suddenly thriving stock markets, have recently appeared. The changing roles of public and private sectors and the implications of these developments are the focus of this book.

Privatization South American Style focuses on the politics of privatization in Argentina, Brazil, and Peru. It examines both the micro and macroeconomics of achieving privatization, the policy measures introduced, and factors affecting the implementation of privatization. The political dimensions of privatization are analysed in order to explain the variations in national success in formulation and implementing privatization programmes. The author argues that evidence suggests that national governments as planned, and that rarely implement most divestiture policies from a technical standpoint, privatization is a learning process that evolves through trial and error. It also examines the apparently 'unconventional' methods used by the governments of Argentina, Brazil, and Peru to achieve privatization Comparative in its approach, the book seeks also to shed light on the nature of privatization in countries throughout the developing world. The book more generally argues that poorly designed privatization policies may have future serious implications on issues such as the rule of law, and the regulation of public utilities.

Focusing on four Latin American countries, this volume examines the environmental impact of private capital flows to emerging market countries.

International marketing consultant Russell Miller takes a close, pragmatic look at the movement to privatization that is sweeping the important markets of Western and Central Europe, Latin America, and Asia, and lays out the business opportunities and challenges that U.S. corporations and others worldwide will find there. He identifies the market dynamics created by newly privatized companies, the problems of reaching them, and the approach strategies that U.S. and other companies would find most productive. An important insight into how corporations here and abroad can gain access to these rich new markets, the book will be essential reading for top management and specialists in marketing, strategic planning, and international business development.

This book analyzes [ejido] land as space of urbanization and location of economic activities and capital and land privatization as a redistributive process with local, urban, regional and global consequences.

A new appraisal of the relationship between the Presidency and Congress in Argentina over the first two decades of its democratic regime. Mariana Llanos uses the processes of privatization and state reform in Argentina to reassess the performance, functions, and stature of these institutions as the country embarked on a program of change. This is a valuable contribution to the debate on the development of political institutions in Latin America.

In the 1980s and 1990s, nations throughout Latin America experienced the dual transformations of market liberalizing reforms and democratization. Since then, perhaps no issue has been more controversial among those who study the region than the exact nature of the relationship between these two processes. Bringing a much-needed comparative perspective to the discussion, Judith Teichman examines the politics of market reform in Chile, Argentina, and Mexico, analyzing its implications for democratic practices in each case.

Teichman considers both internal and external influences on the process of Latin American market reform, anchoring her investigation in the historical, political, and cultural contexts unique to each country, while also highlighting the important role played by such international actors as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Informed by interviews with more than one hundred senior officials involved in the reform process, her analysis reveals that while the initial stage of market reform is associated with authoritarian political practices, later phases witness a rise in the importance of electoral democracy. She concludes, however, that the legacy of authoritarian decision making represents a significant obstacle to substantive democratization.