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George Bush’s visit to Latin America in spring 2007 can be seen as a belated attempt to counteract the devastating effects of years of neo-liberal restructuring. While neoliberal programs were enacted worldwide, nowhere have their magnitude and scope been as drastic as in Latin America. The results, after roughly two decades of experience, seem acceptable to global capital yet intolerable to Latin American societies. This divide stems, in part, from the lack of a sufficiently broad-based contestation of the restructuring process at its onset.

The seven articles in this special issue of LAP contest conventional reasoning about the design of the reforms and the motives and arguments of their proponents. Development programs prior to the debt crisis were more effective than neoliberal orthodoxy allows, suitable to global conditions and varied according to country needs. Revisionist interpretations reinterpret the prior period of import-substitution industrialization in Argentina (James Brennan) and in Chile (Eduardo Silva). Among other things, these two articles - which also compare each case to others in Latin America - suggest that the previous development paradigm did not collapse because of an ineluctable economic logic, but due at least in part to tensions in the political coalitions in support of the policies. For their part, Margheritis and Pereira look to the contemporary period to trace the refashioning of the “Washington Consensus” into the “post-Washington Consensus” while exposing the limitations of both policy frameworks.

The rest of the articles in the issue examine various aspects of neoliberal reform and the resistance to it, showing how the redesign of institutions sometimes reversed development. Diane Bates documents how Ecuador’s restructuring resulted in a loss of landownership and rural employment, contrary to the promise of liberalization. Stephen Mumme’s study of environmental policy in Mexico and Chile shows how poorly structured markets and a lack of regulatory capacity encourages a misallocation of resources. These and other less noticed social changes combine with disappointing macroeconomic results to spur defensive mobilization on the part of popular movements, described by Paul Almeida. Collectively, these articles argue that an accurate analysis of the history and current status of groups contesting neoliberal restructuring is vital to understanding the current political conflicts over the future of Latin America.

Any comprehensive examination of neoliberalism requires reassessment of the previous historical era, innovative explanations of the unfolding of the reforms, and an examination of neglected actors that have been both victimized and provided new opportunities by reform. This special volume of LAP uses a multidisciplinary approach to do so, tracing the trajectory of Latin America’s economic restructuring in order to better understand its causes and effects.