ABSTRACT
The decade of the 1970s was the run-up to what became a debt crisis in the early 1980s as well as a time of watershed political changes. The resurgence of democratic forms coincided with an economic disaster, however, as the debt crisis and subsequent economic reforms plunged the entire region into the "lost decade" of the 1980s. Although there were voices within the United States that called for a more democracy-friendly foreign policy, Latin American upper and middle classes continued to be successful in manipulating United States Cold War fears and to obtain help in containing popular political movements. The principal connections between free markets and democracy are to be found in other directions, and Neoliberal Democracy is my name for the powerful combination of debt crisis, neoliberal political economy, and electoral politics. Neoliberal reforms have profoundly affected Latin American labor markets, and the changes have been instrumental in making democracy a conservative force.
