ABSTRACT
Possibilist/post-neoliberal governance in South America has been marked by a proliferation of heterogeneous left-leaning political regimes. The South American decline in Gini indices coincided with increasing inequality, as measured by the Gini, over the same period in China, India – and in the USA. A corollary of Piketty's findings of particular importance to the study of governance is that where public policy is different, so too is the level of inequality. Inequalities in income and wealth, and associated poverty levels, have been fundamental concerns of economics since the classical origins of the discipline. The evolution of the concentration of income among the top one percent in Argentina, Colombia and Uruguay is spotty and short-term for the River Plate economies. Changes in economists' understanding of inequality transformed economic orthodoxies and relaxed earlier constraints on politically feasible social policies that might reduce inequality.
