ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of security governance in South America since the end of the Second World War. The Cold War was a time of developmental instability in South America. During this period, strategies based on the protection of domestic industry and others that sought to promote sectors that had 'comparative advantages' were alternatively implemented. On the one hand, the pattern of industrial development was based, by and large, on the strengthening of the internal market, high levels of state intervention, and the incorporation of social sectors previously excluded. The end of the Cold War represented a turning point for the inter-American system of security governance as it brought about the abolishment of the strategic framework whose main rationale was the fight against communism. The fall of the Soviet Union and the spread of the Washington Consensus across Latin America prompted a change in the priorities of the system of regional security governance.
