ABSTRACT
ONE OF THE key contemporary issues regards the proper role of the state in leading development. In the middle decades of the twentieth century, a state-led approach to fomenting industrialization, “import substitution,” dominated much of the region. Th en, in the closing decades, the pendulum swung away from the state-led approach toward reliance on a free-market strategy, rolling back the infl uence of the state. Popular discontent with this strategy, called “neoliberalism,” has led the pendulum to swing back toward the state, but not necessarily back to import substitution.
