ABSTRACT
The international relations literature is overwhelmingly concerned with the multiple consequences of the end of the Cold War. The same is true, but to a much lesser extent, in Latin America. In a radical departure from the state-led, protectionist development strategies and policies of the postwar era, the aim of contemporary economic reform is to liberalize and deregulate national and international markets of goods, services, finance, and factors of production, forcing the Latin American economies to engage in worldwide competition. Economic reform became generalized in Latin America after the initiation of the debt crisis in 1982. But such reforms had already been initiated in the countries of the Southern Cone and are of worldwide scope, suggesting that pressures in that direction were profound and had existed for a long time. In the newly established socialist economies the state became the owner of the means of production.
