ABSTRACT
The chapter explores the macroeconomy of Latin America since the mid-twentieth century. It takes a political economy perspective of the “state” and the “market”, arguing that a modern economy is based on manufacturing: growth, industrialization, and development were viewed as one and the same. Several broad questions frame the discussion: how did the size and shape of the economy change over time; what was the role of policy and state action in determining the pattern and rhythm of growth – and how capable was the state in managing both growth and crises; what was the “quality” of growth in terms of social delivery and sustainability? Acknowledging differences of timing and process, the approach is largely chronological, detailing the following “cycles”: the phase of the economically and socially active state (c. 1930–1970s) – a period of “growth from within”, of interventionism, welfarism and “forced” development; the phase of debt-led authoritarian development and “renewed” globalization beginning in the mid-1960s which culminated in post-debt crisis democratization and later the Washington Consensus; post-Washington Consensus experiments of democratic, socially progressive market-led growth and contrasting late populist interventionism – in economy, polity, and society.
