ABSTRACT
Barbara Stallings paper asks why the debt crisis of the 1980s has turned out so poorly for the Latin American debtors, especially in comparison with the crisis of the 1930s. This chapter focuses on one set of analytical issues that Stallings addresses, the relative importance of international and domestic factors in explaining the Latin American response to the debt crisis. Stallings proposes that since virtually all Latin debtors have experienced poor bargaining results in their attempts to reduce the debt burden, there must be a common cause of these national results, and it must be international. Indeed, individual debtors have generally had enough bargaining strength on their own to ensure that concessions granted to one debtor have been extended to other debtors. Among the debtors, however, the proper response to creditor demands has been extremely controversial. Both as individual nations and as a region, the Latin debtors have done poorly in their dealings with the united creditors’ front.
