ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the historical antecedents to the region’s most recent left turn, beginning with the period between the start of Import Substitution Industrialization in the 1950s and the crisis of neoliberalism in the late 1990s. In the process, I outline the neo-Marxist framework deployed in this book, focusing on key contributions from Latin American scholars. In opposition to other schools of thought developed during the said historical periods, I highlight the strengths of the neo-Marxist framework, namely a complex and nuanced understanding of the capitalist state and institutions of liberal democracy, an expansive understanding of the class relation, the centrality of praxis in the process of social transformation and the primacy of local/national conditions in the analysis of the region. From this perspective, I posit the short-lived Allende government in Chile as a key historical example of a break from both populist and vanguardist approaches to development. Finally, I discuss how I combine the neo-Marxist framework with the case study method.
