ABSTRACT
This chapter draws on the work of Kurt Weyland, Wendy Hunter and Raul Madrid to frame the comparison within the left and between the left and right. Beginning in 1998, Latin Americans voted for a shift in policy direction. Most of these voters did not reject the market and did not seek a complete reversal of neoliberal reforms. The commodity boom created new opportunities to expand social policy. Meltzer-Richard posits that high levels of inequality lead to higher levels of redistribution because democracy forces politicians to compete for the median voter to win elections. The neoliberal program entailed reductions in the size of the state and a strong philosophical suspicion of state involvement in the economy. Much of the early period of neoliberalism followed that model as privatizations, spending cuts, and layoffs of state employees reduced the size of the state in an effort to stabilize the economy.
