Economic Crisis and Policy Choice

by Nelson, Joan M.

• ISBN13: 9780691023106
• ISBN10: 0691023107
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1990-02-09
• Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr

Summary

The acute economic pressures of the 1980s have forced virtually all of Latin America and Africa and some countries in Asia into painful austerity programs and difficult economic reforms. Scholars have intensively analyzed the economics of this situation, but they have given much less attention to the political forces involved. In this volume a number of eminent contributors analyze the politics of adjustment in thirteen countries and nineteen governments, drawing comparisons not only across the full set of cases but also within clusters selected to clarify specific issues. Why do some governments respond promptly to signs of economic trouble, while others muddle indecisively for years? Why do some confine their response to temporary macroeconomic measures, while others adopt broader, even sweeping, programs of reform? What leads some countries to experiment with heterodox approaches, while most, however reluctantly, pursue orthodox courses? Why, confronted with intense political protest, have some governments persisted while others have altered or abandoned course? The answers to these questions are political, not economic, and they are examined here by Thomas M. Callaghy, Stephan Haggard, Miles Kahler, Robert R. Kauman, Joan M. Nelson, and Barbara Stallings.

Table of Contents

List of Figures and Tables	p. vii
Contributors	p. ix
Preface	p. xi
Introduction: The Politics of Economic Adjustment in Developing Nations	p. 3
Orthodoxy and Its Alternatives: Explaining Approaches to Stabilization and Adjustment	p. 33
Stabilization and Adjustment in Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico	p. 63
Politics and Economic Crisis: A Comparative Study of Chile, Peru, and Colombia	p. 113
The Politics of Adjustment in Small Democracies: Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, and Jamaica	p. 169
The Political Economy of the Philippine Debt Crisis	p. 215
Lost Between State and Market: The Politics of Economic Adjustment in Ghana, Zambia, and Nigeria	p. 257
Conclusions	p. 321
Statistical Appendix: Thirteen Countries, 1979-1988	p. 363
Index	p. 371
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