Eduardo Silva's Challenging Neoliberalism in Latin America seeks to explain how and why opposition to market-oriented policies gradually emerged in the region. It argues that the initial opposition to these reforms, which came mostly from traditional labour unions, was relatively weak and ineffectual. Beginning in the 1990s, however, a variety of social movements, including neighbourhood groups and organisations of indigenous people, pensioners and the unemployed, joined forces with new labour movements and political parties to present a much stronger and more effective resistance to neoliberalism. These movements were not successful everywhere, but in some countries they managed to stem and even reverse the tide of neoliberal reform.
Silva argues that the rise of powerful opposition movements was a response to the social, economic and political exclusion that accompanied efforts to create what Karl Polanyi referred to as a market society. According to Silva (p. 3), neoliberal policies ‘subordinated politics and social welfare to the needs of an economy built on the logic of free-market economics’. Neoliberalism thus provided the motivation for the waves of contention, but four other factors gave the opposition movements the capacity to resist neoliberal policies successfully. First, the return to democracy in the region supplied opposition movements with the requisite political-associational space to organise protests. Second, poor economic performance in some Latin American countries undermined support for market-oriented policies and weakened their proponents. Third, the opposition movements successfully framed their cause in an inclusive manner and connected local grievances to neoliberal policies. Finally, the anti-neoliberal coalitions, with only a few exceptions, eschewed radicalism and violence, seeking instead to build broad and diverse coalitions.
Silva explores these arguments by carrying out detailed case studies of six countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Peru and Chile. In the first three countries, strong and wide-ranging anti-neoliberal coalitions emerged, and these managed to resist some neoliberal reforms. Resistance to market-oriented reforms in these countries also helped propel new leaders to power who would dismantle many of these policies. Strong resistance to neoliberal policies also emerged in Venezuela, but this took a violent path at times, as exemplified by Hugo Chávez's 1992 coup attempt. Partly as a result, no broad-based anti-neoliberal coalition emerged in Venezuela, although Chávez nevertheless succeeded in taking power and bringing an end to that country's neoliberal experiment. In Peru, meanwhile, no significant anti-neoliberal social movement arose, in large part because Sendero Luminoso's guerrilla war and Alberto Fujimori's authoritarian policies severely restricted political-associational space. Similarly, in Chile an absence of political-associational space impeded anti-neoliberal mobilisation during the regime of Augusto Pinochet. According to Silva, no major anti-neoliberal movement emerged after the return to democracy in Chile largely because the ruling centre-left coalition took important steps to reform the neoliberal model and reduce poverty and social exclusion.
Silva's book has numerous strengths. It is hard not to be impressed with the empirical sweep of Challenging Neoliberalism in Latin America, which examines protests in six countries over three decades. Silva identifies the commonalities in seemingly disparate protests and effectively explains why major protest movements emerged in some countries and not others. The case studies are thorough and well executed, and they largely support the author's arguments. Perhaps the most significant theoretical contribution of the book is the analysis of the framing and alliance strategies of the protest movements. Silva demonstrates persuasively how the movements built broad coalitions by attributing a host of societal ills to neoliberal policies and by appealing to the common interests of diverse organisations through a combination of universalistic and nationalist appeals.
Challenging Neoliberalism in Latin America is not without shortcomings, however. To begin with, the central theoretical argument is somewhat diffuse. Silva attributes the success of the anti-neoliberal movements to a host of different variables, but he does not provide a clear explanation of which variables mattered most. Instead, he suggests that all of the variables were necessary factors without which the movements would not have succeeded. This is almost certainly an overstatement, however –indeed, the book shows that significant anti-neoliberal movements emerged in Chile in the early 1980s, even though little political-associational space existed there at the time. Protests have also emerged where neoliberal policies were performing relatively well, such as in Venezuela during the early 1990s.
The book also focuses excessively on the negative impact of market-oriented policies and ignores the benefits of some of these reforms. The most important benefit provided by these policies was that they helped various countries, including Argentina, Bolivia, Chile and Peru, to conquer hyperinflation, which made them quite popular in these countries for a while. Ecuador and Venezuela, by contrast, never suffered from hyperinflation, which explains why market-oriented policies met more resistance in these two countries and were never implemented in a thorough and sustained manner. Throughout Latin America, trade liberalisation also brought important benefits, including access to foreign markets and inexpensive consumer products. This explains in part why the leftist governments that took power after 1998 have maintained open trade regimes as well as anti-inflationary policies for the most part. Silva is correct that certain market-oriented policies, such as privatisation, became quite unpopular beginning in the late 1990s, but he is too quick to paint all neoliberal policies with the same broad brush.
These shortcomings detract only modestly from what is otherwise an important and impressive book. Challenging Neoliberalism in Latin America is essential reading for anyone interested in market reform in Latin America, and it will be the main reference point for scholars seeking to understand anti-neoliberal protests in the region.
