Product Description: Globalization and Competition explains why some middle-income countries, principally those in Asia, grow fast while others are not successful. The author criticizes both old-style developmentalism and the economics of the Washington Consensus...read more

Product Description: After the 1994 Real Plan ended fourteen years of high inflation in Brazil, the country's economy was expected - mistakenly - to grow quickly. Luiz Carlos Bresser-Pereira discusses Brazil's economic trajectory from the mid-1990s to the present Lula administration, critically appraising the neoliberal reforms that have curtailed growth and proposing a national development strategy geared toward effective competition in the global marketplace...read more

Product Description: The authors of this volume explore general themes of managerial public administration and government reform, then focus on specific Latin American experiences and trends. Discussions of accountability, empowerment, citizen values and new institutions are also included. (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

In this book the authors assess the experiences of transition in Southern Europe, Latin America and Eastern Europe in order to determine what the conditions for successful transitions are. They argue against the "big bang" approach, espoused by many advisors to reforming countries, on the grounds that this approach bypasses the newly formed institutions of democracy that ultimately may undermine the necessary consensus to support painful economic reforms. The most successful reforms, they argue, have been those agreed upon through a process of democratic negotiation. A new democracy must offer politically important groups incentives to process their demands within the democratic institutional framework; otherwise, their support will be tenuous and the system may collapse under the strains incurred by painful economic reforms. (view table of contents)