Human Development
Latin America continues to be noted for its high levels of poverty and inequality as well as its protracted dependence on primary exports and its lackluster economic growth. This is a clear indication that it has failed to master the balancing of economic development and social policies. The vaunted promises of economic liberalization stoked the expectations of the masses, mobilized politically in the advent of concurrent democratization processes. But the reform process, incomplete as it was due to the inability to complement liberalization with second-generation institutional reforms, failed to deliver on those promises. The result has been a general repudiation of liberalizing reforms and a dangerous disenchantment with the institutions of representative democracy. CIPR believes that this situation and its implications represent a key area of research interest. Some of the questions it poses are the following:
- What, if any, will be the paradigm to guide economic reform?
- How can the region overcome the political obstacles to governability posed by the new inclusiveness of its political system?
- How can it accommodate the confluence of rising expectations and political disillusionment?
- What are the implications of the rise of neopopulist leaders that is attributable to these circumstances?
- How can these countries bolster state capacities to deliver the requisites of strong and sustainable increases in human development?
