Chile emerged from military rule in the 1990s as a leader of free market economic reform and democratic stability, and other countries now look to it for lessons in policy design, sequencing, and timing. Explanations for economic change in Chile generally focus on strong authoritarianism under General Augusto Pinochet and the insulation of policymakers from the influence of social groups, especially business and landowners. In this book Eduardo Silva argues that such a view underplays the role of entrepreneurs and landowners in Chile's neoliberal transformation and, hence, their potential effect on economic reform elsewhere. He shows how shifting coalitions of businesspeople and landowners with varying power resources influenced policy formulation and affected policy outcomes. He then examines the consequences of coalitional shifts for Chile's transition to democracy, arguing that the absence of a multiclass opposition that included captialists facilitated a political transition based on the authoritarian constitution of 1980 and inhibited its alternative. This situation helped to define the current style of consensual politics that, with respect to the question of social equity, has deepened a neoliberal model of welfare statism, rather than advanced a social democratic one.

Case studies of the impact of economic policy and monetary policy on capital formation in Latin America with partic. Reference to Brazil, Chile and Mexico - examines the economic implications of development policies, in partic. The effects of import substitution and export promotion of export oriented industries on capital accumulation and economic conditions; studies social implications and economic role of international capital flow, implantation of foreign capital and external debt. References, statistical tables.

In The Left Hand of Capital, Fernando Ignacio Leiva provides a theoretically grounded analysis of the last thirty years of socioeconomic policies in Chile, beginning at the end of the Pinochet military regime in 1990. He skillfully probes how innovative center-left politico-economic initiatives transformed the state's relationships with the country's urban poor, indigenous peoples, workers, students, and business elites, thereby contributing to institutionalize, legitimize, and renew Chile's neoliberal system of domination. Leiva documents how such politics, progressive in appearance, were pivotal in forging new arts of domestication, "participatory" social control mechanisms, and commodified subjectivities. This landmark book guides us into a deeper awareness about the limitations of center-left politics, not only in Chile, but elsewhere in the Americas and Western Europe as well. At a time when far-right movements seem to be growing in the Global South, Europe, and the United States, this book offers valuable insights into the predicament of social democracy and how, as in Chile and in the context of global neoliberalism, it can become the "left hand of capital."