Suchergebnisse

AbstractThis research note seeks to explain why a large number of Latin American countries have privatized their pension systems in recent years. It argues that the privatization schemes are a response to the severe capital shortages that have plagued their countries intermittently in recent years rather than to the financial problems facing some of the pension systems. The likelihood of pension privatization, I argue, is determined in large part by the vulnerability of countries to capital shortages as well as the influence wielded by international financial institutions, especially the World Bank. Whether such reforms are politically feasible, however, depends largely on the strength of organized labor and the president's degree of control over the legislature. A statistical examination of recent pension policy in Latin America provides support for most of these arguments.

Ral Madrid's Overexposed represents the first in-depth study of the involvement of U.S. banks in the Third World debt crisis. Based on extensive interviews with commercial bankers, the book examines the decision-making process at U.S. banks that led to the lending boom of the 1970s and early 1980s as well as the role the banks played in the management of the debt crisis. Madrid argues that banks, particularly the largest U.S. institutions, played a much larger and more active role in the development and management of the crisis than is commonly believed. A comprehensive appendix contains detailed profiles of the seven largest lenders to the Third World, including data on their developing country exposures, profits, and debt conversion activities.

AbstractPeru, in contrast to neighbouring Bolivia and Ecuador, has neither an important indigenous party nor a strong indigenous movement. Nevertheless, in recent years a growing gap has emerged in the voting patterns of indigenous and non-indigenous areas. This article maintains that this gap has developed because some Peruvian politicians, including Alberto Fujimori, Alejandro Toledo and Ollanta Humala, successfully wooed indigenous voters with a combination of ethnic and populist appeals. Like traditional populist leaders, they denounced the political elites, focused their campaigns on the poor and presented themselves as the saviours of Peru, but also forged ties to indigenous leaders, invoked indigenous symbols and embraced some ethnic demands. Although neither Fujimori, nor Toledo, nor Humala self-identified as indigenous, they successfully presented themselves as more ethnically proximate to the indigenous population than their main competitors, who represented the white Lima elite.