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1301. Protest and Collaboration: Transnational Civil Society Networks and the Politics of Summitry and Free Trade in the Americas

Author:
Patricio Korzeniewicz and William C. Smith
Publication Date:
09-2001
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The North-South Center, University of Miami
Abstract:
This paper examines the politics of hemispheric integration exemplified by the Summits of the Americas held in Miami (1994), Santiago (1998), and Quebec (2001) and the negotiations over the creation of a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). Our basic premise is that political and institutional arrangements articulating state, society, and economy in Latin America are currently in the midst of a process of reconfiguration unleashed by the acceleration of globalization and attendant crises of state-centered development strategies. More specifically, we believe the Americas are witnessing the emergence of an ensemble of new social and political actors, among the most salient of which are new social movements and civil society organizations (CSOs), organized in networks operating at the domestic, regional, and global levels.
Topic:
Economics, International Trade and Finance, and Political Economy
Political Geography:
United States, America, South America, Latin America, Central America, Caribbean, North America, and Miami

1302. The Impact of MERCOSUR on the Automobile Industry

Author:
Jerry Haar and Thomas A. O'Keefe
Publication Date:
09-2001
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The North-South Center, University of Miami
Abstract:
A transformation of the automotive industry, particularly the segment involved in production of finished vehicles, has taken place in the Southern Common Market (Mercado Común del Sur/Mercado Comum do Sul—MERCOSUR/MER-COSUL) region of South America, at a time when MERCOSUR member states opened their economies to global competition and to participation in an ambitious subregional economic integration project. This Agenda Paper provides an overview of the factors that have contributed to this recent industry transformation. The paper also examines the factors involved in the formal incorporation of the automotive sector into the MERCOSUR project and discusses the impact this development is like-ly have on the subregional automobile industry,
Topic:
Economics, International Trade and Finance, and Political Economy
Political Geography:
United States, South America, Latin America, and North America

1303. Preferential Treatment in Trade: Is There Any Room Left in the Americas?

Author:
Fernando Masi
Publication Date:
08-2001
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The North-South Center, University of Miami
Abstract:
This paper evaluates the costs and benefits of changes brought by the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) on special and differential treatment (S); shows how these changes affected the new regional integration processes in the American continent; and examines whether this issue is still a priority of developing countries' agendas. Large concessions offered by developing countries in exchange for access to markets automatically led to “trade graduation.” Thus, S has lost its former significance among developing countries. Moreover, nonreciprocal treatment was retained for least developed countries, which do not even enjoy this type of treatment under the so-called “new trade-related issues” of services, investment, and intellectual property rights.
Topic:
Economics, International Trade and Finance, and Political Economy
Political Geography:
United States, America, South America, Latin America, Central America, Caribbean, and North America

1304. Making and Unmaking Authoritarian Peru: Re-election, Resistance, and Regime Transition

Author:
Catherine M. Conaghan
Publication Date:
05-2001
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The North-South Center, University of Miami
Abstract:
One of the time-honored constitutional traditions of Latin America—the ban on immediate presidential re-election—gave way to political change in the 1990s. Cloaked in controversy, the trend began in Peru. In 1992, President Alberto Fujimori led an auto-coup (auto-golpe) that closed Congress and suspended the 1979 Constitution. The auto-coup eventually led to a new Constitution in 1993. The new Constitution lifted the ban on immediate presidential re-election, allowing a president to stay in office for two consecutive five-year terms.
Topic:
Democratization and Government
Political Geography:
Latin America and Peru

1305. When Democracy Isn't All that Democratic: Social Exclusion and the Limits of the Public Sphere in Latin America

Author:
Philip Oxhorn
Publication Date:
04-2001
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The North-South Center, University of Miami
Abstract:
During much of the 1970s and 1980s, the principal political struggles throughout Latin America revolved around the creation of democratic political regimes based on the right to vote. Now that this right has been effectively established in virtually every country of the region, 1 the limits of political democracy as traditionally defined are becoming increasingly apparent (Oxhorn and Ducatenzeiler 1998; Agüero and Stark 1998; Chalmers et al. 1997). These countries are indisputably political democracies, yet the quality of democratic rule leaves much to be desired. Recent studies of the democratic deficits in Latin America have focused on a variety of dimensions (including extremes of economic inequality, poverty, growing levels of criminality, limits on citizenship rights, the weakness of civil society, problems of representation, and the weakness of political parties, among others)
Topic:
Democratization, Development, and Government
Political Geography:
Latin America and Caribbean

1306. Free Trade and Worker Displacement: The Trade Adjustment Assistance Act and the Case of NAFTA

Author:
Jerry Haar and Antonio Garrastazu
Publication Date:
02-2001
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The North-South Center, University of Miami
Abstract:
Trade liberalization, a fundamental feature of U.S. economic policy since the end of the Second World War, has increasingly become a contentious domestic political issue during the last decade. Proponents and opponents of free trade transcend political party affiliation, industry, occupation, geographical locale, income level, age, and other socioeconomic and demographic factors. In addition, the U.S. public and its leaders for the most part hold qualified, mixed, or inconsistent opinions about trade liberalization and the larger and rapidly increasing phenomenon known as globalization. In a February 9-14, 2000, nationwide poll conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates, a majority of respondents (64 percent compared to 27 percent) stated that free trade with other countries is good for the United States. On the other hand, an NBC News/ W all Street Journal poll several months later asked interviewees to respond to the following statement: “Foreign trade has been bad for the U.S. economy because cheap imports from abroad have hurt wages and cost jobs here at home.” Forty-eight percent of the respondents answered that it has been “bad” and 34 percent “good.”
Topic:
Industrial Policy and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States and Latin America

1307. Thinking About Environmental Security: Southeast Asia and the Americas in Comparative Perspective

Author:
Frank McNeil and Joseph Stark
Publication Date:
10-2001
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The North-South Center, University of Miami
Abstract:
This paper is styled a “work-in-progress” with good reason. It is the latest, not entirely ripe fruit of a North-South Center project, the “commonalities” study, about the shared challenges facing the developing nations of Latin America and the Caribbean and the developing nations of Asia, particularly those of Southeast Asia. These views have taken their shape, over more than three years, from the authors' reflections about their extensive interviews in both regions with policy “influentials” and knowledgeable academics, as well as through participation in occasional conferences.
Topic:
Security and Environment
Political Geography:
America, Latin America, Caribbean, and Southeast Asia

1308. Brazil — IMF Agreement

Publication Date:
08-2001
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Oxford Analytica
Abstract:
The real is stabilising against the dollar following the announcement of the latest draft agreement between Brazil and the IMF on August 3. The provision of additional resources by the Fund is designed to support the value of the real and prevent the Brazilian economy from sliding into recession.
Topic:
International Organization, International Trade and Finance, and United Nations
Political Geography:
Brazil and Latin America

1309. Uruguay — Defensive Economics

Publication Date:
08-2001
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Oxford Analytica
Abstract:
In response to regional instability and two years of recession, Uruguay's government has taken measures to stimulate economic growth.
Topic:
International Organization and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
Latin America

1310. A New Era in Mexico?

Author:
Mark Falcoff
Publication Date:
02-2001
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
Abstract:
Last July, Mexico underwent a medium-sized political earthquake—it elected Vicente Fox, candidate of an opposition alliance, to a six-year presidential term. In so doing, it ended seventy-one years of hegemonic rule by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and unleashed a host of possibilities for the nation’s future. What are those possibilities, and what do they mean—for Mexico and the United States? The truth is that nobody—not even veteran Mexico-watchers—is quite sure. Fox himself is a man of paradox: His relationship with his own party is ambiguous, to say the least, and the platform on which he ran points both left and right, as do his cabinet appointments. Moreover, Mexico itself, long in the thrall of a kind of benevolent authoritarianism, is new to the art of divided government. While there may be some changes in the relationship with the United States, tensions and conflicts based on history, geography, and the vast asymmetries of wealth are bound to persist.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Defense Policy, Politics, Authoritarianism, and Elections
Political Geography:
Latin America and Mexico

1311. An Emerging Populist Threat?

Author:
Mark Falcoff
Publication Date:
06-2001
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
Abstract:
On May 14, Jackson Diehl, the deputy foreign editor of the Washington Post, raised an intriguing question in an op-ed for that newspaper: Is Latin America about to “drift back toward its one-time status as semi-hostile territory for the United States”? Some of the evidence he cited was certainly enough to give pause. In Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, that country’s former Marxist president—voted out of office in 1990—seemed poised to finally regain power later this year. In Peru, Alan García, the leftist-populist windbag—the consummate Latin demagogue, almost a caricature of the type—who drove his country to the verge of collapse in the 1980s, has reemerged as a presidential possibility in a runoff scheduled for June 3. In Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the perennial standard-bearer of the Left, is leading in the polls for next year’s presidential race. “Even in El Salvador,” Diehl writes, President Bush “may see the election of former FMLN guerrillas.” As to Venezuela, the machinations of its president, Hugo Chávez, hardly require comment; he makes no secret of the fact that his principal foreign policy objective is to forge a new, worldwide, anti-U.S. alliance.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Economics, Populism, and Hugo Chavez
Political Geography:
South America, Latin America, and Venezuela

1312. Venezuela’s Tinfoil “Revolution”

Author:
Mark Falcoff
Publication Date:
04-2001
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
Abstract:
After forty years of politics as usual, Venezuela has suddenly become an object of curiosity to the world’s press. The reason is President Hugo Chávez, a forty-six-year-old former lieutenant colonel who first came to the attention of Venezuelans in 1992 when he and a group of other junior officers attempted to overthrow the government of President Carlos Andrés Pérez. Amnestied by Pérez’s successor, Chávez began a political career of his own, and in 1998, running as the candidate of the so-called Fifth Republic Revolutionary Movement (MVR), he was elected by a decisive majority. Two and a half years later, he is still an enigma—to Venezuelans, to the United States, and to everyone else. Given the centrality of his country to the oil producers’ cartel and, even more, given the current dependence of the United States on Venezuelan oil, he merits a closer look.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Defense Policy, Government, Natural Resources, and Hugo Chavez
Political Geography:
South America, Latin America, and Venezuela

1313. Peru: Yet Another Transition

Author:
Mark Falcoff
Publication Date:
03-2001
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
Abstract:
Last November Peruvian politics were turned upside down by the revelation that the president’s security chief had been bribing members of congress, other prominent political personalities, and the media. The “smoking gun” was a series of filmed videos actually recording the shady transactions, involving millions of dollars in one of Latin America’s poorest nations. Popular indignation was so great that the president, Alberto Fujimori, diverted a flight to the Asia-Pacific conference in Brunei and went to Tokyo instead, where he precipitously claimed Japanese citizenship and asked for political asylum. At home, one of the strongest political machines in Latin America was dismantled almost overnight. Congress deposed the president, named an interim chief executive and prime minister, and called for new elections on April 8. Thus ends an era in Peruvian politics, one rich in paradox and moral ambiguity. What, one wonders, is next?
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Defense Policy, Corruption, and Politics
Political Geography:
Latin America and Peru

1314. Latin Democracy and Its (Increasing) Discontents

Author:
Mark Falcoff
Publication Date:
09-2001
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
Abstract:
Though summer is still with us in the northern hemisphere, Latin America languishes deep in the winter of its discontent. Ten years after the international scene was transformed by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the cold war, many Latin Americans have become disillusioned with their role in the new world order. The principal problem is that in spite of vigorous, in some cases drastic, market reforms, most of the region’s economies are in the doldrums. More to the point, in spite of a significant return of foreign investment to the area in the early 1990s, the number of Latin Americans living in poverty has increased. Public services have deteriorated or in some cases even disappeared. And crime is rampant everywhere, even in cities such as Buenos Aires, where until ten years ago inhabitants boasted-with reason-that their streets were safer at 3 a.m. than those of New York or Los Angeles in daytime.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Defense Policy, Democracy, and Investment
Political Geography:
South America and Latin America

1315. Nicaragua on the Brink–of What?

Author:
Mark Falcoff
Publication Date:
10-2001
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
Abstract:
On November 4, Nicaraguans will go to the polls to select a president, vice president, and all sixty-six members of their unicameral congress–an event that on its own merits would hardly deserve much attention on the part of foreign observers. But the drama unfolding in that tiny country is characteristic of many small (and not so small) Latin American countries today: the inability of democracy alone to address effectively some of the fundamental problems of society. Nicaragua also provides some interesting insight into the peculiar pathologies that afflict postrevolutionary states, and as such may provide some light on what we can expect in post-Castro Cuba and even, eventually, in post—Chávez Venezuela.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Defense Policy, and Democracy
Political Geography:
Cuba, Latin America, and Nicaragua

1316. Privatization and the Distribution of Assets in Brazil

Author:
Roberto Macedo
Publication Date:
07-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Abstract:
This paper focuses on the Brazilian privatization program undertaken in the 1990s, one of the largest in the world, as a result of which over US$71 billion worth of equity capital and US$17 billion of debt owed by the former state-owned enterprises (SOEs) were transferred to private owners, both at the federal and state levels.
Topic:
Development, Government, and Human Rights
Political Geography:
Brazil, South America, and Latin America

1317. Korean Détente: A Threat to Washington's Anachronistic Military Presence?

Author:
Doug Bandow
Publication Date:
08-2000
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
The recent summit meeting between South Korean president Kim Dae Jung and North Korean leader Kim Jong Il raises the prospect that the Cold War on the Korean Peninsula may at last be coming to an end. Although the latest effort at détente could ultimately abort as did similar initiatives in the 1970s and early 1990s, North Korea's dire economic straits probably leave the Stalinist state little choice this time but to open itself to the outside world and seek trade and investment from its prosperous, democratic South Korean rival.
Topic:
Foreign Policy and Politics
Political Geography:
United States, Washington, Israel, Asia, South Korea, Latin America, and Korean Peninsula

1318. Toward Greater Peace and Security in Colombia: Forging a Constructive U.S. Policy

Author:
Michael Shifter, Bob Graham, and Brent Scowcroft
Publication Date:
10-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
At the dawn of the 21st century, few countries in the world are as deeply troubled as Colombia. This Andean nation—the third most populous in Latin America—is experiencing crises on many fronts. But at the same time the country possesses hopeful elements— the product of a resourceful and resilient people—coupled with an opportunity to forge a more democratic, peaceful, just, and prosperous nation.
Political Geography:
Colombia and Latin America

1319. The Carter Center News, January-June 2000

Publication Date:
01-2000
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Carter Center
Abstract:
During the first six months of this year, four Latin American countries exercised democracy by scheduling elections. The Dominican Republic, Mexico, Peru, and Venezuela laid the groundwork for electoral processes, though only the Dominican Republic and Mexico actually held elections as planned (see also “What Latin America's Elections Really Mean,” Page 4). In all four cases, however, Carter Center delegates were on site to monitor the proceedings. Below are the Center's observations, listing the most recent election first.
Topic:
Development, Environment, Human Rights, Migration, Science and Technology, and Third World
Political Geography:
South America, Latin America, Central America, Caribbean, Venezuela, Mexico, and Peru

1320. Challenges to Democracy in the Americas

Author:
Hugo Chávez, Manuel Antonio Garretón M., Porfirio Muñoz Ledo, Kenneth H. Jr. MacKay, Philip Oxhorn, Kenneth Roberts, Matthew Soberg Shugart, Jorge Vargas Cullel, Laurence Whitehead, and Adolfo E. Nanclares
Publication Date:
10-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Carter Center
Abstract:
Recent events in Latin American and the Carribean, including the election of a former coup leader in Venezuela, the third-term candidacy of Peru President Alberto Fujimori, a coup in Ecuador, and the failed constitutional reform in Guatemala and subsequent election of a party led by retired military officials, have led to serious concerns about the direction of democracy in the region. Americas Program's Council of Presidents and Prime Ministers of the Americas selected the conference topic as an expression of their concern. Held in October 2000 at The Carter Center, the conference addressed the resurgence of populist leaders, the decline of political parties, the need for greater public security, and the many ways the military continues to intervene in Latin American politics.
Topic:
Democratization, Development, Human Rights, Migration, and Politics
Political Geography:
America and Latin America