1
Types of capitalism in Latin America.1
Ilan Bizberg
El Colegio de México2
The four countries which I discuss in this article went through similar paths
until the beginning of the 70’, but have diverged since. My main argument is that
this shows that although one could have talked about Latin America in general
during the time of ISI, it is now impossible to find a unique model of
development in this continent. I will defend the idea that, in the same way as
there are different types of capitalism in the developed world, in this case we are
not dealing with different trajectories that lead to the same end, to one same
economy, but that we are witnessing the development of different types of
capitalism in Latin America, although they may not yet be consolidated.
I follow the literature that considers the existence of a variety of capitalisms:
while some capitalist regimes are more liberal and based on the market (US),
others are more coordinated by social actors (Germany, North Europe) (Hall and
Soskice, 2001), in others the State has a crucial role (France), and in still others it
is the conglomerates of banks and industries that play the main role (Japan and
Korea) (Amable, 2005; Boyer, 2005). The literature that discusses Latin America
1
This article is part of a larger project sponsored by the CONACYT-México that profits from the contribution of
Alberto Aziz, Carlos Alba Vega, Graciela Bensusán, Jaime Marques-Pereira and Bruno Théret and Pascal Labazée
(unfortunately deceased); it is in many respects the result of the discussions we have had during the last four years.
I want to thank especially Bruno Théret with whom I wrote a previous article from which I extract many ideas
and excerpts. I also want to thank Christian Suter and the World Society Studies for the invitation to present a
previous paper at a Conference in Zurich in 2010, which was then published at the Swiss Journal of Sociology, vol. 37,
núm. 2. Geneve. Seismo, 2011, where many of the ideas of the present article were discussed; to Renato Boschi
and Flavio Gaitan for their comments to a first draft at a Conference in Rio de Janeiro in 2011; to Kathryn
Hochstetler, Scott B. Martin and Kenneth C. Shadlen for their comments during the presentation at LASA- San
Francisco in 2012; to the members of the seminar of the Center for International Studies of El Colegio de México
for their comments; and finally to two anonymous reviewers of the journal Interventions Économiques.
2 Associate Member of the CADIS/EHESS and associate professor of the Internationales Graduiertenkolleg,
Zwischen Räumen“ of the Freie Universität Berlin.
2
from this perspective considers that the principal element that defines the type of
capitalism that exists in this continent is the fact that the societies are
heterogeneous and hierarchic (Schneider and Soskice, 2009). This perspective
considers that in Latin America there exists a unique type, the hierarchical one;
that this characteristic defines the orientation of the economy, the role of the
State, the industrial relations and the welfare system that combine into a unique
variety that in many senses a deficient variant of the liberal market economy as
defined by Hall and Soskice. Although I agree with the consideration that
inequality and hierarchy are central features in the case of the Latin American
case, I want to prove, nevertheless, that the dimensions that define different
types of capitalism are not determined by this characteristic, but that they
combine in different manners and configure varieties of capitalism within this
great category.
We will formalize the determinants defined by the varieties of capitalism
school and that of the regulation school in three different dimensions: the way in
which the countries integrate to the world economy: whether they do so based
on their internal market or the external market; the relation between the State
and the economy: that defines among other things the character with which a
country integrates the world economy, whether it does so in a proactive,
defensive or merely passive manner3; in third place what the regulation school
calls the rapport salarial, which is defined by the (political, social and economical)
relation between the State, the entrepreneurs and the unions; which includes the
industrial relations system and the welfare regime4.
3
This will define one of the principal differences between Mexico and Chile, the defensive character of the
integration of the second against the passive one of the first; although in fact they are very similar in terms of
orientation of the economy and socio-political configuration.
4 We are not able to include other relevant elements such as the educational and qualification system nor the
political system for lack of space.
3
In at least three countries in Latin America we have been able to see that
the economic structure and the socio-political conformation (the orientation of
the economy, the role of the State and the wage relation (rapport salarial:
comprising basically the industrial relations system and the welfare regime) are
complementary enough to be able to point towards ideal types although they are
may be not yet totally consolidated. We can identify two types of capitalism
where the State role is significant, in the first one it is determinant, the State is
central in orienting the economy towards the internal market (which does not
exclude that exports, especially of commodities, are significant) and orienting an
active integration to the world economy, and unions and business organizations
are strong, exert pressure on government but are also capable of coordinating
their action; which we can call State led inward oriented capitalism
(a
formalization of the characteristics of the Brazilian economy). There is a
capitalism where the State has a subsidiary role, that of regulating and defending
national capital, implementing counter-cyclical measures; where the social actors
are weak, coordination between unions and capital is almost nonexistent and on
the contrary the relationship is conflictual and, where the industrial relations
system is dominated by flexibility and the welfare system is residual, assistance
oriented, which can be called a State regulated external oriented capitalism (a
formalization of the characteristics of the Chilean economy). Another type of
capitalism, albeit a disarticulated one because the articulation of the productive
structure occurs externally, the State intervention is weak, the coordination
between unions and capital is almost nonexistent because social actors are weak,
the industrial relations system is dominated by flexibility and the welfare system
is residual and assistance oriented, is the international subcontracting capitalism
(a formalization of the Mexican economy). After the enormous crisis of 20012002, Argentina reoriented its economy towards the internal market in a manner
4
very similar to that of Brazil, it is nevertheless not at all certain that it can be
called a type of capitalism because its sustainability is absolutely not assured as it
depends on changing political situations. We can identify an additional type
existing in Latin America, the rentist type, following Boyer, may not be
considered as capitalist at all because the political and social relations do not lead
to increased investment, innovation, but are rather almost “purely” redistributive;
the political and social relationships as well as the economic ones are defined by
the existence of resources in the hands of the State that are distributed without
any productive goals; this type exists in Venezuela and partly in Ecuador and
Bolivia; in fact many of the Latin American countries share this characteristic to
some extent, although it is not as central as it is in these latter countries.
1. The 1970’s, a time of divergence between similar trajectories5.
Before analyzing the static, synchronic relation between the dimensions
defined above, I will analyze the relationship between them diachronically. There
is an ample literature on path dependency that we accept but that we consider
has to be referred less to institutions than to social actors and the coalitions they
have built, in this case to the industrializing coalitions of the four countries we
are analyzing in this article. Although most of the literature on Latin America
considers that all these countries followed practically the same mode of
industrialization by import substitution, had the same problems and failed for
more or less the same reasons, there were crucial differences between the
countries. As analyzed in a path-breaking article by Marques-Pereira and Théret
(2004), Mexico and Brazil followed a similar path of economic development
based on very different socio-political conformations, until these latter began
determining the economic evolution and started to function in non5
This section of the article draws abundantly from Bizberg, Ilan and Bruno Théret, 2012.
5
complementary ways in Mexico and in more complementary forms in Brazil. In
effect, when Latin America faced one of its recurrent balance of payments crises
in the seventies, these two countries started to diverge in important ways. Brazil,
governed by the military, who based their legitimacy on continuous economic
growth, faced the crisis directly and adopted import substitution of intermediary
and capital goods in order to reduce its external dependence, while it began
opening its political system to solve its legitimacy problems. Mexico’s fate was to
find vast oil reserves and become an important exporter. This fact together with
the huge amounts of external credit the Mexican government acquired, allowed
the governments of the PRI to delay the transformation of its import
substitution scheme and uphold their inclusive authoritarian political regime
throughout the 70’s (Marques-Pereira-Théret, 2004).
Even though during this decade the Mexican State also invested and
promoted investment in steel and heavy industry, such as railcars and machinery,
Mexico discovered huge reserves of oil that made it possible to opt the “easy
way”. There was also a political rationale for this decision. Mexico arrived to the
seventies under the PRI regime, a civilian-authoritarian regime that depended on
its control of the popular organizations and its revolutionary legitimacy. It was an
inclusionary-authoritarian-corporatist regime in contrast to the military
exclusionary regimes of the South Cone. Due to the challenge posed by the
student movement in the late 60’s and the labor movement in the early seventies,
the regime was more concerned with political stability than with the viability of
the economic system (Bizberg, I, 2004). The discovery of oil reserves and the
possibility of acquiring debt seemed to be a perfect solution to the dilemma of
how to deepen the import substitution model while continuing to redistribute
and give concessions to its protected entrepreneurs. Although the Mexican State
6
tried to do both, it basically ended up doing the latter while expanding its oil
exporting platform and its debt.
The 1982 crisis put the industrial bases of the Latin American countries
again at stake. In the case of Mexico, it disclosed the weakness of the industrial
base and the fragility of a redistributive mode based on oil exports and debt.
When in 1981 oil prices plunged and the interest rates soared, Mexico suspended
payments on its debt and had to recur to the IMF that imposed draconian
measures. The financial catastrophe and the recipes of the international financial
institution convinced many of the Mexican leaders that the country had to
abandon import substitution and orient its economy towards the external market.
In the span of one sexenio, Mexico radically opened its economy and abandoned
industrial policy with practically no social or political opposition. The new export
led growth model led to an exceptional expansion of the maquiladora industry and
the assimilation of other exporting industries to subcontracting, once the
government abandoned the idea of enhancing the integration of local production
to sectors dominated by foreign capital, thinking that this would happen naturally
without industrial policy.
Brazil followed the contrary path. The economic scheme implemented by
the military was accelerated growth with no wealth distribution (Hermann,
2005a). This mode of growth reached its limits at the beginning the eighties when
the financial international context reversed (Hermann, 2005b). At that moment
Brazil had to depend on its own resources in order to confront the
disequilibrium created by economic growth under an extremely unequal wealth
distribution; the contrary of the fordist economic model that existed in the US
and Western Europe during the thirty years following the Second World War.
This situation eventually led to rampant hyperinflation as the redistributive
conflict could not be controlled in the context of a democratization process
7
where social forces were very active and had no intention of accepting to pay for
the adjustment. Although this situation was extremely costly in social terms,
especially for the sectors that were not covered by indexation, it functioned as an
barrier against de-industrialization caused by liberalizations under external
pressure. (Marques-Pereira and Théret, 2004) This meant that Brazil could
preserve its industrial base and transit to democracy.
In contrast to both of these countries, Chile and Argentina abandoned
import substitution in 1973, for the first, and 1978 for the second (Canelo, 2009).
The military that ruled Chile from 1973 to 1989 and Argentina from 1976 to
1983 had as their main purpose to extricate popular pressure from politics in
order to “depoliticize” the State. The fact that the labor movement in both
countries was deeply entrenched in the political system explains in part the
virulence of the military as well as the predominance of political over economic
rationale6. The Argentinean and Chilean military opened the economy, reduced
the weight of the State and limited redistribution. Both of these countries had
responded to the balance of payments crisis of the seventies with the imposition
of a new economic model (For Argentina: Rapoport, M. 2005, pp. 600-701, for
Chile: Ffrench Davis, 2008 and Silva, 2007). In both Chile and Argentina, harsh
dictatorship extended the liberal economic agenda by crushing the trade unions
and imprisoning or killing even the more moderate trade union and political
leaders.
While the Brazilian military had the same purpose of “depoliticizing” the State after the intense union
mobilizations that had characterized the Goulart presidency they had overthrown, the unions were not as deeply
entrenched in the Brazilian political system as were the peronistas in Argentina or the trade unions in the Socialist
Party of Chile. The political and repressive measures they took were less radical, so were the economic ones. In
addition, in Brazil the military took over before the crisis of the 70’s, a moment where there was still no
alternative model to import substitution, or when it was still not so hegemonic as it became since the eighties. The
Brazilian military thus followed many of the structuralist economic policies that had been in vogue in this country
although they considerably reduced redistribution, and especially took away the redistributive mechanisms from
the unions. On the other hand, the military, as well as the civilians before and after them, had a conception of
their country as a regional and international power that needed a strong economic basis, which meant selfsufficiency in heavy industry, machinery and arms (Sallum, B. 2010). This led the Brazilian military to the deepen
industrialization rather than to open the economy.
6
8
A common feature of the various economic systems in Latin America was
strong state intervention during the period of import substitution. Mexico and
Brazil are probably the two Latin-American countries where the state intervened
most in the economy. There were nevertheless crucial differences between both
interventions. The Mexican State emerged from a revolution, a fact that led to
the establishment of a strong, centralized state both economically and politically.
The fact that the Mexican State emerged from a violent revolution that lasted
seven years implied that the main task for the new government was to preserve
social and political stability. When the Mexican political system stabilized in the
1930s it did so on the basis of a national-popular alliance built upon the workingclass and peasant organizations. It thus gave more importance to redistribution
for purposes of political control than to economic growth, until the end of the
seventies. This fact implied that although growth of the economy was central as a
source of legitimacy, redistribution in the context of its national-popular pact was
still more significant and complementary to its revolutionary legitimacy (Bizberg,
2004).
In Brazil, with the seizure of power by Vargas in 1930, but especially the
establishment of the Estado Novo in 1937, the Brazilian state became a
modernizing actor of society and the economy. On the other hand, Brazil
experienced continuous regime changes: after Vargas's authoritarian regime, it
transited to a democratic one between 1944 and 1964, then to a military regime
from 1964 to 1985, and again to a democracy since then. Each new regime had
to legitimize itself and economic growth was crucial for this purpose. Thus, while
between the thirties and end of the seventies, the Mexican State had as its main
issue political stability, and redistribution, it was concerned with price control and
a stable exchange rate and was in consequence monetarist with regards to its
economic policies, the Brazilian state’s main concern was economic growth even
9
at the expense of inflation and devaluation and its economic policy was more
structuralist. (Marques-Pereira and Théret, 2004).
Because the Mexican State set as its priority distribution rather than
economic growth during the seventies, its economic structure and its dependence
on oil and debt were stronger, and its situation in 1982 was so fragile that it led it
to abandon its role as an actor of development much more radically than did the
Brazilian State. On the contrary, Brazil preserved its state action capacity, partly
because the military that took power in 1964 had no plans to dismantle it, due to
their will to become a regional power.
The Argentine military (1976-1983) sought to destroy unionism, which they
considered to exert too much pressure on the State. But unlike their fellow
Chilean military they never had the necessary strength to achieve their purpose.
The fact that they were not able to reduce the pressure of the unions prevented
them not only of consolidating their political regime, but to implement the liberal
measures as radically as the government of Pinochet did. It was only under the
two peronista governments of Menem that Argentina experienced massive
privatization and the policies of the Washington Consensus (Boschi and Gaitan,
2008).
2. The Synchronic Analysis
a. Articulation to the world economy.
Both Mexico and Chile share the external orientation of their economies,
notwithstanding that Brazil and Argentina are exporting more and more
commodities and industrial products, they are fundamentally oriented towards
the internal market. Data concerning the weight of exports in both groups of
countries confirms this: while in Brazil and Argentina and Chile the aggregate
demand is balanced between the external and the internal market, in the case of
Mexico the external market is much more significant. The impact of exports on
10
the growth of GDP in Mexico was 58% between 2000 and 2008 and of 67% in
the previous decade (1990-2000), for Chile the percentages are 48% and 39%,
respectively. In contrast, for Brazil and Argentina the numbers are 27% and 29%
respectively between 2000 and 2008. In fact, for this same period, the net effect
of the external exchange on the internal demand (exports minus imports) of
Mexico is very negative, -18%, much more negative in the case of Chile -52.1,
while in Brazil it is negative in a much lesser proportion : -6% and in Argentina it
is slightly positive : 0.6%. It is important to mention that while the situation of
both Mexico and Chile aggravated during the first decade of the new century
with respect to the previous decade, the situation of Brazil and Argentina
bettered between both periods. In the nineties the net effect of external exchange
on growth in Mexico was -4.4%; in Chile -0.8%, Brazil. -13.7% and -11.8% in
Argentina. This is proof of the shift of both Brazil and Argentina towards an
activation of the internal market since the beginning of this century that I am
defending in this article. (Data from Bensusán and Moreno Brid, 2011)
On the other hand, although Mexico and Chile share the fact that the
growth of their economies depend strongly on exports and can be said to be
externally led, they export different types of products, while Mexico exports
manufactured goods for more than 70%, Chile exports primary and
manufactured based on primary goods nearing 90% (data for 2008 from CEPAL,
División de Comercio Internacional e Integración). Nevertheless, there is one
crucial characteristic of the Mexican economy, we have seen an impressive
growth of exports: from 30, 691 million dollars in 1988 to 200,000 million in
2011. Nevertheless, the country's imports increased at the same rate: they went
from 28.082 to 196.967 million dollars per year from 1988 to the first semester
of 2011. These data show a disconnect between the exporting platform and the
internal production, an extremely poor integration of national production to the
11
export sector which explains the poor growth of the Mexican economy. In fact,
the connection of the Mexican exporting base is in the external market, basically
the United States; which justify that we qualify the Mexican economy as one of
international subcontracting. (Palma, 2005, Dussel Peters, 2006, Ibarra, 2008,
Puyana y Romero , 2009)
Although Brazil and Argentina base their economy on the internal market,
they are both important exporters of primary goods. Up to 60% of Brazilian
exports are primary or manufactures based on primary goods, while in Argentina
the proportion is almost 70% (data for 2008 from CEPAL, División de
Comercio Internacional e Integración).
These differences are complemented by distinctions that pertain to the
character of the integration to the international economy, where the singularities
of Brazil, Chile and Mexico appear clearly. This character is highly related to the
characteristic of the State we have previously discussed. In the case of Brazil and
Argentina (since 2003), the autonomy of the State, State intervention has defined
that the integration of this country to the international economy is proactive; this
has meant active intervention in the foreign exchange market in order to
maintain a competitive exchange rate (Langellier, 2010). In contrast, in the case of
Mexico the government has rarely intervened in the exchange rate market, only
when the peso suffers an important devaluation, the central bank intervenes
selling dollars; this has signified the overvaluation of the Mexican peso in most of
the last two decades. Although the Chilean State does not intervene in the
economy, it regulates its external economic relations quite efficiently, intervening
in the foreign exchange market when it is necessary. During the nineties and until
mid 2000 the Chilean State imposed a control (encaje) on foreign portfolio
investments that limited its unpredictability. Finally, the Chilean State is set in
diversifying its external markets by signing free trade agreements with a great
12
number of countries. Although Mexico has also signed a great number of such
agreements its diversification has been negligible, the concentration and
dependence on the US market is very great; 85% of its exports go to this country.
On the other hand, while the Brazilian, Argentinian and Chilean States have
intervened and have mechanisms to intervene in a countercyclical manner during
the economic crises, the Mexican government has limited its interventions to the
maximum. (Bizberg, 2011). Finally, while the States of Brazil and Argentina
impose certain restrictions to imports at certain moments, most recently to car
imports from Mexico; neither the Mexican nor the Chilean governments do.
All these characteristics determine that we have considered that while
Mexico has a dependent or passive integration to the world market, which is
complementary to its dependence on foreign investment in a regional and
disarticulated logic; that of subcontracting; Brazil has a proactive or offensive
logic of integration, which Argentina has adopted since 2003, while Chile’s State
has a defensive stance to foreign capital and to the fluctuations of the
international economy, although it is very liberal and laissez faire in what
concerns productive investment. (See Table 1)
Table 1. Articulation to the international economy
Dimension
Orientation
Type of
production
Capital
control
Commercial
protectionism
Exchange rate
administration
Character
Brazil
Internal led
Commodities and
manufactures
Short term controls
Temporary
certain imports
Competitive
Argentina
Internal led
Commodities and
manufactures
Disconnected from
capital markets
of Temporary
of
certain imports
Competitive
Chile
External led
Commodities
Short
controls
None
term None
None
Overvalued
to
control inflation
Offensive/proactive Offensive/proactive Defensive/reactive Passive/dependent
b. State intervention.
Competitive
Mexico
External led
Manufactures
13
From the 1970s to the mid-80s in most countries there was a reversal of
State intervention. But just as there were significant differences in the
characteristics of coalitions and state intervention that supported the model of
import substitution and the deepening of this model, there were differences in
the timing of reforms and on the depth of the withdrawal of state economic
intervention. A crucial difference in this regard relates to the political situation at
the time the withdrawal of the State: authoritarian in Mexico and in Chile, ,
democratic in Brazil and Argentina.
Facing the 1982 crisis, the Mexican State opened the economy to
productive as well as to financial capital, privatized its enterprises, abandoned
subsidies to industry and to the ejidos, decentralized education and health services
and shifted its social policy towards assistance (Barba, 2007 and Valencia Lomelí,
2008). It was able to do so without social or political resistance as it had
preserved the authoritarian structure of the regime; it had succeeded in only
liberalizing the electoral process while continuing to control popular
organizations. According to the new market logic, the State was set to become a
regulatory instance, nonetheless, the manner in which it proceeded with the
privatizations of its enterprises and the way it conceived the retreat from
economy weakened its regulatory capacity considerably. This is why the Mexican
economic structure is plagued by monopolies and oligopolies that have formed in
several areas such as telephone, banking, media, the cement industry, commercial
distribution, etc.
The case of Brazil, as I mentioned is very different, the economic structure
of this country made the State less fragile during the crisis and led to less pressure
to liberalize. On the other hand, the fact that the country democratized before
the implementation of neoliberal policies, resulted in social actors that oppose
them; among them the trade unions and the PT; both crucial actors in the
14
democratization process. The presence of a trade union movement backed by a
disciplined political party (the Workers' Party) and a very active civil society
opposing the Washington Consensus were crucial for this purpose. On the other
hand, the fragmented and decentralized political system of Brazil failed to build a
political coalition capable of implementing a radical dismantling of the
interventionist State. In this manner, resistance and lack of cohesion in the
implementation of neoliberal policies have meant that Brazil was the country in
Latin America where the State has best preserved its powers in the neoliberal
wave of the 1980s and 1990s.
The case of Chile resembles that of Argentina until the beginning of the
eighties. Nevertheless, after the economic crisis of 1983-84, the government
abandoned the purely monetarist approach that had dominated until that
moment, and began to sustain an economy based on the industrialization of
commodities (copper, agro-industry - fish, wine, dried fruits-, wood pulp) with a
considerable support of the State (Rodrik, 2010). Forest products started to be
subsidized under Pinochet, the government financed R&D for the development
of the wine industry, while the salmon industry owes much to the support of
Fundación Chile, a semi-public venture fund. The Pinochet government preserved
the copper industry under control of the State (Gaitán and Boschi, 2009, 11).
Under the governments of the Concertación, in the 90’s, the State imposed controls
on the entry of capital, in order to reduce the instability of portfolio capital. It
also constituted a stabilization fund based on the resources obtained through
copper exports, to be used in an anti-cyclical manner in times of crisis. In this
way, the Chilean State implemented what some have characterized as an
autonomous State with a cooperative relationship with the private sector (Silva,
2007, 79).
15
It is without any doubt that it was the Argentinian government that
proceeded more radically to liberalize during the nineties. The Menem
government achieved this with the complicity of part of the peronist unions, as the
CGT divided upon the question of accepting the measures of Menem in
exchange of keeping the control of the obras sociales (the health services); the
dissidents from the CGT created the CTA, which reunited again with the CGT
under Kirchner. This allowed that it be in this country where the withdrawal of
the State from the economy went furthest (Boschi and Gaitan, 2008).
This is an important difference between Argentina and Chile; while the
military preserved -the ownership of copper and the State company Codelco, the
Argentinian government privatized the oil company: YPF.
Contrary to
Argentina, the Mexican state retained some strategic sectors such as electricity
and oil, and it has not privatized water or postal services. The fact that the States
in Mexico, Brazil and Chile have kept control of strategic economic sectors is not
only important in terms of their ability to regulate the economy, but equally for
state funding, especially with regard to foreign currency7. While in Brazil, Mexico
and Chile, the state has the capacity to get foreign exchange from its own
exports, Argentina does not. There are nevertheless important differences
regarding how each of these countries deal with these resources: while in the case
of Mexico PEMEX is mainly used as a source of revenue for the state budget,
something that partly explains its low capacity to raise taxes and the “rentist”
character of the Mexican State. The resources of copper in the case of Chile are
partly saved in a stabilization fund. Brazil found oil reserves much later and in
much more complex extracting conditions, forcing Petrobras to become a very
dynamic company, with financial "autarky" .
7
This is one of the main reasons why the government of Cristina Kirchner nationalized the oil company in 2012.
16
There are also differences between the financial systems of these countries in
terms both of State and national ownership. While Brazil retained a higher
proportion of banks under state and national control, the Argentinian and
Mexican process of denationalization of banks of the 1990s was radical,
amounting to 61%. Although Mexico resisted mass privatization of banks until
the crisis of 1994-95, thereafter national banks were bought by foreign banks to a
85%. In Brazil, the percentage of banks in foreign hands is only 49% (Boschi
and Gaitán, 2008). In addition, the Brazilian federal government continues to
have an instrument to promote development unparalleled in Latin America and
the world, the BNDES. In fact the BNDES has expanded its operations since
the beginning of the 2000s, it handles one fifth of all the finances of the Brazilian
private sector and has become the first source of long term financing (Santana,
2011; Hochstetler and Montero, 2012). It is also a significant factor in making
credit available during the global crisis as part of an aggressive anti-cyclical policy.
From 1999 to 2009 its disbursements as percentage of GDP grew from 3% to an
impressive 8.5%; although it has been reduced to 5.5% by 2011 (Hochstetler and
Montero, 2012). Nevertheless, although the bank’s increased action was intended
to convert it in the main actor of a renewed industrial policy of the Brazilian
government (about half of its investments are committed to industry), most of its
loans are concentrated in a few large companies that have always dominated the
Brazilian economy and to which the largest loan are allocated: Petrobras, Vale,
Electrobras, etc. (Hochstetler and Montero, 2012).
In contrast the Argentinian BANADES was privatized in the 1980s and the
Mexican development banks have dramatically reduced their intervention and
limited their character. The Mexican State kept six development banks, the most
important being Bancomext and Nacional Financiera (Nafin). This latter was created
in 1934 and was the most important Mexican bank of the ISI period. Measured
17
in terms of assets, these two are the largest banks in Latin America; nonetheless
their impact is reduced as their functions have been radically restricted. Nafin has
reduced its role since the 1982 crisis, and intensified its withdrawal with the trade
and financial opening of the 1990s. Credit operations for productive investment
of Nafin were reduced by 70% between 1996 and 2004. It gives little credit to
businesses and its resources are basically used as warranties for loans offered by
commercial banks to small and medium enterprises. Nafin has also focused on
"factoraje": paying the bills owed by suppliers or clients to small and medium
enterprises in advance. Finally, it serves as an intermediary for the funds received
by the Mexican government and international organizations for different
economic and social programs (Manrique Campos, 2007, 111-113).
Moreover, in Argentina, Mexico and Chile, the governmental expertise that
was consolidated during the years of public intervention in the economy was
dismantled and the liberal reforms have been implemented by governmental staff
that did not have an alternative project of the role of the State in a globalized
economy. In Mexico, for example, the so called technocrats expelled the
functionaries of the period of import substitution of all departments. In
Argentina, the reforms were implemented through presidential decrees, in
Mexico and Chile by authoritarian governments, without counterweight from
social organizations or a developmental bureaucracy. In the case of Brazil,
gradualism and relatively delayed reforms allowed it to preserve the core of
technical and bureaucratic expertise, which was considerable, especially in the
economic Ministries and in the development Bank, the BNDES (Evans, 1995:61
and Sikkink, 1988). Even when these functionaries were converted into agents of
privatization, they succeeded in protecting some of the institutions because they
had a totalizing vision of state action. They either promoted less radical reforms
and privatizations, or advanced with a more integrated perspective of what
18
remained in the hands of the State and with the country's economic structure
(Boschi and Gaitán, 2008).
Nonetheless, the situation has changed dramatically in Argentina after the
2001-2002 crisis. The government of Kirchner (2003-2007) and then that of
Fernandez (2007-2011), have in many respects retraced the path; enhancing the
intervention of the State in the economy. It has adopted a policy of managing its
exchange rate so that the peso does not overvalue and reverse the limited process
of re-industrialization that began after the 2001-2002 crisis, when the peso was
strongly devalued and the country was cut from external loans and imports were
drastically reduced (Wylde, 2010). The State has imposed, albeit at some
moments in a very un-political manner, taxes on exports of agricultural products.
It renationalized the pension funds that were based on capitalization and
reestablished the pay as you go system in 2008.
The tax pressure is one of the clearest and most eloquent indicators of the
capacity of intervention of the State on the economy. In figure 1 we can clearly
see the difference between two groups of countries: Brazil - Argentina and
Mexico – Chile. The fact that the taxing pressure of Chile has been increasing
(5% in 20 years) while Mexico has stagnated (and in fact reduced) is an indicator
of a relative change in the liberal paradigm that this country has achieved, while
Mexico hasn’t.
Table 2. State Intervention
Dimension
Brazil
Productive
Investment
Countercyclical
policy
Central
Bank
independence
Regulation
Industrial policy
Argentina
Chile
Mexico
BNDES: 6% to Limited
8% GDP per year
Strong
Strong
Limited
Strong
NAFIN: 2.5% of
GDP per year
Pro-cyclical
No
No
Yes
Yes
High
High
Limited
Captured State
Yes-limited
Yes-limited
None
None
19
Tolerance of
moderate inflation
Fiscal pressure
Yes
Yes
No
No
High
High
Low
Low
Character
Neodevelopmentist
Neodevelopmentist
Liberal/subsidiary
Liberal/Minimal
c. Unions, industrial relations and welfare regimes.
Industrial and labor relations and welfare policies are crucial to define the
diversities of capitalism (Hall and Soskice, 2001; Becker, 2011). In the more
coherent types they are complementary to the other dimensions (Boyer, 2005,
Amable, 2005, Bizberg and Théret, 2011, Bizberg, 2011) and their features to a
large extent determine their character. While in liberal capitalism a residual
welfare State and a weak labor organization are complementary to the
manufacturing of products based on radical innovation which require flexibility
of the labor market, in the Statist and corporatist-European capitalisms welfare
and industrial relations are very extended, dependent on the labor situation of the
individuals and that of the specific economic sectors, conditions complementary
to manufacturing based on incremental innovation and high qualification. In the
social-democratic capitalism, industrial relations are both centralized but flexible,
while the welfare regime is universal and generous; thus complementary to
competiveness and innovations based on solving social and economic problems.
(Boyer, 2005, 529-32). What is absolutely clear is that coordination between the
State and labor as in Germany or coordination between actors as in the social
democratic countries of Northern Europe, as well as a more generous and
decommodifing (Esping Andersen, 1990) welfare State depend on the strength of
social actors, and in the first place labor. The strength and autonomy of labor are
crucial to understand both the character of the industrial relations and of the
welfare regime.
20
In the case of the countries of Latin America, labor and welfare policy
either contribute to the economic orientation led by the internal market through
a wage led growth (Brazil and Argentina) or merely compensate market faults in a
market-oriented economy based on foreign capital (Mexico and Chile). And, in
return, the situation of labor in each country is dependent on its relation with
democratization and the implementation of liberal measures in recent history. In
the case of both Brazil and Argentina, what explains the presence and strength of
labor in both countries is the central role labor played in the transitions to
democracy in both countries and the relation of the present governments to
labor: the PT in the case of Brazil and the peronista government of Kirchner and
Fernández de Kirchner in Argentina. In the case of Mexico and Chile, although
labor was significant at some point of democratization, it was effectively
demobilized by the incumbent PRI governments in the case of Mexico in the late
seventies and of the Chilean political opposition to the military government in
the wake of the referendum they won against Pinochet at the end of the eighties.
The periodicity of the political and the economic transition was also of
central importance. In the case of Brazil and Argentina, liberalization of the
economy occurred after democratization, which determined that it be less radical
(although in the case of Argentina it was radicalized during the peronista
government of Menem with the support of part of the labor movement) and less
offensive against labor organization and the welfare regime. In the case of both
Mexico and Chile, liberalization of the economy and thus flexibilisation of the
industrial relations system, weakening of unions and dismantling of the welfare
State was accomplished without any resistance of the social and political
opposition because undergone under the authoritarian government; that is before
the democratization process.
21
Mexico and Chile are the two countries where industrial relations have been
deregulated more radically. Negotiations in both countries occur at the local
level, by enterprise and the labor movement is at present very atomized. In Chile
unions were traditionally more powerful at the political level, through the
Socialist Party, and collective negotiations took place at the branch level. In the
labor law of 1979 what was achieved through harsh repression during the first
years of the dictatorship was given legal form. The law imposed the prohibition
of political party involvement in union affairs, banned strikes and shifted
collective negotiations from the branch to the local-plant level. The law also
imposed very flexible industrial relations; where workers could be fired without
any reason and with a minimal compensation and where employers could
substitute striking workers. Although after democratization the number of unions
has increased considerably, they are smaller and union rates are relatively low:
15.3% (Zapata, 1992 and Barrera, 1994) .
In the case of Mexico, the corporatist relationship that existed since the
thirties has almost completely disappeared. In contrast to Chile, where
deregulation of the industrial relations was achieved with the disappearance or
murder of hundreds of union leaders and a change in legislation, in Mexico it was
accomplished under practically the same law; in many cases by circumventing it.
During the eighties and nineties the internal relations of the enterprises were
radically flexibilized; while in the past, contracting a worker was achieved through
the union, at the present time it is rather the employers who have this right,
mostly without any negotiation. The changes in the productive process and the
organization of labor are now decided almost exclusively by the employers.
While some of the workers in the most strategic and dynamic sectors (oil,
education, health, telephone, automobile) still have the protection of unions, in
the vast majority of the workplaces (maquiladora industries, construction,
22
commerce, services, small and medium enterprises, the spare part auto-industry)
there are no unions or they only exist on paper (called protection unions). The
fact that the legislation has not changed in Mexico has been a constant complaint
on the part of the business sector that fear a change of the conditions if a leftist
party comes into power. Nevertheless, this situation has allowed the technocratic
PRI and panista governments (since 2000) to continue imposing State control
over unions through a series of mechanisms: negotiation with the traditional
unions that continue being “loyal” to government in exchange of privileges, the
faculty of the Ministry of Labor to register unions, declare strikes legal or illegal
and set salaries, as well as the approval of direct control of the unions by the
employers through “protection” unions. The continued control of the labor
unions by way of the instruments (but devoid of the corporatist relation of
exchange) of the corporatist arrangement was totally functional to this purpose
(Bensusan, 2008). In fact, Mexico’s union density descended from around 20% in
the seventies to 10.3 % in 2002 (Lawrence and Ishikawa, 2005, 157).
In Argentina, because trade unionism was more social as it controlled the
health and pension benefits, and negotiated the general conditions of the workers
at the branch level, and was less rooted in the particular plants, flexibility was
implemented without much legislative change. In the 1990s, the Menem
government tried to impose local level negotiations and wage increases linked to
growth in productivity by decree. He also tried to “privatize” health services, the
so called Obras sociales administered by the unions. Although flexibility passed,
neither negotiations at the local level nor privatization of the health service went
too far, partly due to negotiations between the main union confederation, the
peronista CGT, that accepted flexibility (and other measures such as privatization
of public enterprises) in exchange for preserving their control of the Obras
Sociales. The unions were successful in resisting both the intent to decentralize
23
union negotiations and to remove the obras sociales from the unions (Munck, 2004,
11). The fact that the Menem government had to negotiate with the unions
paradoxically led to a very radical privatization program but concurrently to the
preservation of the force of the unions, that have been re-activated in the present
Kirchner and Fernandez governments (Etchemendy and Collier, 2007); in
comparative terms the Argentinian labor organizations have been relatively well
preserved, at around 37% of union density, the highest in Latin America.
Nevertheless, the support given by unions to the Menem government did result
in the division of the peronista union and a decrease of the proportion of the
active working class that it organizes (Palomino, 2000).
With the arrival to the presidency of Nestor Kirchner in 2003, social and
labor policies changed radically with respect to the Menem and Alfonsín years.
The Argentinian government reaffirmed its alliance with the peronist unions, it
named a renowned labor lawyer at the head of the Ministry of labor, that
contrary to what was current during the Menem years began promoting branch
level industrial negotiations rather than by enterprise (Palomino and Trajtemberg,
2006, 49). In addition, union action and increased inspection by the Ministry of
Labor led to a substantial increase of registered labor in contrast to the previous
tendency to subcontracting and informalization; the coverage of collective
bargaining went from 1.6 million workers in 2003 to 3.5 million in 2006. The
government also raised minimum salaries and worked to reduce the gap between
low and high salaries and increased the resources of the pension funds; all of this
a result of higher salaries and of a larger extension of coverage (Ibid., 52-5)
According to some analysts, since the year 2003, and again with measures such as
the renationalization of the pension funds in 2008 in the midst of the more
recent crisis, there occurred a turning point where the ancient socio-economic
mode based on the external market, labor flexibilization and welfare system
24
privatization was abandoned, in favor of a development mode that pretends to
equilibrate the external and the internal market and that articulates economic and
social policies in order to develop the latter (Novick, Lengyel, Sarabia, 2009, 272).
Although, as in the rest of the continent, industrial relations have been
flexibilized in Brazil, unionism has managed to retain an important degree of
autonomy and capacity of action. This is partly due to the fact that the labor
movement in Brazil was both a central actor in the democratization process and
in the discussions leading to the writing of the 1988 Constitution, but also
because it never lost its character as an interlocutor with the successive
governments, even with the more liberal ones. During the presidency of
Cardoso, the government promoted negotiations between employers and labor
(the tripartite Cámaras sectoriais) in order to set conditions for the modernization
and increased production in several branches of the economy. More recently,
under the presidency of the PT with Lula, a party with ample trade union bases,
the government has implemented a number of negotiating institutions: labor
participated in the negotiations of the labor law and in the tripartite SocialEconomic Council. Since the eighties, unions have managed to impose local
representation, through delegates, in some of the largest companies. They also
managed to unionize previously non-organized sectors such as the peasants
(Bizberg, 2004). In fact, although it is true that unions are smaller, the total
number of unions has increased considerably; trade union density is quite high in
comparison with that of the rest of Latin America, 17.3% in 2001 (Lawrence and
Ishikawa, 2005, 157).
What is crucial in this discussion regarding labor policy is that in Brazil and
Argentina there is a relative coordination/pressure on the part of an active labor
union movement that is complementary to an internal market oriented economy,
25
while in the case of Mexico and Chile labor weakness, low union density and
atomization
are
complementary
to
an
economy
based
on
external
competitiveness: in the case of Chile this implies decentralized negotiations that
insure wage increases by enterprise that depend on local conditions and that do
not go beyond productivity, (Miotti, Quenan and Torija, 2012), in Mexico an
economy based on wage repression in order to attract foreign capital in a
subcontracting scheme.
This can be clearly seen in the contrasting manner in which real minimum
salary has been evolving in each of these countries (Figure 2). During the last
four years there has been a significant increase of minimum salaries in Brazil and
Argentina that not only served to close the gap between the best and worst paid
workers and reduce inequality, but as an economic policy tending to expand the
internal market. One has to consider that minimum wage increases impact
pensions, unemployment benefits, contributions, etc., as many of these are
calculated on this basis. In February 2009 the minimum salary in Brazil was
almost double that of 2000 in constant terms (ILO, 2009). In contrast, in both
Chile and Mexico minimum salaries have been held under control, with the
important difference that in Chile they are constantly above inflation, while in
Mexico in many years there has been a loss of purchasing power.
Another component of industrial relations that affects growth of the
internal market is labor inspection and collective negotiations; both have an
impact on the formalization of the labor market and the level of wages. Whereas
in Mexico there has been no advances in this respect, informalization has been
growing as well as the “protection” unions that do not hold collective
negotiations; the effect on salaries, both minimum as well as average has been
negative. Chile has been a success in formalization of workers; the informal
26
sector had been reduced to around 22% as a result of economic growth and work
inspection, rather than collective bargaining, while the other three countries are
around 45% in 2003 (Quenan and Velut, 2011: 52); although some authors
consider that it has been done at the expense of lowering considerably the
conditions of formal jobs (Bensusan, 2008). In the cases of both Brazil and
Argentina (since 2004) there has been a very consistent effort in both respects, as
a result there has been an important expansion of formalization of employment
(ILO, 2009, Dedecca, 2010, Bensusan, 2010).
Welfare policy is the result of a social contract between labor and the State
and/or employers, which has a short term impact on the economy through
pensions, unemployment compensations, health investment and expenditure,
and a medium and long term impact through productivity growth. Brazil and
Argentina (since 2003) have been expanding their welfare regime, while in both
Chile and Mexico it has shifted towards assistance.
It has been in Chile where the welfare regime has been most profoundly
modified; in fact, it is the only country where we can consider the old system to
have been dismantled. Under Pinochet the inclusive pension system was
privatized; it was totally converted into a capitalization scheme. The military also
partly privatized health and reoriented social policy towards a focalized assistance
scheme. The pension system passed from a “pay as you go” to an individual
capitalization scheme and health services were decentralized to the municipal
level and workers started being obliged to pay for their health insurance.
Although the democratic governments accepted the economic model adopted by
the dictatorship, as it constituted the base of a consensus that had permitted a
smooth transition to democracy, they somewhat modified the labor relations
system and adjusted social policies. They nevertheless preserved the liberal
27
character of both the welfare regime and the industrial relations system. They
extended health coverage and established safeguards for workers who did not
accumulate enough to get a decent pension. The Lagos government instituted a
minimum salary pension for those workers that did not arrive to this level
through capitalization. On the other hand, as the private ISAPRES only covered
16% of the population and were not treating many of the diseases common to
Chileans, the two last governments set up standards to include them and
extended public health services to cover 70 % of the population (Mesa-Lago, C.,
2009, 13). In the year 2008 the government of Bachelet implemented a Welfare
Reform that included the compulsory affiliation to an independent workers
health system by 20168 and the universalization of a non-contributive pension for
the poor. It also flexibilized access of the old to contributive pensions (MesaLago, 2009, 15-6). Although Chile has surely not abandoned its economic model
oriented towards the external market and its liberal character, where economic
rationality primes over the social one, it has certainly corrected the most unjust
elements of the welfare reforms of the dictatorship (Riesco, 2009).
Nevertheless, this coverage of the majority of the population is achieved in
quite paradoxical conditions, which show the limits of the reforms of the
democratic governments. In fact, the public sector ends up subsidizing the
private one: while the private ISAPREs insure mainly the young and higher
revenues individuals, 85% of the insured in this system are between 15 and 59
years old, and only 3% are over 60, at the public FONASA 54% of the insured
are between 20 and 60 years old and 18% over 60; this obviously means that a
significant percentage of those in the ISAPREs are expelled from the system
when they grow older and are more prone to be sick (Ministerio de Salud de
Chile, 2010: 172). In some cases individuals are so sick that they have to incur in
8
In contrast, in Mexico the Seguro Popular is voluntary.
28
such a costly treatment they cannot afford the copayment in the private sector,
so they are obliged to migrate to the public one.
It is also necessary to mention that it has done almost nothing to better the
situation of the educational system that led to the first social crisis encountered
by the Bachelet presidency and that has literally exploded at present. Something
comprehensible when one notes that Chile spends only 0.5% of the PIB in
education, one of the lowest in the world, and that university fees represent 41%
of per capita GDP, one of the highest in the world (Koschützke, 2012: 20)
The welfare regime in Mexico was closely linked to the needs of the PRI; it
was the way in which the State exchanged benefits for control of the social
organizations in a corporatist scheme. Since the arrival of the “technocrats” to
government and the distancing of the State from these organizations, the Welfare
State has been evolving towards a more universal, albeit minimalist scheme. Since
the mid 90’s social programs have decidedly shifted to assistance (Valencia
Lomelí, 2008). The main social program Oportunidades focalizes on the poorest,
including at present time 5,800,000 families. It is complemented by the Seguro
Popular, a decentralized health program run by the local States and financed by
them and by the federation. This program pretends to extend health coverage to
the whole of the population that is not insured by the traditional public systems
(IMSS and ISSSTE), but it has been incapable of inducing the great majority of
the informal workers that would have to contribute (an amount that varies
according to their resources) in order to affiliate. According to the OCDE, the
Seguro Popular has enlarged health coverage to close 80% of the population,
although, expenditure and health infrastructure has not been increased
correspondingly (Bizberg and Martin, 2012). In fact, according to the ECLAC, in
the year 2000 there were 0.8 beds and in 2010 0.7 beds per 1000 inhabitants; in
29
Brazil there were 2.5 in 2005, in Argentina 2.1 in 2010 and in Chile 2.3 (ECLAC,
2011). On the other hand the percentage of health expenditure that has to be
financed by the patients themselves has been reduced rather marginally from
51.9% to 49% (Reforma; 28/08/12: 2); in contrast to around 32% in Brazil
(Becerril-Montekio, 2011).
During the first “technocratic” government (1988-1994), the resources for
the assistance programs came from the privatizations of the State enterprises.
Since then the government has had to proceed to the dismantling of the
corporatist welfare system in order to finance them. It thus transformed the “pay
as you go” pension system of the private sector workers into an individual
capitalization system in 1995 and that of the public sector workers in 2007,
copying a Chilean model that was already being questioned in 1995.
Brazil and Argentina (since 2003) stand in sharp contrast to both of these
cases in that the welfare regime was not radically modified, especially the case of
Brazil. The fact that labor has been a significant actor in this country and that
since the year 2003 the PT, a party that has roots in the trade union movement,
notably the CUT, has not only signified that unions have been convened to
discuss issues concerning labor and welfare policies, but that their presence and
pressure has obliged the government to extend social policy. In fact, not only has
Brazil not reduced its welfare regime but it has been advancing towards
universalisation in the last decade. The Brazilian regime was centralized by the
military in 1967 in order to extort its control from the trade unions. In this way,
the welfare regime became less corporatist, thus relatively more universalistic,
albeit minimalist and clientelistic. During the nineties, Brazil did not reduce
spending in health and education as most other countries in Latin America did
(Lautier, B., 2007, 53). It did not abandon the “pay as you go” pension system or
30
even institute a mixed one. In fact, the 1988 Constitution instituted trough a
process with an active participation of civic organizations, defined as one of its
main goals the universalization of the Welfare state, something that has pressed
the successive governments to expand social policies. This was especially true in
the case of health with the creation of the SUS (Sistema Unificado de Salud). This
system, based on the model of the British National Health Service, extended the
offer of free health services very rapidly: in 2003 79% of the population was
using these health services regularly and it financed 57% of the total health acts,
26% were at least partially financed by private plans and 15% by the patient
himself. Concerning hospitalization, the SUS financed 68% of the acts and the
private plans 24% (Lautier, 2007, 56-7). The most important assistance program,
Bolsa Familia, was expanded both in terms of resources and coverage, and in 2009
reached almost 50 million people (Dowbor, L., 2009, 194). In addition, noncontributive pensions to the rural workers were expanded: since 1991 12.8
million people get a minimum salary. Another social assistance program, called
the BPC (Beneficio de Prestação Continuada), covers about 2.7 million old or
incapacitated individuals over 65 years which live in a home that has a revenue
lower than one fourth of a minimum salary, (Lautier, 2007, 60-2). Finally, Brazil
is the first important country in the world to have instituted (in 2004) a basic
revenue of citizenship, called Renda Básica de Cidadania that was supposed to
cover all Brazilians by 2008 and substitute all other assistance programs and
minimum pensions, but has not yet been implemented (Lautier, 2007, 54).
In Argentina, both Alfonsin and Menem failed to retrieve the obras sociales
from the unions and concentrate them in the hands of the State. Although the
Menem government did succeed in imposing a private pillar to the pension
system and weaken the unions with its economic policies; they managed to
preserve the control the obras sociales. After the 2001 crisis, they regained force
31
from their position as a crucial ally (together with the unemployed piquetero
organizations) of the new Kirchner government. With the support of the peronist
unions, this government implemented policies intended to extend the coverage
of health services though the obras sociales of the retired workers and reduced the
population without health services, reaching a coverage of 59% (Mesa-Lago, C.,
2009, 15). Finally, in 2008 the Fernandez government renationalized the pension
funds that had been partially privatized during the Menem presidency. The
government unified the system under a State controlled solidary regime,
eliminating the segment of capitalization administered by the AFJP
(Administradoras de Fondos de Jubilaciones) (CEPAL, 2010, 8-9).
In Figure 3 we compare State expenditure in social programs. We can see
how both Brazil and Argentina are on a much higher level that Chile and Mexico.
In addition, while in Brazil social expenditure has been continuously growing
since the 90’s, Mexico started out at an extremely low level and continues
spending less than half that of Brazil although it has almost doubled. The effects
of these policies are clear in Figure 4, where we can see the different levels of
social protection in the four countries. I have explained above the paradoxes of
the high coverage of the Chilean case.
Table 3. Industrial relations and welfare system
Dimension
Brazil
Argentina
Chile
Mexico
Union density,
organization and
pressure
High
High
Low
Low
State labor
coordination
Strong
Strong
Low
Low
Wage policy
Wage led growth
Wage led growth
Link between
Productivity and
wages
Wage repression
32
Formalization
Strong
Strong
Strong/low
requisites
Low
Social policy
Tendency to
Universalization/
redistributive
Tendency to
Universalization/
redistributive
State coverage
subsidiary to
private social
security/
assistance
Focalized/
Assistance
Character
Internal market
Internal market
growth/redistributive growth
Low salaries and
charges
Competitive
salaries and
charges
3. Concluding remarks: Is there a diversity of capitalisms in Latin America?
We have constructed three types of capitalism in Latin America on the basis
of an analytical formalization of the orientation of the economy, State-economy
relations and the coordination/pressure of the labor movement as defined by the
industrial relations system and the welfare State of the four countries we have
analyzed in this article. In terms of industrial relations and the welfare regime it is
clear that Mexico and Chile have great similarities. In both workers organizations
are weak, there is no coordination between them and the State or the
entrepreneurs; as a result wage and labor policy are decentralized and tend to be
contained. In the case of Mexico this has resulted in outward wage repression
leading to low wages that benefit the subcontracting model, while in the case of
Chile wages are set in atomized contractual negotiations and end up being closely
linked to productivity; the fact that the economy of the latter has grown almost
continuously for the last twenty years and that productivity has increased
significantly, has resulted in a slow but continuous growth of salaries. Mexico has
a restrictive labor policy because the cost of labor is a determinant component of
its exports and a crucial element to attract foreign investment in a subcontracting
mode. Chile is mostly concerned by the cost of the total product it exports,
33
which are mainly commodities, with high capital content, something that can be
regulated by an exchange rate policy that depends on the regulation of the entry
of foreign capital; an area where Chilean governments have excelled since they
imposed restrictions on the access of short term capital in the 90’s and beginning
of the 2000, and that is at present managed through the administration of foreign
reserves oriented to maintain a competitive exchange rate. Mexico has a smaller
margin in this respect: in the first place exchange rate policies are quite
ineffectual when exports depend so highly on imports, in the second place it
cannot afford to control foreign investment as it needs it both to equilibrate its
trade deficit and to sustain a strong currency in order to attract fresh investments,
finally labor is very sensitive to exchange rate hikes. The obvious counter effects
of this situation is that the maintaining of an overvalued local currency makes
imports cheaper, turns against local producers and is responsible for the slow
growth of the Mexican economy (Ibarra, 2008).
In addition to the flexible labor policies described above, a liberal social
policy is complementary to the capitalist modes of Mexico and Chile, as they
both depend almost totally on the international competitivity of their economies.
In both countries the Welfare regime is almost purely focalized, assistance
oriented and led by market logic (in Chile this logic is put to its limits as the State
subsidizes a privatized social security and health system); that totally excludes
decommodification and redistribution. Policies on wages, labor conditions and
social policy are considered almost exclusively as economic costs and depend on
a logic defined on the basis of the external competitiveness of both the Chilean
and the Mexican economy.
In contrast, in Brazil and Argentina, union density is high, labor is quite
autonomous and has considerable power. This situation is due both to their
34
central role in the process of democratization and because the incumbent
governments have either allied with them or have chosen them as social partners
(Brazil is governed by the PT since 2002 and the Kirchner government in
Argentina re-affirmed its alliance with the peronist CGT at the wake of the grave
economic and political crisis of 2001-2001). The strength of labor and its relation
to government in these countries has resulted in a departure from the previous
labor and assistance policies and in a tendency to universalize the welfare State.
On the other hand, the expansive wage and social policies are complementary to
the orientation of the economy towards the internal market.
The presence of a relatively strong labor movement and coordination
between unions and the State has in its turn supported a stronger State
intervention in the economy; which defines the second characteristic determining
different types of capitalism in Latin America. In contrast, in the countries where
social actors are weak, the State is also weak; to a great measure this is the result
of the fact that the State in most Latin American countries was built upon the
social actors, especially labor. While in both Mexico and Chile the State has
retreated from intervening in the economy, in Brazil the State actively promotes
certain productive activities through its development bank (BNDES) and public
policies. After the 2001-2002 crisis, Argentina shifted from a very open economy
and a non-intervening State to a model akin to that of Brazil. It is not clear if this
model will survive an eventual change of government as it has already done in
Brazil (from Cardoso to Lula) due to its dependence on the leadership of its two
last presidents in a very de-structured political system (Aziz, A., 2011). Although
both State intervention and coordination between the State and labor and the
entrepreneurs are far from what exists in the types of capitalism of some of the
continental European countries, they are both equally complementary with the
35
general orientation of the economy and of its mode of articulation to the
international economy.
Finally, the fact that the economies of Mexico and Chile are led by the
external market and accompanied by a retreat of the State while those of Brazil
and Argentina are led by the internal market and the active intervention of the
State define the character of the articulation to the international economy. Thus
while in Brazil and Argentina the State engages policies to preserve the internal
market from the fluctuations of the international economy by temporarily
controlling short term-portfolio investment, imposing transitory controls on
imports and trying to maintain the exchange rate at a level that does not affect its
industry (although they do not always succeed), in Mexico the State does not
impose any of these limits, both because it is contrary to the economic project of
the succeeding governments since the mid 80’s and because the rules of NAFTA
prohibit them. In Mexico, the international (basically with the United States,
although not exclusively) articulation of the productive basis of the Mexican
economy requires a labor policy that exerts a restrictive control on salaries and a
social policy defined as a safety net; although there are sectors of the economy
that have high salaries, the dominant economic mode requires low salaries as it is
based on the attraction of foreign investments on productive branches with a
high aggregate of labor; thus salaries are more important as an element of
competitiveness of an export economy than as a component of the internal
market. The only possibility of escaping this situation would be vertical
integration of the industry through the incorporation of national providers to the
export industry, something that the last four governments have considered would
happen spontaneously through the market. We have thus considered that while
Brazil (and Argentina) seems to be on a road to consolidate a capitalism that is
State oriented and led by the internal market, Mexico has constructed a
36
disarticulated or rather, externally articulated, international subcontracting
capitalism.
Although in what respects the external orientation of the economy and its
labor and social policies Chile has been following a very similar path that Mexico,
in contrast to this latter, the State has applied a number of measures concerning
its relation to the international economy, albeit in a defensive rather that in a
proactive manner. Although this country has followed an export driven mode of
development since the military coup it has diverted at some moments from the
purely liberal market economies. During the mid-eighties, after the liberalmonetarist model collapsed, the State began to increase its intervention in the
economy. Until the nineties, this economic mode was complemented by a radical
liberal-residual social model in both its labor and its welfare policies, epitomized
by the total privatization of the pension system, the intent to privatize health
services and a very restrictive labor law. Although the democratic governments
did not modify the economic mode they have adjusted the labor and social
policies in order to make them less unjust without modifying their liberal
character. The Chilean democratic governments modified the liberal welfare
policies to compensate for the loopholes created by the reforms of the eighties.
On the other hand, the Chilean governments have implemented a defensive
policy towards the international economy, have at some point regulated the
access of speculative capital, imposed measures to maintain a competitive
exchange and built a reserve of foreign currency from copper exports in order to
implement counter-cyclical policies. Finally, the country has signed numerous
free trade agreements in order to diversify its exports and not depend on one or a
few countries. In contrast to Brazil that has a proactive policy and is trying to
impose its own mode of integration to the international economy, in contrast to
the Mexican mode of dependent and passive integration to the international
37
economy and an accrued dependence on one single market, Chile seems to be
defending an integration of its economy to the world market that we have called
State regulated external led capitalism9. Finally both countries differ in size.
Whereas a small country, of 17 million inhabitants can develop exclusively on the
basis of exports (like the small European countries), a big country like Mexico,
with more that 110 million inhabitants, simply cannot, it is obliged to depend on
its internal market for growth. Nonetheless, even Chile will not be able to
increase wealth considerably and redistribute it (as the social democratic
European countries do) if it does not add value to what it exports and continues
exporting natural resources with low value added.
In the case of Argentina, the 2001 devaluation generated a change in the
relative prices of its manufacturing sectors that together with the increased
external demand for the commodities it exports, have sensibly eased the external
foreign currency restrictions it has traditionally faced and promoted import
substitution. On the other hand, since 2003, the Kirchner and Fernandez
governments have effectively reoriented the social and labor policies both in
response to increased social pressure (the piqueteros and the peronista labor unions)
and to their will to stimulate re-industrialization. Although according to some
analysts this has marked a significant transformation of the pattern of
development, Boyer and others consider that Argentina has not been able to
substantially modify its investment and productive structure, its mode of
accumulation, which continues to be based on natural resources (Fernandez
Bugna and Porta, 2008, 223). Thus, even though the last two governments have
9 The intervention of the State in the case of Chile has lead to important discrepancies. Most authors consider that
the State is basically absent in this country, nevertheless I consider, with other authors, Rodrik, 2010, Miotti, E.L.,
C. Quenan and E. Torija, 2012 and Boyer, 2009 that the State has a stronger presence in Chile that is generally
acknowledged.
38
been decidedly trying to impose an internal market led growth, Argentina is still
struggling between two different capitalist modes, as it has traditionally done.
Bibliography
Alonso, Guillermo. (2007), “La reforma del seguro social de salud argentino”. In Brachet
Marquez (Ed.), Salud pública y regímenes de pensiones en la era neoliberal: Argentina, Brasil, Chile y
México (1980-2000). Mexico: El Colegio de México, pp. 98-9.
Álvarez, R., Bravo-Ortega, C., y Navarro, L. (2011), “Innovación, investigación, desarrollo y
productividad en Chile”, Revista CEPAL, 104, agosto, pp. 141-166.
Amable, Bruno, (2005), Les cinq capitalismes. Paris: Editions du Seuil.
Arza, V. (2011), “El Mercosur como plataforma de exportación para la industria automotriz”,
Revista CEPAL, 104, agosto, pp. 139-164.
Aziz, Alberto, 2011, « ¿Democracias diferentes?: México, Brasil y Argentina”, CIESAS ,
manuscript,.
Barba, Carlos, 2007, “Claroscuros de la reforma social en México y América Latina”, Espiral,
Estudios sobre Estado y Sociedad, vol. 13, no. 39,.
Barrera, Manuel, “Política de ajuste y proceso de democratización en Chile: sus efectos sobre
los trabajadores”, en Revista Mexicana de Sociología (México, UNAM), vol. 56, núm. 1,
1994, pp.105-129.
Becarria, Luis and Salvador Marconi (Eds.). 2010. Anuario estadístico de América Latina y el Caribe
2009. Santiago: United Nations.
Becerril-Montekio, Victor, 2011, “Sistema de salud de Brasil”, Salud Pública de México, vol. 53,
suplemento 2, , pp. 120-131.
Becker, U. (2011), “Comparing institutional change in the BRICs and Central European political economies. Theoretical considerations and first empirical results”, paper presented at
the SASE Annual Meeting in Madrid, June 2011, pp. 1-31.
Beckerman, M., y Rikap, C. (2011) “Integración regional y diversificación de exportaciones en
el Mercosur: el caso de Argentina y Brasil”, Revista CEPAL, 104, agosto, pp. 169-191.
Bensusán, Graciela and Juan Carlos Moreno-Brid, 2011 “El desempeño de las políticas
macroeconómicas y laborales y las respuestas a la crisis internacional (1990-2010)”,
manuscript, UAM-CEPAL,.
Bensusán, G. (2010), “Políticas laborales en América Latina: orientaciones, alcances y
resultados”, ponencia presentada en CEISAL, Toulouse, 2 de julio, pp. 1-60.
Bensusan, G. 2008. ”Regulaciones laborales, calidad de los empleos, modelos de inspección:
México en el contexto latinoamericano”. In Cuaderno de la CEPAL. México: CEPAL.
Bizberg, Ilan. 2004. « Trayectorias políticas e institucionales de Mexico y Brasil: el caso de las
relaciones entre el Estado y el sindicalismo”. In Alba, Carlos and Ilán Bizberg (Eds.),
Democracia y Globalización en México y Brasil. México: El Colegio de México.
Bizberg, Ilan and Scott Martin, (2012), El Estado de Bienestar ante la Globalización, el caso de
Norteamérica, Mexico, El Colegio de México,.
Bizberg, Ilan and Bruno Theret 2012, « Pourquoi le Brésil et non l’Argentine et encore moins
le Mexique, peut-il être considéré comme un pays (ré)émergent ? Quelques éléments de
réponse», la Revue de la Régulation, Paris, no. 11, 1st semester,.
39
Bizberg, Ilan (2011), “The global economic crisis as disclosure of different types of capitalism”,
Swiss Journal of Sociology / World Society Studies, Swiss Journal of Sociology / World Society Studies,
vol. 37, núm. 2. Geneve. Seismo,. pp. 321-329.
Blecker, R., and Esquivel G. (2010), “NAFTA, Trade, and Development”, Economic Alternatives,
Center for the U.S.-Mexican Studies, UC San Diego, pp. 1-41.
Boschi, Renato y Gaitán, Flavio. 2009. Empresas, Capacidades estatales y estrategias de
desarrollo en Argentina, Brasil y Chile.
(http://neic.iuperj.br/textos/renatowkshpniteroi.pdf).
Boyer, Robert. 2005. How and why capitalisms differ. Economy and Society, 34 (4): 509-557.
Boyer, Robert. 2009. Formes de capitalisme et crise financière en pays émergents. Manuscript,
presented at the Conference Dimensions sociopolitiques et économiques de la crise dans les pays
émergents. Approche pluridisciplinaire et comparative à partir du Mexique, Centro de Estudios
Internacionales, El Colegio de México, Mexico.
Canelo, Paula. 2009. “La política contra la economía: los elencos militares frente al plan
económico de Martinez Hoz durante el Proceso de Reorganización Nacional (1976–
1981).” In Alfredo Pucciarelli (Ed.), Empresarios, tecnócratas y militares. La trama corporativa
de la última Dictadura. Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI.
Cardoso, A., y Gindin, J. (2009), “Industrial and collective bargaining: Argentina, Brazil and
Mexico compared”, International Labor Office, Geneva, Working Paper No. 5, pp. 1-94.
Carneiro, Â. M., y Veras de Oliveira, R. (2010), “O sindicalismo na era Lula: entre paradoxos e
novas perspectivas”, trabajo presentado en el VI Congresso da Associação
Latinoamericana de Sociologia do Trabalho, Ciudad de México, 16-22 de abril, pp. 1-24.
Centro de Relaciones Laborales, Trabajo y Diálogo Social. (2007), “Desarrollo del Mercado de
Trabajo en Chile: Empleo, productividad, relaciones laborales y diálogo social.
Antecedentes para la elaboración de Propuestas Sindicales. Énfasis en el Sector MIPE”,
Santiago, abril, pp. 1-34.
CEPAL (2010), La reacción de los gobiernos de las Américas frente a la crisis internacional: una presentación
sintética de las medidas de política anunciadas hasta el 31 de diciembre de 2009. Santiago de Chile:
United Nations.
Dedecca, C, S. (2010), “População e Trabalho no Brasil, oportunidades e desafios”, ensayo
realizado para la X Reunión Nacional de Investigación Demográfica en México de la
Sociedad Mexicana de Demografía, 3-6 de noviembre, México D.F., pp. 1-20.
Delamata, Gabriela. 2008. “Luchas sociales, gobierno y Estado durante la presidencia de
Néstor Kirchner”. In Soares de Lima, Maria Regina (Ed.), Desempenho de Governos
Progressistea no Cone Sul: Agendas alternativas ao Neoliberalismo. Rio de Janeiro: Edicoes
IUPERJ.
Dowbor, Ladislau. 2009. La crisis no es solo económica. Reflexiones globales y algunos
apuntes sobre Brasil. Nueva Sociedad, (224).
Dussel Peters, E., “Hacia una política de competitividad en México”, Economía UNAM, Vol. 3,
núm. 9, 2006.
ECLAC, (2011), Statistical Yearbook for Latin America and the Caribbean.
Ensigna, J. (2005), “Sindicalismo en el Chile de hoy”, Santiago, FES-Actual, julio, pp. 1-6.
Esping-Andersen, Gosta (1990), The three worlds of welfare capitalism, Princeton, New Jersey,
Princeton University Press,.
Etchemendy, S., and R. B. Collier, (2007), “Down but Not Out: Union Resurgence and
Segmented Neocorporatism in Argentina (2003-2007)”, Politics & Society, 7(3), pp. 363401.
40
Evans, Peter, Embedded Autonomy. States and industrial transformation, Princeton, New Jersey,
Princeton University Press, 1995.
Fernandez Bugna, Cecilia and Fernando Porta. 2008. “El crecimiento reciente de la industria
Argentina: Nuevo Régimen sin cambio estructural”. In Soares de Lima, Maria Regina
(Ed.), Desempenho de Governos Progressistas no Cone Sul: Agendas alternativas ao Neoliberalismo.
Rio de Janeiro: Edições IUPERJ.
Ffrench-Davis, R. (2003), “Chile, entre el neoliberalismo y el crecimiento con equidad”, Nueva
Sociedad, 183, enero-febrero, pp. 70-90.
Ffrench-Davis, R., Chile entre el neoliberalismo y el crecimiento con equidad. Reformas y políticas económicas
desde 1973, Santiago, J.C. Sáez editor, 2008.
Ffrench-Davis, R. (2010), “Macroeconomía para el empleo decente en América Latina y el
Caribe”, Oficina Internacional del Trabajo, Oficina Subregional para el Cono Sur de
América Latina, pp. 1-23.
FMI. 2010. World Economic Outlook (WEO). Recovery, Risk, and Rebalancing. Washington, D.C.,
October.
Gasparini, L. y Lustig, N. (2011), “The Rise and Fall of Income Inequality in Latin America”,
Universidad de la Plata, Centro de Estudios Distributivos, Laborales y Sociales,
Documento de Trabajo No. 118, pp. 1-27.
Gazol Sánchez, A. (2004), “Diez años del TLCAN: una visión al futuro”, Economía UNAM,
1(3), septiembre, pp. 1-29.
Grindin, J. (2008), “Sindicalismo docente en México, Brasil y Argentina. Una hipótesis
explicativa de su estructuración diferenciada”, Revista Mexicana de Investigación Educativa,
13(37), abril-junio, pp. 351-375.
Groisman, F. (2011) “Argentina: los hogares y los cambios en el mercado laboral (2004-2009)”,
Revista CEPAL, 104, agosto, pp. 81-102.
Hall, P. A. & Soskice, D (Eds.). 2001. Varieties of capitalism: The institutional foundations of
comparative advantage, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hermann, Jennifer, “Reformas, endividamento externo e o ‘milagre’ econômico” en
Giambiagi, Fabio, André Villela, et. al., Economia brasileira contemporânea (1945-2004), Sao
Paulo, Campus, 2005a.
Hermann, Jennifer, “Auge e Declínio do Modelo de Crescimento com Endividamento: O II
PND e a Crise da Dívida Externa (1974-1984)” en Giambiagi, Fabio, André Villela, et. al.,
op. Cit., 2005b.
Herrera, G. y Tavosnanska, A. (2011), “La industria argentina a comienzos del siglo XXI”,
Revista CEPAL, 104, agosto, pp. 103-122.
Hochstetler, K. and A. Montero, “Inertial statism and the new developmentist State in Brazil”,
paper presented at the 2012 Latin American Studies Association Conference, San
Francisco, May 23-26.
Ibarra, C. (2008), “la paradoja del crecimiento lento de México”, Revista de la CEPAL, no. 95,
August.
Ibarra, C. (2011), “México: la maquila, el desajuste monetario y el crecimiento impulsado por
las exportaciones”, Revista CEPAL, 104, agosto, pp. 199-215.
ILO. 2009 (http://www.oit.org.pe/2/?p=87).
Kay, Cristóbal. 2002. Why East Asia overtook Latin America: agrarian reform, industrialization
and development. Third World Quarterly, 23 (6): 1073-1102.
Koschtüzke, Alberto, « Chile frente a si mismo. Los límites del fundamentalismo de mercado y
las protestas estudiantiles », Nueva Sociedad, no. 237, jan-feb., 2012.
41
Langellier, Jean-Pierre. 2010. Le Brésil tente de contrôler l’envolée de sa croissance. Le Monde,
24/05/2010 .(http://www.lemonde.fr/economie/article/2010/05/24/le-bresil-tente-decontroler-l-envolee-de-sa-croissance_1362203_3234.html).
Lautier, Bruno. 2007 « Les politiques sociales au Brésil durant le goouvernment de Lula :
aumône d'Etat ou droits sociaux ? ». Problèmes d’Amérique latine, 63 : 51-76.
Lawrence, Sophia and Junko Ishikawa. 2005. Trade union membership and collective
bargaining coverage: Statistical concepts, methods and findings. Working Paper 59,
Geneva: International Labor Office.
López-Calva, L. y Lustig, N. (2010), “Declining Latin American inequality: Market forces or
state action?”, http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/5148, (consultado el 13 de
agosto de 2010).
Manrique C., (2007), « Banca de desarrollo en México : un futuro necesario », in J. L. Calva,
Agenda para el Desarrollo, Vol. 6: Financiamiento del crecimiento económico, México, PorrúaUNAM,, pp. 100-116.
Marques Pereira, Jaime and Bruno Théret. 2004. “Mediaciones institucionales de regulación
social y dinámicas macroeconómicas: los casos de Brasil y México”. In Alba, Carlos and
Ilán Bizberg (Eds.), Democracia y Globalización en México y Brasil. México: El Colegio de
México.
Marshall, A., y Parelman, L. (2008), “Estrategias de afiliación en la Argentina”, Desarrollo
Económico, 4(189), abril-junio, pp. 3-30.
Mesa- Lago, Carmelo. 2009. Efectos de la crisis global sobre la seguridad social de salud y
pensiones en América Latina y el Caribe y recomendaciones de políticas. Serie Políticas
Sociales, Santiago de Chile: CEPAL.
Mesa-Lago, Carmelo, Changing Social Security in Latin America. Towards alleviating the Social Costs of
Economic Reform”, Boulder and London, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1994.
Ministerio
de
Salud
de
Chile,
2010
http://www.minsal.gob.cl/portal/url/item/94b9610953e4f5c4e04001011e016291.pdf
Miotti, E.L., C. Quenan and E. Torija, “Continuités et ruptures dans l’accumulation et la
régulation en Amérique latine dans les années 2000: le cas de l’Argentine, du Brésil et du
Chili”, Revue de la régulation, no. 11, Spring 2012.
Moreno-Brid, J.C, Pardinas J.E, y Ros, J. (2009), “Economic development and social policies in
Mexico”, Economy and Society, 38(1), February, pp. 154-176.
Munck, Ronaldo (2004), “Introduction”, en Latin American Perspectives (California, Sage), vol.
31, núm. 4, , p. 3-20.
Notaro, J. (2010), “Los sistemas de Relaciones Laborales. Un enfoque macro social desde el
Cono Sur de América Latina”, Instituto de Economía, Serie de Documentos de Trabajo
DT 4/10, pp. 1-50.
Novick, M. (1997), “Una mirada integradora de las relaciones entre empresas y competencias
laborales en América Latina”, en Novick, M. y Gallart, M., (eds.), Competitividad, redes
productivas y competencias laborales: ¿homogeneidad o segmentación?, Montevideo,
Cinterfor/OIT/CIID/CENEP, pp. 15-48.
Novick, Marta, Miguel Lengyel and Marianele Sarabia, (2009). De la protección laboral a la
vulnerabilidad social. Reformas neoliberales en la Argentina. Revista Internacional del
Trabajo, 128 (3): 257-275.
Ocampo, J.A. (2011) “Macroeconomía para el desarrollo: políticas anti-cíclicas y
transformación productiva”, Revista CEPAL, 104, agosto, pp. 7-35.
Oficina Internacional del Trabajo. (2008), “Evolución de los salarios en América Latina 19952006”, Santiago, octubre, pp. 1-37.
42
Palma, José Gabriel, (2005), “The seven main ‘stylized facts’ of the Mexican economy since
trade liberalization and NAFTA”, Industrial and Corporate Change, Volume 14, No. 6, pp.
941-991.
Palomino, Héctor and David Trajtemberg. 2006. Una nueva dinámica de las relaciones
laborales y la negociación colectiva en la Argentina. Revista de Trabajo, 2(3): 47-68.
Palomino, Héctor, (2000). Los sindicatos en la Argentina contemporánea. Nueva Sociedad, 169
(4): 121-134.
Puyana, Alicia and José Romero. 2009. México. De la crisis de la deuda al estancamiento económico,
México: El Colegio de México.
Quenan, C. and S. Velut (ed), Les enjeux du développement en Amérique latine. Dynamiques
socioéconomiques et politiques publiques, Paris, Institut des Amériques- Agence Française de
Développement, 2011.
Rapoport, Mario and collaborators 2005. Historia económica, política y social de la Argentina.
Córdoba: Ediciones Macchi.
Riesco, M. 2009. El modelo social chileno comienza a cambiar. Revista Internacional del Trabajo,
128 (3): 311-330.
Rodrik, Dani. 2010. The Return of Industrial Policy. Project Syndicate, 12 April
(http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/rodrik42/English).
Salama, P. (2010), “Forces et Faiblesses de l´Argentine, du Brésil et du Mexique”, en Hugon, P.
y Salama, P., (eds.), Les Suds dans la crise, Revue Tiers Monde, Hors Série, Paris : Armand
Colin, pp. 99-125.
Salama, P. (2011), “«Mystère», «Surprise», «Reproche à la Théorie Economique», que penser de
l´évolution du partage du revenu dans les économies semi-industrialisées Latinoaméricaines?”, Workshop on New Developmentalism and Structuralist Development
Macroeconomics, August 15-16, São Paulo, pp. 1-23.
Sallum Jr., Brasilio. 2010. “El Brasil en la ‘pos-transición’: la institucionalización de una nueva
forma de Estado”. In Bizberg, Ilán (Ed.), México en el espejo latinoamericano. Crisis o
Democracia, México: El Colegio de México-Fundación Konrad Adenauer.
Santana, Carlos H. V., (2011), “Conjuntura crítica, legados institucionais e comunidades
epistêmicas: limites e possibilidades de uma agenda de desenvolvimento no Brasil”, in
Boschi, R. (Ed), Variedades de Capitalismo, Política e desenvolvimento na América Latina), Belo
Horizonte, MG: Editora UFMG.
Schneider, Ben Ross and David Soskice. 2009. Inequality in developed countries and Latin
America: coordinated, liberal and hierarchical systems. Economy and Society, 38 (1): 17-52.
Sikkink, K. A. (1988), Developmentalism and democracy : ideas, institutions and economic policy making in
Brazil and Argentina 1954-1962, PhD., Columbia University, N. Y.
Silva, Eduardo. 2007. The Import Substitution Model: Chile in Comparative Perspective. Latin
American Perspectives, 34(3): 67-90.
Svampa, M., y Pereyra, S. (2004), “La experiencia piquetera: Dimensiones y desafíos de las
organizaciones de desocupados en Argentina”, Revista Soc. Bra. Economía Política, 15,
diciembre, pp. 88-110.
Théret, Bruno. 2002. Protection Sociale et Fédéralisme. L’Europe dans le miroir de l’Amérique du Nord.
Montréal : Presse de l’Université de Montréal - Peter Lang.
Valencia Lomelí, E., « Las transferencias monetarias condicionadas como política social en
América latina,. Un balance : Aportes, límites y debates », Annual review of Sociology,
Volume 34, 2008.
Von Mettenheim, Kurt (2006), “ From the economics of politics to the politics of monetary
policy in Brazil”, in Sola, Lourdes & Whitehead, Laurence (eds), Statecraftong Monetary
43
Authority. Democracy and Financial Order in Brazil, Oxford, Center for Brazilian Studies,
University of Oxford, pp. 325-358.
Wylde, Christopher (2010), “Argentina, Kirchnerismo, and Neodesarollismo: Argentine
Political Economy under the Administration of Nestor Kirchner 2003-2007”, Documento
de Trabajo n°44, Area de Relaciones Internacionales, FLACSO/Argentina, abril.
Zapata, Francisco, “Transición democrática y sindicalismo en Chile”, en Foro Internacional
(México, El Colegio de México), vol. 32, núm. 5., 1992, pp. 703-721.
Source: Elaborated with data from Becarria, Luis y Salvador Marconi, (editors), Anuario
estadístico de América Latina y el Caribe 2009, Santiago, Naciones Unidas, 2010.
44
Source: Elaborated with data from ILO, Panorama Laboral 2011, Lima: OIT / Oficina
Regional para América Latina y el Caribe, 2011. 144 p.
Source: CEPAL, Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe División de
desarrollo Social. Base de datos sobre gasto social, (DE, 19 de mayo, 2010:
http://websie.eclac.cl/sisgen/ConsultaIntegrada.asp?idAplicacion=1&idTema=6&idioma
=).
45
Source: Elaborated with data from ILO, Panorama Laboral 2011, Lima: OIT / Oficina
Regional para América Latina y el Caribe, 2011. 144 p. Intermediate data for Chile are lacking.
So are data for 2009 or 2010 for Mexico.
Revue Interventions économiques
Papers in Political Economy
49 | 2014
Gouvernance globale du travail
Types of capitalism in Latin America
Ilan Bizberg
Publisher
Association d’Économie Politique
Electronic version
URL: http://
interventionseconomiques.revues.org/1772
ISBN: 1710-7377
ISSN: 1710-7377
Electronic reference
Ilan Bizberg, « Types of capitalism in Latin America », Revue Interventions économiques [Online],
49 | 2014, Online since 01 May 2014, connection on 30 September 2016. URL : http://
interventionseconomiques.revues.org/1772
This text was automatically generated on 30 septembre 2016.
Les contenus de la revue Interventions économiques sont mis à disposition selon les termes de la
Licence Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International.
Types of capitalism in Latin America
Types of capitalism in Latin America
Ilan Bizberg
1
The four countries which I discuss in this article went through similar paths until the
beginning of the 70’, but they have diverged since. My main argument is that this shows
that although one could have talked about Latin America in general during the time of
ISI, it is now impossible to find a unique model of development in this continent. I will
defend the idea that, in the same way as there are different types of capitalism in the
developed world, in this case we are not dealing with different trajectories that lead to
the same end, to one same economy, but that we are witnessing the development of
different types of capitalism in Latin America, although they may not yet be consolidated.
2
I follow the literature that considers the existence of a variety of capitalisms. While some
capitalist regimes are more liberal and based on the market (US), others are more
coordinated by social actors (Germany, North Europe) (Hall and Soskice, 2001). In others,
it is the State, which has a crucial role (France), and still in others, the conglomerates of
banks and industries are the ones, which play the main role (Japan and Korea) (Amable,
2005; Boyer, 2005).The literature that discusses Latin America from this perspective
considers that the principal element that defines the type of capitalism that exists in this
continent is the fact that the societies are heterogeneous and hierarchic (Schneider and
Soskice, 2009). This perspective considers that in Latin America there exists a unique
type, the hierarchical one; that this characteristic defines the orientation of the economy,
the role of the State, the industrial relations and the welfare system that combine into a
unique variety that in many senses is a deficient variant of the liberal market economy as
defined by Hall and Soskice. Although I agree with the consideration that inequality and
hierarchy are central features in the case of the Latin American case, I want to prove,
nevertheless, that the dimensions that define different types of capitalism are not
determined by this characteristic, but that they combine in different manners and
configure varieties of capitalism within this great category.
3
We will formalize those determinants defined by the varieties of capitalism school and
that of the regulation school in three different dimensions: the way in which the
countries integrate to the world economy: whether they do so based on their internal
Revue Interventions économiques, 49 | 2014
1
Types of capitalism in Latin America
market or the external market; the relation between the State and the economy: that
defines among other things the character with which a country integrates the world
economy, whether it does so in a proactive, defensive or merely passive manner 1; in
thethird place we will considerwhat the regulation school calls the rapport salarial, which
is defined by the political, social and economic relation between the State, the
entrepreneurs and the unions; which includes the industrial relations system and the
welfare regime2.
4
In at least three countries in Latin America we have been able to see that the economic
structure and the socio-political conformation (the orientation of the economy, the role
of the State and the wage relation (rapport salarial: comprising basically the industrial
relations system and the welfare regime) are complementary enough to be able to point
towards ideal types, although they might not be totally consolidated yet. We can identify
two types of capitalism where the State has a significant role. In the first one it is
determinant, the State is central in orienting the economy towards the internal market
(which does not exclude that exports, especially of commodities, are significant), and in
orienting an active integration to the world economy; here unions and business
organizations are strong, exert pressure on government but are also capable of
coordinating their action; this may be called a State led/inward oriented capitalism (a
formalization of the characteristics of the Brazilian economy). There is a capitalism
where the State has a subsidiary role, that of regulating and defending national capital,
implementing counter-cyclical measures; here social actors are weak, coordination
between unions and capital is almost nonexistent, and full of conflicts; here the industrial
relations system is dominated by flexibility, and the welfare system is residual, assistance
oriented, this may be called a State regulated/externally oriented capitalism (a
formalization of the characteristics of the Chilean economy). Another type of capitalism,
albeit a disarticulated one because the articulation of the productive structure occurs
externally, is the one in which the State intervention is weak, the coordination between
unions and capital is almost nonexistent, because social actors are also weak, the
industrial relations system is dominated by flexibility, and the welfare system is residual
and assistance oriented, this is the international subcontracting capitalism (a
formalization of the Mexican economy). After the enormous crisis of 2001-2002,
Argentina reoriented its economy towards the internal market in a manner very similar
to that of Brazil, it is nevertheless not at all certain that it can be called a type of
capitalism because its sustainability is absolutely not assured as it depends on changing
political situations. We can identify an additional type of capitalism existing in Latin
America, the rentist type, following Boyer, it may not be considered as capitalist at all
because the political and social relations do not lead to increased investment, or
innovation, but are rather almost “purely” redistributive; the political and social
relationships as well as the economic ones are defined by the existence of resources in the
hands of the State that are distributed without any productive goals; this type of
capitalism exists in Venezuela and partly in Ecuador, and Bolivia; in fact many of the
Latin American countries share this characteristic to some extent, although it is not as
central as it is in these latter countries.
Revue Interventions économiques, 49 | 2014
2
Types of capitalism in Latin America
The 1970’s, a time of divergence between similar
trajectories3
5
Before analyzing the static, synchronic relation between the dimensions defined above, I
will analyze the relationship between them diachronically. There is an ample literature
on path dependency that we accept, but we consider thatit has to be referred less to
institutions than to social actors and the coalitions they have built, in this case to the
industrializing coalitions of the four countries we are analyzing in this article. Although
most of the literature on Latin America considers that all these countries followed
practically the same mode of industrialization by import substitution, that they had the
same problems and failed for more or less the same reasons, there were crucial
differences between the countries. As analyzed in a path-breaking article by MarquesPereira and Théret (2004), Mexico and Brazil followed a similar path of economic
development based on very different socio-political conformations, until they began
determining the economic evolution and started to function in non-complementary ways
in Mexico, and in more complementary forms in Brazil. In effect, when Latin America
faced one of its recurrent balance of payments crises in the seventies, these two countries
started to diverge in important ways. Brazil, governed by the military, which based their
legitimacy on continuous economic growth, faced the crisis directly and adopted import
substitution of intermediary and capital goods in order to reduce its external
dependence, while it began opening its political system to solve its legitimacy problems.
Mexico’s fate was to find vast oil reserves tobecome an important exporter. This fact
together with the huge amounts of external credit the Mexican government acquired,
allowed the governments of the PRI to delay the transformation of its import substitution
scheme, and uphold their inclusive authoritarian political regime throughout the 70’s
(Marques-Pereira-Théret, 2004).
6
Even though during this decade the Mexican State also invested and promoted
investment in steel and heavy industry, such as railcars and machinery, Mexico
discovered huge reserves of oil that made it possible to opt for the “easy way”. There was
also a political rationale for this decision. Mexico arrived to the seventies under the PRI
regime, a civilian-authoritarian regime that depended on its control of the popular
organizations and its revolutionary legitimacy. It was an inclusionary-authoritariancorporatist regime in contrast to the military exclusionary regimes of the South Cone.
Due to the challenge posed by the student movement in the late 60’s and the labor
movement in the early seventies, the regime was more concerned with political stability
than with the viability of the economic system (Bizberg, I, 2004). The discovery of oil
reserves and the possibility of acquiring debt seemed to be a perfect solution to the
dilemma of how to deepen the import substitution model while continuing to redistribute
and give concessions to its protected entrepreneurs. Although the Mexican State tried to
do both, it basically ended up doing the latter while expanding its oil exporting platform
and its debt.
7
The 1982 crisis put the industrial bases of the Latin American countries again at stake. In
the case of Mexico, it disclosed the weakness of the industrial base, and the fragility of a
redistributive mode based on oil exports and debt. When in 1981 oil prices plunged and
the interest rates soared, Mexico suspended payments on its debt and had to recur to the
IMF that imposed draconian measures. The financial catastrophe and the recipes of the
Revue Interventions économiques, 49 | 2014
3
Types of capitalism in Latin America
international financial institution convinced many of the Mexican leaders that the
country had to abandon import substitution and orient its economy towards the external
market. In the span of one sexenio, Mexico radically opened its economy and abandoned
its industrial policy with practically no social or political opposition. The new export led
growth model promoted an exceptional expansion of the maquiladora industry, and the
assimilation of other exporting industries to subcontracting, once the government
abandoned the idea of enhancing the integration of local production to sectors dominated
by foreign capital, thinking that this would happen naturally without an industrial policy.
8
Brazil followed the contrary path. The economic scheme implemented by the military
was accelerated growth with no wealth distribution (Hermann, 2005a). This mode of
growth reached its limits at the beginning the eighties when the financial international
context reversed (Hermann, 2005b). At that moment Brazil had to depend on its own
resources in order to confront the disequilibrium created by economic growth under an
extremely unequal wealth distribution; the contrary of the fordist economic model that
existed in the US and Western Europe during the thirty years following the Second World
War. This situation eventually led to a rampant hyperinflation, as the redistributive
conflict could not be controlled in the context of a democratization process where social
forces were very active and had no intention of accepting to pay for the adjustment.
Although this situation was extremely costly in social terms, especially for the sectors
that were not covered by indexation, it functioned as a barrier against deindustrialization caused by liberalizations under external pressure (Marques-Pereira and
Théret, 2004). This meant that Brazil could preserve its industrial base and begin its
transit to democracy.
9
In contrast to both of these countries, Chile and Argentina abandoned import
substitution, the first one in 1973 and the second one in 1978)(Canelo, 2009). The military
that ruled Chile,from 1973 to 1989, and Argentina, from 1976 to 1983, had as its main
purpose to extricate popular pressure from politics in order to “depoliticize” the State.
The fact that the labor movement in both countries was deeply entrenched in the
political system explains in part the virulence of the military, as well as the
predominance of political over economic rationale4. The Argentinean and Chilean
military opened the economy, reduced the weight of the State, and limited redistribution.
Both countries had responded to the balance of payments crisis of the seventies with the
imposition of a new economic model (For Argentina: Rapoport, M. 2005, pp. 600-701, for
Chile: Ffrench Davis, 2008, and Silva, 2007). In both Chile and Argentina, harsh
dictatorship extended the liberal economic agenda by crushing the trade unions,and
imprisoning or killing even the more moderate trade union and political leaders.
10
A common feature of the various economic systems in Latin America was a strong state
intervention during the period of import substitution. Mexico and Brazil are probably the
two Latin-American countries where the state intervened most in the economy. There
were nevertheless crucial differences between both interventions. The Mexican State
emerged from a revolution, a fact that led to the establishment of a strong, centralized
state both economically and politically. The fact that the Mexican State emerged from a
violent revolution that lasted seven years implied that the main task for the new
government was to preserve social and political stability. When the Mexican political
system stabilized in the 1930s it did so on the basis of a national-popular alliance built
upon the working-class and peasant organizations. It thus gave more importance to
redistribution for purposes of political control than to economic growth, until the end of
Revue Interventions économiques, 49 | 2014
4
Types of capitalism in Latin America
the seventies. This fact implied that although thegrowth of the economy was central as a
source of legitimacy, redistribution in the context of its national-popular pact was still
more significant, and complementary to its revolutionary legitimacy (Bizberg, 2004).
11
In Brazil, with the seizure of power by Vargas in 1930, but especially withthe
establishment of the Estado Novo in 1937, the state became a modernizing actor of society
and the economy. On the other hand, Brazil experienced continuous regime changes:
after Vargas’s authoritarian regime, it transited to a democratic one between 1944 and
1964, then to a military regime from 1964 to 1985, and again to a democracy since then.
Each new regime had to legitimize itself and economic growth was crucial for this
purpose. Thus, while between the thirties and theend of the seventies, the Mexican State
had political stability and redistributionas its main issues it was concerned with price
control and witha stable exchange rate, being in consequence monetarist with regards to
its economic policies; in contrast, the Brazilian state’s main concern was economic
growth,even at the expense of inflation and devaluation,and its economic policy was
more structuralist (Marques-Pereira and Théret, 2004).
12
Because the Mexican State set as its priority distribution rather than economic growth
during the seventies, its economic structure and its dependence on oil and debt were
stronger, and its situation in 1982 was so fragile that it led it to abandon its role as an
actor of development much more radically than did the Brazilian State. On the contrary,
Brazil preserved its state action capacity, partly because the military that took power in
1964 had no plans to dismantle it, due to their will to become a regional power.
13
The Argentine military (1976-1983) sought to destroy unionism, considering that it
exerted too much pressure on the State. But unlike their fellow Chilean military they
never had the necessary strength to achieve their purpose. The fact that they were not
able to reduce the pressure of the unions prevented them not only fromconsolidating
their political regime, but also from implementing the liberal measures as radically as the
government of Pinochet did. It was only under the two peronista governments of Menem
that Argentina experienced massive privatization, and the policies of the Washington
Consensus (Boschi and Gaitan, 2008).
The Synchronic Analysis
Articulation to the world economy
14
Both Mexico and Chile share the external orientation of their economies,
notwithstanding that Brazil and Argentina are exporting more and more commodities
and industrial products, they are fundamentally oriented towards the internal market.
Data concerning the weight of exports in both groups of countries confirms this: while in
Brazil and Argentina and Chile the aggregate demand is balanced between the external
and the internal market, in the case of Mexico the external market is much more
significant. The impact of exports on the growth of GDP in Mexico was 58% between 2000
and 2008, and 67% in the previous decade (1990-2000), for Chile the percentages are 48%
and 39%, respectively. In contrast, for Brazil and Argentina the numbers are 27% and 29%
respectively between 2000 and 2008. In fact, for this same period, the net effect of the
external exchange on the internal demand (exports minus imports) of Mexico is very
negative, -18%, much more negative in the case of Chile -52.1, while in Brazil it is negative
in a much lesser proportion: -6%, and in Argentina it is slightly positive: 0.6%. It is
Revue Interventions économiques, 49 | 2014
5
Types of capitalism in Latin America
important to mention that while the situation of both Mexico and Chile aggravated
during the first decade of the new century with respect to the previous decade, the
situation of Brazil and Argentina bettered between both periods. In the nineties the net
effect of external exchange on growth in Mexico was -4.4%; in Chile -0.8%, in Brazil
-13.7%,and -11.8% in Argentina. This is proof of the shift of both Brazil and Argentina
towards an activation of the internal market since the beginning of this century, which I
am defending in this article (Data from Bensusán and Moreno Brid, 2011).
15
On the other hand, although Mexico and Chile share the fact that the growth of their
economies depends strongly on exports and can be said to be externally led, they export
different types of products.While Mexico exports manufactured goods for more than 70%,
Chile exports primary and manufactured goods based on commodities nearing 90% (data
for 2008 from CEPAL, División de Comercio Internacional e Integración). Nevertheless,
there is one crucial characteristic of the Mexican economy, we have seen an impressive
growth of exports: from 30, 691 million dollars in 1988 to 200,000 million in 2011.
Nevertheless, the country’s imports increased at the same rate: they went from 28.082 to
196.967 million dollars per year from 1988 to the first semester of 2011. These data show a
disconnectbetween the exporting platform and the internal production, an extremely
poor integration of national production to the export sector which explains the poor
growth of the Mexican economy. In fact, the connection of the Mexican exporting base is
in the external market, basically the United States; which justify that we qualify the
Mexican economy as one of international subcontracting (Palma, 2005, Dussel Peters,
2006, Ibarra, 2008, Puyana y Romero, 2009).
16
Although Brazil and Argentina base their economy on the internal market, they are both
important exporters of primary goods. Up to 60% of Brazilian exports are primary or
manufactured goods based on commodities, while in Argentina the proportion is almost
70% (data for 2008 from CEPAL, División de Comercio Internacional e Integración).
17
These differences are complemented by distinctions that pertain to the character of the
integration to the international economy, where the singularities of Brazil, Chile and
Mexico appear clearly. This character is highly related to the characteristic of the State
we have previously discussed. In the case of Brazil and Argentina (since 2003), the
autonomy of the State, State intervention has defined that the integration of this country
to the international economy is proactive; this has meant active intervention in the
foreign exchange market in order to maintain a competitive exchange rate (Langellier,
2010). In contrast, in the case of Mexico the government has rarely intervened in the
exchange rate market, only when the peso suffers an important devaluation, the central
bank intervenes selling dollars; this has signified the overvaluation of the Mexican peso
in most of the last two decades. Although the Chilean State does not intervene in the
economy, it regulates its external economic relations quite efficiently, intervening in the
foreign exchange market when it is necessary. During the nineties and until mid-2000 the
Chilean State imposed a control (encaje) on foreign portfolio investments that limited its
unpredictability. Finally, the Chilean State is set in diversifying its external markets by
signing free trade agreements with a great number of countries. Although Mexico has
also signed a great number of such agreements its diversification has been negligible, the
concentration and dependence on the US market is very great; 85% of its exports go to
this country. On the other hand, while the Brazilian, Argentinian, and Chilean States have
intervened,and have mechanisms to intervene in a countercyclical manner during the
economic crises, the Mexican government has limited its interventions to the maximum
Revue Interventions économiques, 49 | 2014
6
Types of capitalism in Latin America
(Bizberg, 2011). Finally, while the States of Brazil and Argentina impose certain
restrictions to imports at certain moments, most recently to car imports from Mexico;
neither the Mexican nor the Chilean governments do so.
18
All these characteristics let us consider that while Mexico has a dependent or passive
integration to the world market, which is complementary to its dependence on foreign
investment in a regional and disarticulated logic: that of subcontracting; Brazil has a
proactive or offensive logic of integration, which Argentina has adopted since 2003; while
Chile’s State has a defensive stance to foreign capital and to the fluctuations of the
international economy, although it is very liberal and laissez faire in what concerns
productive investment (See Table 1).
State intervention
19
From the 1970s to the mid-80s there was a reversal of State intervention in most
countries. But just as there were significant differences in the characteristics of coalitions
and state intervention that sustained the model of import substitution and its deepening,
there were differences in the timing of reforms, and on the depth of the withdrawal of
state economic intervention. A crucial difference in this regard relates to the political
situation at the time the withdrawal of the State: authoritarian in Mexico and in Chile,
democratic in Brazil and Argentina.
20
Facing the 1982 crisis, the Mexican State opened the economy to productive as well as to
financial capital, privatized its enterprises, abandoned subsidies to industry and to the e
jidos, decentralized education and health services and shifted its social policy towards
assistance (Barba, 2007 and Valencia Lomelí, 2008). It was able to do so without social or
political resistance as it had preserved the authoritarian structure of the regime; it had
succeeded in only liberalizing the electoral process while continuing to control popular
Revue Interventions économiques, 49 | 2014
7
Types of capitalism in Latin America
organizations. According to the new market logic, the State was set to become a
regulatory instance, nonetheless, the manner in which it proceeded with the
privatizations of its enterprises and the way it conceived the retreat from economy
weakened its regulatory capacity considerably. This is why the Mexican economic
structure is plagued by monopolies and oligopolies in several areas such as telephone,
banking, media, the cement industry, commercial distribution, etc.
21
The case of Brazil, as I mentioned is very different, the economic structure of this country
made the State less fragile during the crisis and thus resisted better the internal and
external pressures to liberalize. On the other hand, the fact that the country
democratized before the implementation of neoliberal policies, resulted in social actors
that opposed them; among them the trade unions and the PT; both crucial actors in the
democratization process. The presence of a trade union movement backed by a
disciplined political party (the Workers’ Party) and a very active civil society opposing
the Washington Consensus were crucial for this purpose. On the other hand, the
fragmented and decentralized political system of Brazil failed to build a political coalition
capable of implementing a radical dismantling of the interventionist State. In this
manner, resistance and lack of cohesion in the implementation of neoliberal policies have
meant that Brazil was the country in Latin America where the State has best preserved its
powers in the neoliberal wave of the 1980s and 1990s.
22
The case of Chile resembles that of Argentina until the beginning of the eighties.
Nevertheless, after the economic crisis of 1983-84, the government abandoned the purely
monetarist approach that had dominated until that moment, and began to sustain an
economy based on the industrialization of commodities (copper, agro-industry - fish,
wine, dried fruits-, wood pulp) with a considerable support of the State (Rodrik, 2010).
Forest products started to be subsidized under Pinochet, the government financed R&D
for the development of the wine industry, while the salmon industry owes much to the
support of Fundación Chile, a semi-public venture fund. The Pinochet government
preserved the copper industry under control of the State (Gaitán and Boschi, 2009, 11).
Under the governments of the Concertación, in the 90’s, the State imposed controls on the
entry of capital, in order to reduce the instability of portfolio capital. It also constituted a
stabilization fund based on the resources obtained through copper exports, to be used in
an anti-cyclical manner in times of crisis. In this way, the Chilean State implemented
what some have characterized as an autonomous State with a cooperative relationship
with the private sector (Silva, 2007, 79).
23
It is without any doubt that it was the Argentinian government that proceeded more
radically to liberalize during the nineties. The Menem government achieved this with the
complicity of part of the peronist unions, as the CGT divided upon the question of
accepting the measures of Menem in exchange of keeping the control of the obras sociales
(the health services); the dissidents from the CGT created the CTA, which reunited again
with the CGT under Kirchner. This allowed this country to be the one in whichthe
withdrawal of the State from the economy went furthest (Boschi and Gaitan, 2008).
24
This is an important difference between Argentina and Chile; while the military
preserved the ownership of copper and the State company Codelco, the Argentinian
government privatized the oil company: YPF. Contrary to Argentina, the Mexican state
retained some strategic sectors such as electricity and oil, and it has not privatized water
or postal services. The fact that the States in Mexico, Brazil and Chile have kept control of
strategic economic sectors is not only important in terms of their ability to regulate the
Revue Interventions économiques, 49 | 2014
8
Types of capitalism in Latin America
economy, but equally for state funding, especially with regard to foreign currency5. While
in Brazil, Mexico and Chile, the state has the capacity to get foreign exchange from its
own exports Argentina does not. There are nevertheless important differences regarding
how each of these countries deal with these resources: while in the case of Mexico the
fact that PEMEX is mainly used as a source of revenue for the state budget, it is something
that partly explains its low capacity to raise taxes and the “rentist” character of the
Mexican State. The resources of copper in the case of Chile are partly saved in a
stabilization fund. Brazil found oil reserves much later and in much more complex
extracting conditions, forcing Petrobras to become a very dynamic company, with
financial "autarky".
25
There are also differences between the financial systems of these countries in terms both
of State and national ownership. While Brazil retained a higher proportion of banks
under state and national control, the Argentinian and Mexican processes of
denationalization of banks of the 1990s were radical, amounting to 61%. Although Mexico
resisted mass privatization of banks until the crisis of 1994-95, thereafter national banks
were bought by foreign banks to a 85%. In Brazil, the percentage of banks in foreign
hands is only 49% (Boschi and Gaitán, 2008). In addition, the Brazilian federal government
continues to have an instrument to promote development unparalleled in Latin America
and the world, the BNDES. In fact the BNDES has expanded its operations since the
beginning of the 2000s, it handles one fifth of all the finances of the Brazilian private
sector, and it has become the first source of long term financing (Santana, 2011;
Hochstetler and Montero, 2012). It is also a significant factor in making credit available
during the global crisis as part of an aggressive anti-cyclical policy. From 1999 to 2009 its
disbursements as percentage of GDP grew from 3% to an impressive 8.5%; although it has
been reduced to 5.5% by 2011 (Hochstetler and Montero, 2012). Nevertheless, although
the bank’s increased action was intended to convert it in the main actor of a renewed
industrial policy of the Brazilian government (about half of its investments are
committed to industry), most of its loans are concentrated in a few large companies that
have always dominated the Brazilian economy and to which the largest loan are
allocated: Petrobras, Vale, Electrobras, etc. (Hochstetler and Montero, 2012).
26
In contrast the Argentinian BANADES was privatized in the 1980s, and the Mexican
development banks have dramatically reduced their intervention and limited their
character. The Mexican State kept six development banks, the most important being
Bancomext and NacionalFinanciera (Nafin). The latter was created in 1934,and it was the
most important Mexican bank of the ISI period. Measured in terms of assets, these two
are the largest banks in Latin America; nonetheless their impact diminished, as their
functions have been radically restricted. Nafin has reduced its role since the 1982 crisis,
and intensified its withdrawal with the trade and financial opening of the 1990s. Credit
operations for productive investment of Nafin were reduced by 70% between 1996 and
2004. It gives little credit to businesses and its resources are basically used as warranties
for loans offered by commercial banks to small and medium enterprises. Nafin has also
focused on "factoraje": paying the bills owed by suppliers or clients to small and medium
enterprises in advance. Finally, it serves as an intermediary for the funds received by the
Mexican government and international organizations for different economic and social
programs (Manrique Campos, 2007, 111-113).
27
Moreover, in Argentina, Mexico, and Chile, the governmental expertise which was
consolidated during the years of public intervention in the economy was dismantled, and
Revue Interventions économiques, 49 | 2014
9
Types of capitalism in Latin America
the liberal reforms have been implemented by governmental staff that did not have an
alternative project of the role of the State in a globalized economy. In Mexico, for
example, the so called technocrats expelled the functionaries of the period of import
substitution of all departments. In Argentina, the reforms were implemented through
presidential decrees, in Mexico and Chile by authoritarian governments, without
counterweight from social organizations or a developmental bureaucracy. In the case of
Brazil, gradualism and relatively delayed reforms allowed it to preserve the core of
technical and bureaucratic expertise, which was considerable, especially in the economic
Ministries and in the development Bank, the BNDES (Evans, 1995:61 and Sikkink, 1988).
Even when these functionaries were converted into agents of privatization, they
succeeded in protecting some of the institutions because they had a totalizing vision of
state action. They either promoted less radical reforms and privatizations, or advanced
with a more integrated perspective of what remained in the hands of the State and with
the country’s economic structure (Boschi and Gaitán, 2008).
28
Nonetheless, the situation has changed dramatically in Argentina after the 2001-2002
crisis. The government of Kirchner (2003-2007), and then that of Fernandez (2007-2011) in
many respects have retraced the path; enhancing the intervention of the State in the
economy. It has adopted a policy of managing its exchange rate so that the peso does not
overvalue and reverse the limited process of re-industrialization that began after the
2001-2002 crisis, when the peso was strongly devalued, and the country was cut from
external loans, and imports were drastically reduced (Wylde, 2010). The State has
imposed, albeit at some moments in a very un-political manner, taxes on exports of
agricultural products. It renationalized the pension funds that were based on
capitalization, and re-established the pay as you go system in 2008.
29
The tax pressure is one of the clearest and most eloquent indicators of the capacity of
intervention of the State on the economy. In figure 1 we can clearly see the difference
between two groups of countries: Brazil - Argentina and Mexico - Chile. The fact that the
taxing pressure of Chile has been increasing (5% in 20 years) while Mexico has stagnated
(and in fact reduced) is an indicator of a relative change in the liberal paradigm that this
country has achieved, while Mexico hasn’t.
Revue Interventions économiques, 49 | 2014
10
Types of capitalism in Latin America
Unions, industrial relations and welfare regimes
30
Industrial and labor relations and welfare policies are crucial to define the diversities of
capitalism (Hall and Soskice, 2001; Becker, 2011). In the more coherent types they are
complementary to the other dimensions (Boyer, 2005, Amable, 2005, Bizberg and Théret,
2011, Bizberg, 2011), and their features to a large extent determine their character. While
in liberal capitalism a residual welfare State and a weak labor organization are
complementary to the manufacturing of products based on radical innovation which
require flexibility of the labor market, in the Statist and corporatist-European capitalisms
Revue Interventions économiques, 49 | 2014
11
Types of capitalism in Latin America
welfare and industrial relations are very extended, dependent on the labor situation of
the individuals and that of the specific economic sectors, conditions complementary to
manufacturing based on incremental innovation and high qualification. In the socialdemocratic capitalism, industrial relations are both centralized but flexible, while the
welfare regime is universal and generous; thus complementary to competiveness and
innovations based on solving social and economic problems. (Boyer, 2005, 529-32). What
is absolutely clear is that coordination between the State and labor as in Germany or
coordination between actors as in the social democratic countries of Northern Europe, as
well as a more generous and decommodifing (Esping Andersen, 1990) welfare State
depend on the strength of social actors, and in the first place labor. The strength and
autonomy of labor are crucial to understand both the character of the industrial relations
and of the welfare regime.
31
In the case of the countries of Latin America, labor and welfare policy either contribute to
the economic orientation led by the internal market through a wage led growth (Brazil
and Argentina) or merely compensate market faults in a market-oriented economy based
on foreign capital (Mexico and Chile). And, in return, the situation of labor in each
country is dependent on its relation with democratization and the implementation of
liberal measures in recent history. In the case of both Brazil and Argentina, what explains
the presence and strength of labor in both countries is the central role labor played in the
transitions to democracy in both countries, and the relation of the present governments
to labor: the PT in the case of Brazil and the peronista government of Kirchner and
Fernández de Kirchner in Argentina. In the case of Mexico and Chile, although labor was
significant at some point of democratization, it was effectively demobilized by the
incumbent PRI governments in the case of Mexico in the late seventies, and of the Chilean
political opposition to the military government in the wake of the referendum they won
against Pinochet at the end of the eighties.
32
The periodicity of the political and the economic transition was also of central
importance. In the case of Brazil and Argentina, liberalization of the economy occurred
after democratization, which determined that it be less radical (although in the case of
Argentina it was radicalized during the peronista government of Menem with the support
of part of the labor movement),and less offensive against labor organization and the
welfare regime. In the case of both Mexico and Chile, the liberalization of the economy,
and thus the flexibilisation of the industrial relations system, weakening of unions and
dismantling of the welfare State were accomplished without any resistance of the social
and political opposition because they were implemented under the authoritarian
government; that is before the democratization process.
33
Mexico and Chile are the two countries where industrial relations have been deregulated
more radically. Negotiations in both countries occur at the local level, by enterprise, and
the labor movement is at present very atomized. In Chile unions were traditionally more
powerful at the political level, through the Socialist Party, and collective negotiations
took place at the branch level. In the labor law of 1979 what was achieved through harsh
repression during the first years of the dictatorship was given legal form. The law
imposed the prohibition of political party involvement in union affairs, banned strikes
and shifted collective negotiations from the branch to the local-plant level. The law also
imposed very flexible industrial relations; where workers could be fired without any
reason and with a minimal compensation and where employers could substitute striking
workers. Although after democratization the number of unions has increased
Revue Interventions économiques, 49 | 2014
12
Types of capitalism in Latin America
considerably, they are smaller, and union rates are relatively low: 15.3% (Zapata, 1992 and
Barrera, 1994).
34
In the case of Mexico, the corporatist relationship that existed since the thirties has
almost completely disappeared. In contrast to Chile, where deregulation of the industrial
relations was achieved with the disappearance or murder of hundreds of union leaders
and a change in legislation, in Mexico it was accomplished under practically the same
law; in many cases by circumventing it. During the eighties and nineties the internal
relations of the enterprises were radically flexibilized; while in the past, contracting a
worker was achieved through the union; at the present time it is rather the employers
who have this right, mostly without any negotiation. The changes in the productive
process and the organization of labor are now decided almost exclusively by the
employers. While some of the workers in the most strategic and dynamic sectors (oil,
education, health, telephone, automobile) still have the protection of unions, in the vast
majority of the workplaces (maquiladora industries, construction, commerce, services,
small and medium enterprises, the spare part auto-industry) there are no unions or they
only exist on paper (called protection unions). The fact that the legislation has not
changed in Mexico has been a constant complaint on the part of the business sector that
fearsa change of the conditions if a leftist party comes into power. Nevertheless, this
situation has allowed the technocratic PRI and panista governments (since 2000) to
continue imposing State control over unions through a series of mechanisms: negotiation
with the traditional unions that continue being “loyal” to government in exchange of
privileges, the faculty of the Ministry of Labor to register unions, declare strikes legal or
illegal, and set salaries, as well as the approval of direct control of the unions by the
employers through “protection” unions. The continued control of the labor unions by
way of the instruments (but devoid of the corporatist relation of exchange) of the
corporatist arrangement was totally functional to this purpose (Bensusan, 2008). In fact,
Mexico’s union density descended from around 20% in the seventies to 10.3 % in 2002
(Lawrence and Ishikawa, 2005, 157).
35
In Argentina, because trade unionism was more social as it controlled the health and
pension benefits, and negotiated the general conditions of the workers at the branch
level, and was less rooted in the particular plants, flexibility was implemented without
much legislative change. In the 1990s, the Menem government tried to impose local level
negotiations,and wage increases linked to growth in productivity by decree. He also tried
to “privatize” health services, the so called Obras sociales administered by the unions.
Although flexibility passed, neither negotiations at the local level nor privatization of the
health service went too far, partly due to negotiations between the main union
confederation, the peronista CGT, that accepted flexibility (and other measures such as
privatization of public enterprises) in exchange for preserving their control of the Obras
Sociales. The unions were successful in resisting both the intent to decentralize union
negotiations and to remove the obras sociales from the unions (Munck, 2004, 11). The fact
that the Menem government had to negotiate with the unions paradoxically led to a very
radical privatization program but concurrently to the preservation of the force of the
unions, that have been re-activated in the present Kirchner and Fernandez governments
(Etchemendy and Collier, 2007); in comparative terms the Argentinian labor
organizations have been relatively well preserved, at around 37% of union density, the
highest in Latin America. Nevertheless, the support given by unions to the Menem
Revue Interventions économiques, 49 | 2014
13
Types of capitalism in Latin America
government did result in the division of the peronista union,and ina decrease of the
proportion of the active working class that it organizes (Palomino, 2000).
36
With the arrival to the presidency of Nestor Kirchner in 2003, social and labor policies
changed radically with respect to the Menem and Alfonsín years. The Argentinian
government reaffirmed its alliance with the peronist unions, it named a renowned labor
lawyer at the head of the Ministry of labor, that contrary to what was current during the
Menem years began promoting branch level industrial negotiations rather than by
enterprise (Palomino and Trajtemberg, 2006, 49). In addition, union action and increased
inspection by the Ministry of Labor led to a substantial increase of registered labor in
contrast to the previous tendency to subcontracting and informalization; the coverage of
collective bargaining went from 1.6 million workers in 2003 to 3.5 million in 2006. The
government also raised minimum salaries, worked to reduce the gap between low and
high salaries,and increased the resources of the pension funds; all these measures were a
result of higher salaries, and of a larger extension of coverage (Ibid. 52-5). According to
some analysts, since the year 2003, and again with measures such as the renationalization
of the pension funds in 2008 in the midst of the more recent crisis, there occurred a
turning point where the ancient socio-economic mode based on the external market,
labor flexibilization and welfare system privatization was abandoned, in favor of a
development mode that pretends to equilibrate the external and the internal market, and
that articulates economic and social policies in order to develop the internal market
(Novick, Lengyel, Sarabia, 2009, 272).
37
Although, as in the rest of the continent, industrial relations have been flexibilized in
Brazil, unionism has managed to retain an important degree of autonomy and capacity of
action. This is partly due to the fact that the labor movement in Brazil was both a central
actor in the democratization process,and in the discussions leading to the writing of the
1988 Constitution, but also because it never lost its character as an interlocutor with the
successive governments, even with the more liberal ones. During the presidency of
Cardoso, the government promoted negotiations between employers and labor (the
tripartite Cámaras sectoriais) in order to set conditions for the modernization and increase
production in several branches of the economy. More recently, under the presidency of
the PT with Lula, a party with ample trade union bases, the government has implemented
a number of negotiating institutions: labor participated in the negotiations of the labor
law, and in the tripartite Social-Economic Council. Since the eighties, unions have
managed to impose local representation, through delegates, in some of the largest
companies. They also managed to unionize previously non-organized sectors such as the
peasants (Bizberg, 2004). In fact, although it is true that unions are smaller, the total
number of unions has increased considerably; trade union density is quite high in
comparison with that of the rest of Latin America, 17.3% in 2001 (Lawrence and Ishikawa,
2005, 157).
38
What is crucial in this discussion regarding labor policy is that in Brazil and Argentina
there is a relative coordination/pressure on the part of an active labor union movement
that is complementary to an internal market oriented economy, while in the case of
Mexico and Chile labor weakness, low union density, and atomization are complementary
to an economy based on external competitiveness. In the case of Chile this implies
decentralized negotiations that insure wage increases by enterprise that depend on local
conditions and that do not go beyond productivity (Miotti, Quenan and Torija, 2012): in
Revue Interventions économiques, 49 | 2014
14
Types of capitalism in Latin America
Mexico this implies an economy based on wage repression in order to attract foreign
capital in a subcontracting scheme.
39
This can be clearly seen in the contrasting manner in which real minimum salary has
been evolving in each of these countries (Figure 2). During the last four years there has
been a significant increase of minimum salaries in Brazil and Argentina that not only
served to close the gap between the best and worst paid workers and reduces inequality,
but as an economic policy tending to expand the internal market. One has to consider
that minimum wage increases impact pensions, unemployment benefits, contributions,
etc., as many of these are calculated on this basis. In February 2009 the minimum salary
in Brazil almost doubled that of 2000 in constant terms (ILO, 2009). In contrast, in both
Chile and Mexico minimum salaries have been held under control, with the important
difference that in Chile they are constantly above inflation, while in Mexico in many
years there has been a loss of purchasing power.
40
Two other components of industrial relations that affect the internal market growth
areinspection and collective negotiations; both have an impact on the formalization of
the labor market, and on the level of wages. Whereas in Mexico no advances in this
respect are noticeable, both the informalization and “protection” unions that do not hold
collective negotiations have been growing, and the effect on salaries (minimum and
average) has been negative. Chile has been a success in formalization of workers; the
informal sector had been reduced to around 22% (whereas informality in the three other
countries is around 45%) as a result of economic growth and work inspection, rather than
collective bargaining (Quenan and Velut, 2011: 52). Nevertheless, some authors consider
that lowering the informal sector in Chile has actually been achieved at the expense of
lowering considerably the conditions of formalization (Bensusan, 2008). In the cases
Brazil and Argentina (since 2004) there has been a very consistent effort in both respects,
which has led to a significant expansion of formalization of employment (ILO, 2009,
Dedecca, 2010, Bensusan, 2010; see figure 4).
Revue Interventions économiques, 49 | 2014
15
Types of capitalism in Latin America
41
Welfare policy is the result of a social contract between labor and the State and/or
employers, which has a short-term impact on the economy through pensions,
unemployment compensations, health investment and expenditure, and a medium and
long-term impact through productivity growth. Brazil and Argentina (since 2003) have
been expanding their welfare regime, while in both Chile and Mexico it has shifted
towards assistance.
42
In Chile the welfare regime has been most profoundly modified; in fact, we consider that
it is the only country that has actually dismantled the old system. Under Pinochet the
inclusive pension system was privatized; it was totally converted into a capitalization
scheme. The military also partly privatized health services and reoriented social policy
towards a focalized assistance scheme. The pension system passed from a “pay as you go”
to an individual capitalization scheme, health services were decentralized to the
municipal level, and workers started being obliged to pay for their health insurance.
Although the democratic governments accepted the economic model adopted by the
dictatorship, as it constituted the base of a consensus that had permitted a smooth
transition to democracy, they somewhat modified the labor relations system and adjusted
social policies. They nevertheless preserved the liberal character of both the welfare
regime and the industrial relations system. They extended health coverage and
established safeguards for workers who did not accumulate enough to get a decent
pension. The Lagos government instituted a minimum salary pension for those workers
that did not arrive to this level through capitalization. On the other hand, as the private
ISAPRES only covered 16% of the population and did not provide treatment for many of
the diseases common to Chileans, the two last governments set up standards to include
them, and extended public health services to cover 70 % of the population (Mesa-Lago, C.,
2009, 13). In the year 2008 the government of Bachelet implemented a Welfare Reform
that included the compulsory affiliation to an independent workers health system by
20166, and the universalization of a non-contributive pension for the poor. It also
flexibilized access of the old to contributive pensions (Mesa-Lago, 2009, 15-6). Although
Chile has surely not abandoned its economic model oriented towards the external market
and its liberal character, where economic rationality primes over the social one, it has
certainly corrected the most unjust elements of the welfare reforms of the dictatorship
(Riesco, 2009).
43
Nevertheless, this coverage of the majority of the population is achieved in quite
paradoxical conditions, which show the limits of the reforms of the democratic
governments. In fact, the public sector ends up subsidizing the private one: while the
private ISAPREs insure mainly the young and higher revenues individuals, 85% of the
insured in this system are between 15 and 59 years old, and only 3% are over 60, at the
public FONASA 54% of the insured are between 20 and 60 years old,and 18% over 60; this
obviously means that a significant percentage of those in the ISAPREs are expelled from
the system when they grow older and are more prone to be sick (Ministerio de Salud de
Chile, 2010: 172). In some cases individuals are so sick that they have to incur in such a
costly treatment they cannot afford the copayment in the private sector, so they are
obliged to migrate to the public one.
44
It is also necessary to mention that it has done almost nothing to improve the situation of
the educational system that led to the first social crisis encountered by the Bachelet
presidency,and that has literally exploded at present. Something comprehensible when
one notes that Chile spends only 0.5% of the PIB in education, one of the lowest in the
Revue Interventions économiques, 49 | 2014
16
Types of capitalism in Latin America
world, and that university fees represent 41% of per capita GDP, one of the highest in the
world (Koschützke, 2012: 20).
45
The welfare regime in Mexico has been closely linked to the needs of the PRI; it was the
way in which the State exchanged benefits for control of the social organizations in a
corporatist scheme. Since the arrival of the “technocrats” to government,and the
distancing of the State from these organizations, the Welfare State has been evolving
towards a more universal, albeit minimalist scheme. Since the mid 90’s social programs
have decidedly shifted to assistance (Valencia Lomelí, 2008). The main social program
Oportunidades focalizes on the poorest, including nowadays 5,800,000 families. It is
complemented by the Seguro Popular, a decentralized health program run by the local
States, financed by them and by the federation. This program pretends to extend health
coverage to the whole of the population that is not insured by the traditional public
systems (IMSS and ISSSTE), but it has been incapable of inducing the great majority of the
informal workers that would have to contribute (an amount that varies according to their
resources) in order to affiliate. According to the OCDE, the Seguro Popular has enlarged
health coverage to close 80% of the population, although, expenditure and health
infrastructure have not been increased correspondingly (Bizberg and Martin, 2012). In
fact, according to the ECLAC, in the year 2000 there were 0.8 beds, and in 2010, 0.7 beds
per 1000 inhabitants; in Brazil there were 2.5 in 2005, in Argentina 2.1 in 2010, and in
Chile 2.3 (ECLAC, 2011). On the other hand, the percentage of health expenditure that has
to be financed by the patients themselves has been reduced rather marginally from 51.9%
to 49% (Reforma; 28/08/12: 2); in contrast to around 32% in Brazil (Becerril-Montekio,
2011).
46
During the first “technocratic” government (1988-1994), the resources for the assistance
programs came from the privatizations of the State enterprises. Since then the
government has had to proceed to the dismantling of the corporatist welfare system in
order to finance them. It thus transformed the “pay as you go” pension system of the
private sector workers into an individual capitalization system in 1995, and that of the
public sector workers in 2007, copying a Chilean model that was already being questioned
in 1995.
47
Brazil and Argentina (since 2003) stand in sharp contrast to both of these cases in that the
welfare regime was not radically modified, especially the case of Brazil. The fact that
labor has been a significant actor in this country,and that since the year 2003 the PT, a
party that has roots in the trade union movement, notably the CUT, has not only signified
that unions have been convened to discuss issues concerning labor and welfare policies,
but that their presence and pressure has obliged the government to extend social policy.
In fact, Brazil not only has not reduced its welfare regime but it has been advancing
towards universalization in the last decade. The Brazilian regime was centralized by the
military in 1967 in order to extort its control from the trade unions. In this way, the
welfare regime became less corporatist, thus relatively more universalistic, albeit
minimalist and clientelistic. During the nineties, Brazil did not reduce spending in health
and education as most other countries in Latin America did (Lautier, B., 2007, 53). It did
not abandon the “pay as you go” pension system or even institute a mixed one. In fact,
the 1988 Constitution instituted through a process with an active participation of civic
organizations, defined as one of its main goals the universalization of the Welfare state,
something that has pressed the successive governments to expand social policies. This
was especially true in the case of health with the creation of the SUS (Sistema Unificado de
Revue Interventions économiques, 49 | 2014
17
Types of capitalism in Latin America
Salud). This system, based on the model of the British National Health Service, extended
the offer of free health services very rapidly: in 2003,79% of the population was using
these health services regularly,and it financed 57% of the total health acts, 26% were at
least partially financed by private plans, and 15% by the patient himself. Concerning
hospitalization, the SUS financed 68% of the acts,and the private plans 24% (Lautier, 2007,
56-7). The most important assistance program, Bolsa Familia, was expanded both in terms
of resources and coverage, and in 2009 reached almost 50 million people (Dowbor, L.,
2009, 194). In addition, non-contributive pensions to the rural workers were expanded:
since 1991,12.8 million people get a minimum salary. Another social assistance program,
called the BPC (Beneficio de Prestação Continuada), covers about 2.7 million old or
incapacitated individuals over 65 years which live in a home that has a revenue lower
than one fourth of a minimum salary (Lautier, 2007, 60-2). Finally, Brazil is the first
important country in the world to have instituted (in 2004) a basic revenue of
citizenship, called Renda Básica de Cidadania,that was supposed to cover all Brazilians by
2008 and substitute all other assistance programs and minimum pensions, but it has not
been implemented yet (Lautier, 2007, 54).
48
In Argentina, both Alfonsín and Menem failed to retrieve the obras sociales from the
unions to concentrate them in the hands of the State. Although the Menem government
did succeed in imposing a private pillar to the pension system,and weakening the unions
with its economic policies; the unions managed to preserve the control of the obras
sociales. After the 2001 crisis, they regained force from their position as a crucial ally
(together with the unemployed piquetero organizations) of the new Kirchner government.
With the support of the peronist unions, this government implemented policies intended
to extend the coverage of health services through the obras sociales of the retired workers,
and reduced the population without health services, reaching a coverage of 59% (MesaLago, C., 2009, 15). Finally, in 2008 the Fernandez government renationalized the pension
funds which had been partially privatized during the Menem presidency. The
government unified the system under a State controlled solidary regime, eliminating the
segment of capitalization administered by the AFJP (Administradoras de Fondos de
Jubilaciones) (CEPAL, 2010, 8-9).
49
In Figure 3 we compare State expenditure in social programs. We can see how both Brazil
and Argentina are on a much higher level that Chile and Mexico. In addition, while in
Brazil social expenditure has been continuously growing since the 90’s, Mexico started
out at an extremely low level,and even if it has almost doubled its expenditure, it is still
half of that of Brazil. The effects of these policies are clear in Figure 4, where we can see
the different levels of social protection in the four countries. I have explained above the
paradoxes of the high coverage of the Chilean case.
Revue Interventions économiques, 49 | 2014
18
Types of capitalism in Latin America
Revue Interventions économiques, 49 | 2014
19
Types of capitalism in Latin America
Concluding remarks: Is there a diversity of capitalisms
in Latin America?
50
We have constructed three types of capitalism in Latin America on the basis of an
analytical formalization of the orientation of the economy, State-economy relations, and
the coordination/pressure of the labor movement as defined by the industrial relations
system, and the welfare State of the four countries we have analyzed in this article. In
terms of industrial relations and the welfare regime it is clear that Mexico and Chile have
great similarities. In both workers organizations are weak, there is no coordination
between them and the State or the entrepreneurs; as result wage and labor policies are
decentralized and tend to be contained. In the case of Mexico this has resulted in outward
wage repression leading to low wages that benefit the subcontracting model, while in the
case of Chile wages are set in atomized contractual negotiations,and they end up being
closely linked to productivity. The fact that the economy in Chile has been growing
almost continuously for the last twenty years, and that its productivity has increased
significantly, has resulted in a slow but continuous growth of salaries. Mexico has a
restrictive labor policy because the cost of labor is a determinant component of its
exports,and a crucial element attracting foreign investment in a subcontracting mode.
Chile is mostly concerned by the cost of the total product of its exports, which are mainly
commodities, with high capital content, something that can be regulated by an exchange
rate policy which depends on the regulation of the entry of foreign capital; an area where
Chilean governments have excelled since they imposed restrictions on the access of short
term capital in the 90’s and thebeginning of the 2000, and that is at present managed
through the administration of foreign reserves oriented to maintain a competitive
exchange rate. Mexico has a smaller margin in this respect: in the first place exchange
rate policies are quite ineffectual when exports depend so highly on imports, in the
Revue Interventions économiques, 49 | 2014
20
Types of capitalism in Latin America
second place it cannot afford to control foreign investment as it needs it both to
equilibrate its trade deficit and to sustain a strong currency in order to attract fresh
investments, finally labor is very sensitive to exchange rate hikes. The obvious counter
effects of this situation are that the maintaining of an overvalued local currency makes
imports cheaper, turns against local producers, and is responsible for the slow growth of
the Mexican economy (Ibarra, 2008).
51
In addition to the flexible labor policies described above, a liberal social policy is
complementary to the capitalist modes of Mexico and Chile, as they both depend almost
totally on the international competitivity of their economies. In both countries the
Welfare regime is almost purely focalized, assistance oriented,and led by market logic (in
Chile this logic is set to its limits as the State subsidizes a privatized social security and
health system); that totally excludes decommodification and redistribution. Policies on
wages, labor conditions,and social policy are considered almost exclusively as economic
costs,and they depend on a logic defined on the basis of the external competitiveness of
both the Chilean and the Mexican economy.
52
In contrast, in Brazil and Argentina, union density is medium to high; labor is quite
autonomous and has considerable power. This situation is due to their central role in the
process of democratization. Besides, the incumbent governments have either allied with
them or have chosen them as social partners(Brazil is governed by the PT since 2002 and
the Kirchner government in Argentina re-affirmed its alliance with the peronist CGT at the
wake of the grave economic and political crisis of 2001-2001). The strength of labor and
its relation to government in these countries has resulted in a departure from the
previous labor and assistance policies, and in a tendency to universalize the welfare State.
On the other hand, the expansive wage and social policies are complementary to the
orientation of the economy towards the internal market.
53
The second characteristic which determines the different types of capitalism in Latin
America has to do with the presence of a relatively strong labor movement, and with the
coordination between unions and the State which in its turn has supported a stronger
State intervention in the economy. In contrast, in countries where social actors are weak,
the State is also weak; in a great measure this is the result of the fact that the State in
most Latin American countries was built upon the social actors, especially labor. While in
both Mexico and Chile the State has retreated from intervening in the economy, in Brazil
the State actively promotes certain productive activities through its development bank
(BNDES), and public policies. After the 2001-2002 crisis, Argentina shifted from a very
open economy and a non-intervening State to a model akin to that of Brazil. It is not clear
if this model will survive an eventual change of government as it has already happened in
Brazil (from Cardoso to Lula) due to its dependence on the leadership of its two last
presidents in a very de-structured political system (Aziz, A., 2011). Although both State
intervention and coordination between the State and labor and the entrepreneurs are far
from what exists in the types of capitalism of some of the continental European countries,
they are both equally complementary with the general orientation of the economy and of
its mode of articulation to the international economy.
54
Finally, the fact that economies like those of Mexico and Chile are led by the external
market and accompanied by a retreat of the State while those of Brazil and Argentina are
led by the internal market and the active intervention of the State define the character of
the articulation of those economies to the international economy. Thus while in Brazil
and Argentina the State engages policies to preserve the internal market from the
Revue Interventions économiques, 49 | 2014
21
Types of capitalism in Latin America
fluctuations of the international economy by temporarily controlling short termportfolio investment, imposing transitory controls on imports, and trying to maintain the
exchange rate at a level that does not affect its industry (although they do not always
succeed), in Mexico the State does not impose any of these limits, both because it is
contrary to the economic project of the succeeding governments since the mid 80’s and
because the rules of NAFTA prohibit them. In Mexico, the international (basically with the
United States, although not exclusively) articulation of the productive basis of the
Mexican economy requires a labor policy that exerts a restrictive control on salaries, and
a social policy defined as a safety net; although there are sectors of the economy that
have high salaries, the dominant economic mode requires low salaries as it is based on
the attraction of foreign investments on productive branches with a high aggregate of
labor; thus salaries are more important as an element of competitiveness of an export
economy than as a component of the internal market. The only possibility of escaping
this situation would be vertical integration of the industry through the incorporation of
national providers to the export industry, something that the last four governments have
considered would happen spontaneously through the market. We have thus considered
that while Brazil (and Argentina) seems to be on a road to consolidate a capitalism that is
State oriented and led by the internal market, Mexico has constructed a disarticulated or
rather, externally articulated, international subcontracting capitalism.
55
Although Chile has been following a very similar path to that of Mexico in relation to the
external orientation of the economy and its labor and social policies, its State, in contrast,
has applied a number of different measures concerning its relation to the international
economy, though in a defensive rather that in a proactive manner. Although this country
has followed an export driven mode of development since the military coup it has
diverted at some moments from the purely liberal market economies. During the mideighties, after the liberal-monetarist model collapsed, the State began to increase its
intervention in the economy. Until the nineties, this economic mode was complemented
by a radical liberal-residual social model in both its labor and its welfare policies,
epitomized by the total privatization of the pension system, the intent to privatize health
services and a very restrictive labor law. Although the democratic governments did not
modify the economic mode, they have adjusted the labor and social policies in order to
make them less unjust without modifying their liberal character. The Chilean democratic
governments modified the liberal welfare policies to compensate for the loopholes
created by the reforms of the eighties. On the other hand, the Chilean governments not
only have implemented a defensive policy towards the international economy, they have
also at some point regulated the access of speculative capital, imposed measures to
maintain a competitive exchange,and built a reserve of foreign currency from copper
exports in order to implement counter-cyclical policies. Finally, the country has signed
numerous free trade agreements in order to diversify its exports and not depend on one
or a few countries. In contrast to Brazil which has a proactive policy and is trying to
impose its own mode of integration to the international economy, in contrast to the
Mexican mode of dependent and passive integration to the international economy and an
accrued dependence on one single market, Chile seems to be defending an integration of
its economy to the world market that we have called State regulated external led
capitalism7. Finally both countries differ in size. Whereas a small country, of 17 million
inhabitants can develop exclusively on the basis of exports (like the small European
countries), a big country like Mexico, with more that 110 million inhabitants, simply
cannot, it is obliged to depend on its internal market for growth. Nonetheless, even Chile
Revue Interventions économiques, 49 | 2014
22
Types of capitalism in Latin America
will not be able to increase wealth considerably and redistribute it (as the social
democratic European countries do) if it does not add value to what it exports and
continues exporting natural resources with low value added.
56
In the case of Argentina, the 2001 devaluation generated a change in the relative prices of
its manufacturing sectors that together with the increased external demand for the
commodities it exports have sensibly eased the external foreign currency restrictions it
has traditionally faced and promoted import substitution. On the other hand, since 2003,
the Kirchner and Fernandez governments have effectively reoriented the social and labor
policies both in response to increased social pressure (the piqueteros and the peronista
labor unions) and to their will to stimulate re-industrialization. Although according to
some analysts these measureshave marked a significant transformation of the pattern
of development, Boyer and others consider that Argentina has not been able to
substantially modify its investment and productive structure, its mode of accumulation,
which continues to be based on natural resources (Fernandez Bugna and Porta, 2008, 223).
Thus, even though the last two governments have been decidedly trying to impose an
internal market led growth, Argentina is still struggling between two different capitalist
modes, as it has traditionally done. On the other hand, this fundamental polarisation in
Argentina and its translation into politics makes the sustainability of the actual economic
mode very dubious, it could thus be reversed anytime in the future as it has often done in
the past (Bizberg and Théret, 2012).
Acknowledgements
This article is part of a larger project sponsored by the CONACYT-México that profits from the
contribution of Alberto Aziz, Carlos Alba Vega, Graciela Bensusán, Jaime Marques-Pereira and
Bruno Théret and Pascal Labazée (unfortunately deceased); it is in many respects the result of the
discussions we have had during the last four years. I want to thank especially Bruno Théret with
whom I wrote a previous article from which I extract many ideas and excerpts. I also want to thank
Christian Suter and the World Society Studies for the invitation to present a previous paper at a
Conference in Zurich in 2010, which was then published at the Swiss Journal of Sociology, vol. 37,
no. 2. Genève. Seismo, 2011, where many of the ideas of the present article were discussed; to Renato
Boschi and Flavio Gaitan for their comments to a first draft at a Conference in Rio de Janeiro in
2011; to Kathryn Hochstetler, Scott B. Martin and Kenneth C. Shadlen for their comments during
the presentation at LASA- San Francisco in 2012; to the members of the seminar of the Center for
International Studies of El Colegio de México for their comments; and finally to two anonymous
reviewers of the journal Interventions
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Alonso, Guillermo (2007), “La reforma del seguro social de salud argentino”. In Brachet Marquez
(Ed.), Salud pública y regímenes de pensiones en la era neoliberal: Argentina, Brasil, Chile y México
(1980-2000). Mexico: El Colegio de México, pp. 98-9.
Revue Interventions économiques, 49 | 2014
23
Types of capitalism in Latin America
Álvarez, R., Bravo-Ortega, C., y Navarro, L. (2011), “Innovación, investigación, desarrollo y
productividad en Chile”, Revista CEPAL, 104, agosto, pp. 141-166.
Amable, Bruno (2005), Les cinq capitalismes. Paris: Editions du Seuil.
Arza, V. (2011), “El Mercosur como plataforma de exportación para la industria automotriz”,
Revista CEPAL, 104, agosto, pp. 139-164.
Aziz, Alberto (2011), “¿Democracias diferentes?: México, Brasil y Argentina”, CIESAS, manuscript.
Barba, Carlos (2007), “Claroscuros de la reforma social en México y América Latina”, Espiral,
Estudios sobre Estado y Sociedad, vol. 13, no. 39.
Barrera, Manuel (1994), “Política de ajuste y proceso de democratización en Chile: sus efectos
sobre los trabajadores”, en Revista Mexicana de Sociología (México, UNAM), vol. 56, núm. 1,
pp.105-129.
Becarria, Luis and Salvador Marconi (Eds.) (2010), Anuario estadístico de América Latina y el Caribe
2009. Santiago: United Nations.
Becerril-Montekio, Victor (2011), “Sistema de salud de Brasil”, Salud Pública de México, vol. 53,
suplemento 2, pp. 120-131.
Becker, U. (2011), “Comparing institutional change in the BRICs and Central European political
economies. Theoretical considerations and first empirical results”, paper presented at the SASE
Annual Meeting in Madrid, June 2011, pp. 1-31.
Beckerman, M., y Rikap, C. (2011), “Integración regional y diversificación de exportaciones en el
Mercosur: el caso de Argentina y Brasil”, Revista CEPAL, 104, agosto, pp. 169-191.
Bensusán, Graciela and Juan Carlos Moreno-Brid (2011), “El desempeño de las políticas
macroeconómicas y laborales y las respuestas a la crisis internacional (1990-2010)”, manuscript,
UAM-CEPAL.
Bensusán, G. (2010), “Políticas laborales en América Latina: orientaciones, alcances y resultados”,
ponencia presentada en CEISAL, Toulouse, 2 de julio, pp. 1-60.
Bensusan, G. (2008), ”Regulaciones laborales, calidad de los empleos, modelos de inspección:
México en el contexto latinoamericano”. In Cuaderno de la CEPAL. México: CEPAL.
Bizberg, Ilan (2004), « Trayectorias políticas e institucionales de Mexico y Brasil: el caso de las
relaciones entre el Estado y el sindicalismo”. In Alba, Carlos and Ilán Bizberg (Eds.), Democracia y
Globalización en México y Brasil. México: El Colegio de México.
Bizberg, Ilan and Scott Martin (2012), El Estado de Bienestar ante la Globalización, el caso de
Norteamérica, Mexico, El Colegio de México.
Bizberg, Ilan and Bruno Theret (2012), « La diversité des capitalismes
latino-américains : les cas de l¹Argentine, du Brésil et du Mexique», La
Revue de la Régulation, Paris, no. 11, 2012.
Bizberg, Ilan (2011), “The global economic crisis as disclosure of different types of capitalism”,
Swiss Journal of Sociology / World Society Studies, Swiss Journal of Sociology / World Society Studies, vol.
37, núm. 2. Geneve. Seismo,. pp. 321-329.
Blecker, R., and Esquivel G. (2010), “NAFTA, Trade, and Development”, Economic Alternatives,
Center for the U.S.-Mexican Studies, UC San Diego, pp. 1-41.
Revue Interventions économiques, 49 | 2014
24
Types of capitalism in Latin America
Boschi, Renato y Gaitán, Flavio (2009), Empresas, Capacidades estatales y estrategias de
desarrollo en Argentina, Brasil y Chile. (http://neic.iuperj.br/textos/renato-wkshpniteroi.pdf).
Boyer, Robert (2005), How and why capitalisms differ. Economy and Society, 34 (4): 509-557.
Boyer, Robert (2009), Formes de capitalisme et crise financière en pays émergents. Manuscript,
presented at the ConferenceDimensions sociopolitiques et économiques de la crise dans les pays
émergents. Approche pluridisciplinaire et comparative à partir du Mexique, Centro de Estudios
Internacionales, El Colegio de México, Mexico.
Canelo, Paula (2009), “La política contra la economía: los elencos militares frente al plan
económico de Martinez Hoz durante el Proceso de Reorganización Nacional (1976–1981).” In
Alfredo Pucciarelli (Ed.), Empresarios, tecnócratas y militares. La trama corporativa de la última
Dictadura. Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI.
Cardoso, A., y Gindin, J. (2009), “Industrial and collective bargaining: Argentina, Brazil and
Mexico compared”, International Labor Office, Geneva, Working Paper No. 5, pp. 1-94.
Carneiro, Â. M., y Veras de Oliveira, R. (2010), “O sindicalismo na era Lula: entre paradoxos e
novas perspectivas”, trabajo presentado en el VI Congresso da Associação Latinoamericana de
Sociologia do Trabalho, Ciudad de México, 16-22 de abril, pp. 1-24.
Centro de Relaciones Laborales, Trabajo y Diálogo Social (2007), “Desarrollo del Mercado de
Trabajo en Chile: Empleo, productividad, relaciones laborales y diálogo social. Antecedentes para
la elaboración de Propuestas Sindicales. Énfasis en el Sector MIPE”, Santiago, abril, pp. 1-34.
CEPAL (2010), La reacción de los gobiernos de las Américas frente a la crisis internacional: una
presentación sintética de las medidas de política anunciadas hasta el 31 de diciembre de 2009. Santiago de
Chile: United Nations.
Dedecca, C, S. (2010), “População e Trabalho no Brasil, oportunidades e desafios”, ensayo
realizado para la X Reunión Nacional de Investigación Demográfica en México de la Sociedad
Mexicana de Demografía, 3-6 de noviembre, México D.F., pp. 1-20.
Delamata, Gabriela (2008), “Luchas sociales, gobierno y Estado durante la presidencia de Néstor
Kirchner”. In Soares de Lima, Maria Regina (Ed.), Desempenho de Governos Progressistea no Cone Sul:
Agendas alternativas ao Neoliberalismo. Rio de Janeiro: Edicoes IUPERJ.
Dowbor, Ladislau (2009), La crisis no es solo económica. Reflexiones globales y algunos apuntes
sobre Brasil. Nueva Sociedad, (224).
Dussel Peters, E. (2006), “Hacia una política de competitividad en México”, Economía UNAM, Vol. 3,
núm. 9.
ECLAC (2011), Statistical Yearbook for Latin America and the Caribbean.
Ensigna, J. (2005), “Sindicalismo en el Chile de hoy”, Santiago, FES-Actual, julio, pp. 1-6.
Esping-Andersen, Gosta (1990), The three worlds of welfare capitalism, Princeton, New Jersey,
Princeton University Press.
Etchemendy, S., and R. B. Collier (2007), “Down but Not Out: Union Resurgence and Segmented
Neocorporatism in Argentina (2003-2007)”, Politics & Society, 7(3), pp. 363-401.
Evans, Peter (1995), Embedded Autonomy. States and industrial transformation, Princeton, New Jersey,
Princeton University Press.
Fernandez Bugna, Cecilia and Fernando Porta (2008), “El crecimiento reciente de la industria
Argentina: Nuevo Régimen sin cambio estructural”. In Soares de Lima, Maria Regina (Ed.),
Revue Interventions économiques, 49 | 2014
25
Types of capitalism in Latin America
Desempenho de Governos Progressistas no Cone Sul: Agendas alternativas ao Neoliberalismo. Rio de
Janeiro: Edições IUPERJ.
Ffrench-Davis, R. (2003), “Chile, entre el neoliberalismo y el crecimiento con equidad”, Nueva
Sociedad, 183, enero-febrero, pp. 70-90.
Ffrench-Davis, R. (2008), Chile entre el neoliberalismo y el crecimiento con equidad. Reformas y políticas
económicas desde 1973, Santiago, J.C. Sáez editor.
Ffrench-Davis, R. (2010), “Macroeconomía para el empleo decente en América Latina y el Caribe”,
Oficina Internacional del Trabajo, Oficina Subregional para el Cono Sur de América Latina, pp.
1-23.
FMI (2010), World Economic Outlook (WEO). Recovery, Risk, and Rebalancing. Washington, D.C.,
October.
Gasparini, L. y Lustig, N. (2011), “The Rise and Fall of Income Inequality in Latin America”,
Universidad de la Plata, Centro de Estudios Distributivos, Laborales y Sociales, Documento de
Trabajo No. 118, pp. 1-27.
Gazol Sánchez, A. (2004), “Diez años del TLCAN: una visión al futuro”, Economía UNAM, 1(3),
septiembre, pp. 1-29.
Grindin, J. (2008), “Sindicalismo docente en México, Brasil y Argentina. Una hipótesis explicativa
de su estructuración diferenciada”, Revista Mexicana de Investigación Educativa, 13(37), abril-junio,
pp. 351-375.
Groisman, F. (2011), “Argentina: los hogares y los cambios en el mercado laboral (2004-2009)”,
Revista CEPAL, 104, agosto, pp. 81-102.
Hall, P. A. & Soskice, D (Eds.) (2001), Varieties of capitalism: The institutional foundations of
comparative advantage, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hermann, Jennifer (2005ª), “Reformas, endividamento externo e o ‘milagre’ econômico” en
Giambiagi, Fabio, André Villela, et. al., Economia brasileira contemporânea (1945-2004), Sao Paulo,
Campus.
Hermann, Jennifer (2005b), “Auge e Declínio do Modelo de Crescimento com Endividamento: O II
PND e a Crise da Dívida Externa (1974-1984)” en Giambiagi, Fabio, André Villela, et. al., op. Cit.
Herrera, G. y Tavosnanska, A. (2011), “La industria argentina a comienzos del siglo XXI”, Revista
CEPAL, 104, agosto, pp. 103-122.
Hochstetler, K. and A. Montero (2012), “Inertial statism and the new developmentist State in
Brazil”, paper presented at the 2012 Latin American Studies Association Conference, San
Francisco, May 23-26.
Ibarra, C. (2008), “la paradoja del crecimiento lento de México”, Revista de la CEPAL, no. 95, August.
Ibarra, C. (2011), “México: la maquila, el desajuste monetario y el crecimiento impulsado por las
exportaciones”, Revista CEPAL, 104, agosto, pp. 199-215.
ILO (2009), (http://www.oit.org.pe/2/?p=87).
Kay, Cristóbal (2002), Why East Asia overtook Latin America: agrarian reform, industrialization
and development. Third World Quarterly, 23 (6): 1073-1102.
Koschtüzke, Alberto (2012), « Chile frente a si mismo. Los límites del fundamentalismo de
mercado y las protestas estudiantiles », Nueva Sociedad, no. 237, jan-feb.
Revue Interventions économiques, 49 | 2014
26
Types of capitalism in Latin America
Langellier, Jean-Pierre (2010), Le Brésil tente de contrôler l’envolée de sa croissance. Le Monde,
24/05/2010. (http://www.lemonde.fr/economie/article/2010/05/24/le-bresil-tente-decontroler-l-nvolee-de-sa-croissance_1362203_3234.html ).
Lautier, Bruno (2007), « Les politiques sociales au Brésil durant le goouvernment de Lula :
aumône d’Etat ou droits sociaux ? ». Problèmes d’Amérique latine, 63: 51-76.
Lawrence, Sophia and Junko Ishikawa (2005), Trade union membership and collective bargaining
coverage: Statistical concepts, methods and findings. Working Paper 59, Geneva: International
Labor Office.
López-Calva, L. y Lustig, N. (2010), “Declining Latin American inequality: Market forces or state
action?”, http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/5148, (consultado el 13 de agosto de 2010).
Manrique C. (2007), « Banca de desarrollo en México : un futuro necesario », in J. L. Calva, Agenda
para el Desarrollo, Vol. 6: Financiamiento del crecimiento económico, México, Porrúa-UNAM, pp.
100-116.
Marques Pereira, Jaime and Bruno Théret (2004), “Mediaciones institucionales de regulación
social y dinámicas macroeconómicas: los casos de Brasil y México”. In Alba, Carlos and Ilán
Bizberg (Eds.), Democracia y Globalización en México y Brasil. México: El Colegio de México.
Marshall, A., y Parelman, L. (2008), “Estrategias de afiliación en la Argentina”, Desarrollo Económico
, 4(189), abril-junio, pp. 3-30.
Mesa- Lago, Carmelo (2009), Efectos de la crisis global sobre la seguridad social de salud y
pensiones en América Latina y el Caribe y recomendaciones de políticas. Serie Políticas Sociales,
Santiago de Chile: CEPAL.
Mesa-Lago, Carmelo (1994), Changing Social Security in Latin America. Towards alleviating the Social
Costs of Economic Reform”, Boulder and London, Lynne Rienner Publishers.
Ministerio de Salud de Chile (2010), http://www.minsal.gob.cl/portal/url/
item/94b9610953e4f5c4e04001011e016291.pdf
Miotti, E.L., C. Quenan and E. Torija (2012), “Continuités et ruptures dans l’accumulation et la
régulation en Amérique latine dans les années 2000: le cas de l’Argentine, du Brésil et du Chili”,
Revue de la régulation, no. 11, Spring.
Moreno-Brid, J.C, Pardinas J.E, y Ros, J. (2009), “Economic development and social policies in
Mexico”, Economy and Society, 38(1), February, pp. 154-176.
Munck, Ronaldo (2004), “Introduction”, en Latin American Perspectives (California, Sage), vol. 31,
núm. 4, p. 3-20.
Notaro, J. (2010), “Los sistemas de Relaciones Laborales. Un enfoque macro social desde el Cono
Sur de América Latina”, Instituto de Economía, Serie de Documentos de Trabajo DT 4/10, pp.
1-50.
Novick, M. (1997), “Una mirada integradora de las relaciones entre empresas y competencias
laborales en América Latina”, en Novick, M. y Gallart, M., (eds.), Competitividad, redes productivas y
competencias laborales: ¿homogeneidad o segmentación?, Montevideo, Cinterfor/OIT/CIID/CENEP, pp.
15-48.
Novick, Marta, Miguel Lengyel and Marianele Sarabia (2009), De la protección laboral a la
vulnerabilidad social. Reformas neoliberales en la Argentina. Revista Internacional del Trabajo, 128
(3): 257-275.
Revue Interventions économiques, 49 | 2014
27
Types of capitalism in Latin America
Ocampo, J.A. (2011), “Macroeconomía para el desarrollo: políticas anti-cíclicas y transformación
productiva”, Revista CEPAL, 104, agosto, pp. 7-35.
Oficina Internacional del Trabajo (2008), “Evolución de los salarios en América Latina 1995-2006”,
Santiago, octubre, pp. 1-37.
Palma, José Gabriel (2005), “The seven main ‘stylized facts’ of the Mexican economy since trade
liberalization and NAFTA”, Industrial and Corporate Change, Volume 14, No. 6, pp. 941-991.
Palomino, Héctor and David Trajtemberg (2006), Una nueva dinámica de las relaciones laborales y
la negociación colectiva en la Argentina. Revista de Trabajo, 2(3): 47-68.
Palomino, Héctor (2000), Los sindicatos en la Argentina contemporánea. Nueva Sociedad, 169 (4):
121-134.
Puyana, Alicia and José Romero (2009), México. De la crisis de la deuda al estancamiento económico,
México: El Colegio de México.
Quenan, C. and S. Velut (ed) (2011), Les enjeux du développement en Amérique latine. Dynamiques
socioéconomiques et politiques publiques, Paris, Institut des Amériques- Agence Française de
Développement.
Rapoport, Mario and collaborators (2005), Historia económica, política y social de la Argentina.
Córdoba: Ediciones Macchi.
Riesco, M. (2009), El modelo social chileno comienza a cambiar. Revista Internacional del Trabajo,
128 (3): 311-330.
Rodrik, Dani (2010), The Return of Industrial Policy. Project Syndicate, 12 April (http://
www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/rodrik42/English).
Salama, P. (2010), “Forces et Faiblesses de l´Argentine, du Brésil et du Mexique”, en Hugon, P. y
Salama, P., (eds.), Les Suds dans la crise, Revue Tiers Monde, Hors Série, Paris : Armand Colin, pp.
99-125.
Salama, P. (2011), “«Mystère», «Surprise», «Reproche à la Théorie Economique», que penser de l
´évolution du partage du revenu dans les économies semi-industrialisées Latino-américaines?”,
Workshop on New Developmentalism and Structuralist Development Macroeconomics, August 15-16, São
Paulo, pp. 1-23.
Sallum Jr., Brasilio (2010), “El Brasil en la ‘pos-transición’: la institucionalización de una nueva
forma de Estado”. InBizberg, Ilán (Ed.), México en el espejo latinoamericano. Crisis o Democracia,
México: El Colegio de México-Fundación Konrad Adenauer.
Santana, Carlos H. V. (2011), “Conjuntura crítica, legados institucionais e comunidades
epistêmicas: limites e possibilidades de uma agenda de desenvolvimento no Brasil”, in Boschi, R.
(Ed), Variedades de Capitalismo, Política e desenvolvimento na América Latina), Belo Horizonte, MG:
Editora UFMG.
Schneider, Ben Ross and David Soskice (2009), Inequality in developed countries and Latin
America: coordinated, liberal and hierarchical systems. Economy and Society, 38 (1): 17-52.
Sikkink, K. A. (1988), Developmentalism and democracy: ideas, institutions and economic policy making
in Brazil and Argentina 1954-1962, PhD., Columbia University, N. Y.
Silva, Eduardo (2007), The Import Substitution Model: Chile in Comparative Perspective. Latin
American Perspectives, 34(3): 67-90.
Revue Interventions économiques, 49 | 2014
28
Types of capitalism in Latin America
Svampa, M., y Pereyra, S. (2004), “La experiencia piquetera: Dimensiones y desafíos de las
organizaciones de desocupados en Argentina”, Revista Soc. Bra. Economía Política, 15, diciembre,
pp. 88-110.
Théret, Bruno (2002), Protection Sociale et Fédéralisme. L’Europe dans le miroir de l’Amérique du Nord.
Montréal : Presse de l’Université de Montréal - Peter Lang.
Valencia Lomelí, E. (2008), « Las transferencias monetarias condicionadas como política social en
América latina. Un balance: Aportes, límites y debates », Annual review of Sociology, Volume 34.
Von Mettenheim, Kurt (2006), “From the economics of politics to the politics of monetary policy
in Brazil”, in Sola, Lourdes & Whitehead, Laurence (eds), Statecraftong Monetary Authority.
Democracy and Financial Order in Brazil, Oxford, Center for Brazilian Studies, University of Oxford,
pp. 325-358.
Wylde, Christopher (2010), “Argentina, Kirchnerismo, and Neodesarollismo: Argentine Political
Economy under the Administration of Nestor Kirchner 2003-2007”, Documento de Trabajo n°44,
Area de Relaciones Internacionales, FLACSO/Argentina, abril.
Zapata, Francisco (1992), “Transición democrática y sindicalismo en Chile”, en Foro Internacional
(México, El Colegio de México), vol. 32, núm. 5, pp. 703-721.
NOTES
1. This will define one of the principal differences between Mexico and Chile, the defensive
character of the integration of the second against the passive one of the first; although in fact
they are very similar in terms of orientation of the economy and socio-political configuration.
2. We are not able to include other relevant elements such as the educational and qualification
system nor the political system for lack of space.
3. This section of the article draws abundantly from Bizberg, Ilan and Bruno Théret, 2012.
4. While the Brazilian military had the same purpose of “depoliticizing” the State after the
intense union mobilizations that had characterized the Goulart presidency they had overthrown,
the unions were not as deeply entrenched in the Brazilian political system as were the peronistas
in Argentina or the trade unions in the Socialist Party of Chile. The political and repressive
measures they took were less radical, so were the economic ones. In addition, in Brazil the
military took over before the crisis of the 70’s, a moment where there was still no alternative
model to import substitution, or when it was still not so hegemonic as it became since the
eighties. The Brazilian military thus followed many of the structuralist economic policies that
had been in vogue in this country although they considerably reduced redistribution, and
especially took away the redistributive mechanisms from the unions. On the other hand, the
military, as well as the civilians before and after them, had a conception of their country as a
regional and international power that needed a strong economic basis, which meant selfsufficiency in heavy industry, machinery, and arms (Sallum, B. 2010). This led the Brazilian
military to deepen industrialization rather than to open the economy.
5. This is one of the main reasons why the government of Cristina Kirchner nationalized the oil
company in 2012.
6. In contrast, in Mexico the Seguro Popular is voluntary.
7. The intervention of the State in the case of Chile has lead to important discrepancies. Most
authors consider that the State is basically absent in this country, nevertheless I consider, with
other authors, Rodrik, 2010, Miotti, E.L., C. Quenan and E. Torija, 2012 and Boyer, 2009 that the
State has a stronger presence in Chile that is generally acknowledged.
Revue Interventions économiques, 49 | 2014
29
Types of capitalism in Latin America
ABSTRACTS
Although one could have certainly talked about Latin America as a whole during the time of ISI, it
This article
defends the idea that just as we find a variety of capitalisms in the developed
countries, according to the varieties of capitalism and the French regulation
schools, in Latin America we are also witnessing the development of different
types of capitalism. In at least three countries in this continent we have been able to see that
is nowadays impossible to find a unique model of development in this continent.
the economic structure and the socio-political conformation: the articulation to the world
economy, the role of the State,and the wage relation -rapport salarial- (comprising basically the
industrial relations system and the welfare regime) are complementary enough to be able to
point towards ideal types, although they may not yet be consolidated.
On pouvait parler de l’Amérique latine dans son ensemble à l’époque de l’ISI; il est aujourd’hui
impossible de trouver un modèle unique de développement sur ce continent. Les écoles des
variétés du capitalisme et de la régulation ont
montré qu’il existe une variété de capitalismes
dans les pays développés ; cet article défend l’idée que nous assistons en Amérique latine à
l’émergence de différents types de capitalisme. Dans au moins trois pays de ce continent nous
pouvons observer que les liens de complémentarité entre la structure économique et la
conformation socio-politique, l’insertion à l’économie mondiale, le rôle de l’Etat et le rapport
salarial (essentiellement le système de relations industrielles et le régime de protection sociale),
sont suffisamment forts pour pointer vers des idéaux-types, sans toutefois être totalement
consolidés.
Aunque sin duda se podría haber hablado de América Latina en su conjunto durante el tiempo de
la ISI, hoy en día es imposible encontrar un modelo único de desarrollo en este continente. Las
escuelas de las variedades de capitalismo y de regulación han demostrado que hay una gran
variedad de capitalismos en los países desarrollados, en este artículo se defiende la idea de que en
América Latina también estamos asistiendo al desarrollo de diferentes tipos de capitalismo. En
por lo menos tres países de este continente hemos podido ver que la estructura económica y la
conformación socio-política: la inserción en la economía mundial, el papel del Estado y la
relación salarial (rapport salarial) que comprende básicamente el sistema de relaciones
industriales y el régimen de bienestar son lo suficientemente complementarios como para
apuntar hacia tipos ideales a pesar de que todavía no se han consolidado.
INDEX
Keywords: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Economic Orientation, Latin America, Mexico, State, Unions,
Varieties of capitalism, Welfare State
Palabras claves: América Latina, Brasil, Estado, Estado de Bienestar, inserción internacional,
sindicatos, variedades de capitalismo
Mots-clés: Amérique latine, Argentine, Brésil, Chili, État-providence, insertion internationale,
l’État, Mexique, syndicats, variété du capitalisme
Revue Interventions économiques, 49 | 2014
30
Types of capitalism in Latin America
AUTHOR
ILAN BIZBERG
El Colegio de México. Associate Member of the CADIS/EHESS and associate professor of the
Internationales Graduiertenkolleg “Zwischen Räumen” of the Freie Universität Berlin.
Revue Interventions économiques, 49 | 2014
31