Rethinking Economic Alternatives: Left Parties and the Articulation of Popular Demands in Chile and Peru

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Abstract
How have left parties responded to the challenges of neo‐liberalism, the debt crisis, and the decline of socialist models, and how have they adapted their economic projects? In Peru, the left went from serious national contender in the 1980s to political also‐ran in the 1990s under Fujimori's neo‐liberal reforms, while the Chilean left was able to return to power in the 1990s with a moderate economic programme following Pinochet's authoritarian neo‐liberal transformation of that country. This comparative examination of left parties’ responses in Chile and Peru argues that structural changes in capitalism have helped consolidate social democratic reformism on the left even as two structural constraints undermine the possibilities for redistributive social democratic reforms: namely, (1) the internationalization of economic competition and capital markets, and (2) the structural weakness of labour and social fragmentation of civil society.

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