Author: Kurtz, Marcus J.
Title: Free Market Democracy and the Chilean and Mexican Countryside
Description: Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, (2005). Reprint. orig.boards. 24x15cm, ix,253 pp.. Minor rubbing. VG. ¶ This book examines the relationship between free markets and democracy. It demonstrates how the implementation of even very painful free-market economic reforms in Chile and Mexico have helped to consolidate democratic politics without engendering a backlash against either reform or democratization. This national-level compatibility between free markets and democracy, however, is founded on their rural incompatibility. In the countryside, free-market reforms socially isolate peasants to such a degree that they become unable to organize independently, and are vulnerable to the pressures of local economic elites. This helps to create an electoral coalition behind free-market reforms that is critically based in some of the market's biggest victims: the peasantry. The book concludes that the comparatively stable free-market democracy in Latin America hinges critically on its defects in the countryside; conservative, free- market elites may consent to open politics only if they have a rural electoral redoubt" - publisher's description.

Keywords: Comparative Politics, Political History, Latin America, Chile, Mexico, Rural Democracy, Neoliberal Reforms, ,