1. Sebastian Edwards, Left Behind: Latin America and the False Promise of Populism.
2. Matthew Bishop and Michael Green, The Road from Ruin: How to Revive Capitalism and Put America Back on Top.
3. Daniel R. Headrick, Power over Peoples: Technology, Environments, and Western Imperialism, 1400 to the Present.
4. David S. Landes, Joel Mokyr, and William J. Baumol, editors, The Invention of Enterprise: Entrepreneurship from Ancient Mesopotamia to Modern Times.
Tyler, this comment is not about S. Edwards’ book. I assume that today he must be very happy: in his Chile, the new president Sebastián Piñera (Ph.D. Economics, Harvard) has announced his cabinet, the most qualified cabinet in the history of Latin America. No room for any type of populism in the new government.
The question is then what policies are feasible in Chile. Will the new government be able to stop the decline into crony capitalism? I think at least this can be achieved but that’s not enough to deliver Piñera’s promise of high growth and low unemployment. To deliver it there must be a radical change in the attitude toward entrepreneurship because at least one third of voters still believe that redistribution is essential to the country’s welfare–most will reject socialist policies a la Chavez but are in favor of major redistribution programs.
You may want to know about the qualification of the new cabinet of 22 secretaries. There are 6 economists with graduate studies in the best US universities: Felipe LarraÃn will the secretary of the Treasury (Felipe is well known as the co-author with J. Sachs of a macro textbook and also got his Ph.D. from Harvard), two a Ph.D. from Minnesota and three a Master from Chicago. There is only one laywer but with training in law and econ in Harvard. A few others have degrees in public policy or MBA, and most of the others are engineers, all with graduate studies abroad. Most have been related as students, professors, and deans with Universidad Católica. Thus, Sebastián Edwards knows well the six economists (they studied there in the 1970s and were my students and/or assistants). Most have already long, successful careers in private enterprises and close relations with important NGOs. Quite a cabinet.
The book by Sebastian Edwards could be a humdinger. The others look interesting too.
E. Barandiaran,
Excellent news and congratulations. The announcement of a new *technocratic* cabinet apparently intent on promoting markets, rule of law, and more effective administration and political representation is always an exciting moment in Latin America (the more so if among them you find your own students). Because of Chile’s strong institutions, this one may be more likely to succeed than its predecessors in the region. And it seems on the face of it to be a government of fitting status for the OECD.
In fact the line up of faces is reassuring:
http://www.emol.com/especiales/2010/nacional/gobierno_de_pinera/gabinete.htm
One lovely touch (irony?) — the Minister of Planning is a coordinator at Hernando de Soto’s Institute of Liberty and Democracy.
I haven’t checked my facts yet, but your claim that it is “the most qualified cabinet in the history of Latin America† could be up for dispute. If I’m not mistaken Patricio Aylwin’s cabinet immediately following Pinochet was also well qualified (18 out of 23 ministers had PhDs if my memory does not fail me?). And I vividly remember The Economist writing that Mexico’s government under Carlos Salinas (in the six years prior to the 1994 crisis) was the most economically-literate that has ever existed in the world because of all the economics PhDs among its ministers. Still, depends how you define ‘qualified’.
Exemplary highly-educated technocrats in Latin America during the 1980s and 90s innovated a new development paradigm for the rest of the world. It was not inevitable that they should have failed to meet expectations.
So it would be good to have Chile confidently leading the way again to restore credibility to that paradigm. Let’s not forget that Chile was the global pioneer of neoliberalism. Now’s the time to revisit those famous 2nd and 3rd stage neoliberal institutional reforms that — for a variety of well documented and easily understood reasons — were never quite started or completed in most countries!
joan,
Most observers (practically all outside of Weekly Standard subscribers) already consider the larger fraction of time spent under right-wing autocrats as a guaranteed promise of misery. That only enhances the importance of examining leftist populism and its claims of economic & political salvation.
Thanks for putting up the Headrick book. I met him 10 years ago at a Pasadena conference of the Society for the History of Technology. Out of 30 presentations, his is the one I remember most clearly. He was pushing back the boundaries on the emergence of IT then, looking into the emergence of indexing, alphabetization – he took technology beyond artifacts to the ways in which we organize our thinking about the world. I expect his book will be entertaining and thought-provoking.
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