Latin America in the global Political economy: association, adaptation and resistance.

• Author: Levaggi, Ariel Gonzalez
• Position: Book review

States, Banks and Crisis: Emerging Finance Capitalism in Mexico and Turkey

By Thomas Marois

Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd., 2012, 288 pages, 80.00 [pounds sterling], ISBN: 9780857938572.

Counter-globalization and Socialism in the 21st Century: The Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America

Edited By Thomas Muhr

New York: Routledge, 2013, 250 pages, 90.00 [pounds sterling], ISBN: 9780415669078.

The Political Economy of Space in the Americas: The New Pax Americana

By Alejandra Roncallo

New York: Routledge, 2014, 212 pages, 90.00 [pounds sterling], ISBN: 9780415671545.

During the last several years, Latin America has been presented as a complex and enduring interaction between social forces and anti-hegemonic attempts from particular nation-states to resist the expansion of the market-based global political economy. The emergence of the New-Left, the increasing role of social movements, and the development of a new strategic regionalism as exemplified by the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), have all played a key role in supporting a counter-hegemonic vision of Latin America. These factors has pushed for a post-neoliberal path grounded on a new role of the state not only as market regulator, but also as a social and economic actor, thus limiting the scope of the transnational companies -including those who are close to the U.S. interests-, opening new spaces for national businessmen and, empowering actors from popular and minority strata.

However, the region's leftist or "populist" general tendency since the 2000s does not represent the overall developmental models and regional institutions of Latin America in the context of the global political economy. On the contrary, during the few last years, Latin-American countries have faced the forces of economic global interdependence in three ways: association, adaptation, and resistance. Three recent, important studies elucidate how the region has evolved from the developmental to the post-neoliberal age, explaining the interplay of local, national, regional and global dynamics from a critical and radical perspective. (1) Nonetheless, these texts capture an incomplete and partial narrative about Latin America, which describe a polarization between neoliberal and leftist's stances, leaving small room for middle ground interpretations.

Inspired by a Marxian comparative approach and implementing an "incorporated comparison research strategy" Thomas Marois focuses on the concept of emerging finance capitalism to compare two peripheral cases in the world economy: Mexico and Turkey. In general terms, the transition to neoliberalism and the reforms of the 1990s culminated in a new phase called emerging finance capitalism. This stage represents a new form of state-society relationship specific to peripheral capitalism, which is defined by a fusion of the interests of domestic and foreign financial capital in the state apparatus to the detriment of labor. (2) Central to his work is the role of financial capital in shaping the relations between finance, the state, and capitalist development. The author detects a series of commonalities between Mexico and Turkey, such as the historical path the countries have taken in regard to social relations and the role of the state, and in their neoliberal strategies of development. He argues that the countries' peripheral place in the global political economy makes them examples of subordinate nations within the international hierarchy of states. His arguments are explained on the trajectory of the bank sector in the broader context of the social relations between the state, private business, and foreign investors. Contrary to the neoliberal literature, the emerging finance capitalism requires strong state capabilities to make strategic interventions in times of crisis by socializing the financial risks, as well as making constant interventions on behalf of financial capital, such as beneficial regulations or conduct privatizations. (3)

Counter-globalization and Socialism in the 21st Century is a book edited by Thomas Muhr about the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America-Peoples' Trade Treaty (ALBA-TCP), one of the most relevant expressions of counter-hegemonic resistance in the region. The main aim of the work is to show an example of resistance against global capitalism and the building of a new socialism, taking Latin America as exemplary of collective, dialectic, multidimensional, pluriscalar processes driven by governments...