Whither reform? Towards a new agenda for Latin America

Includes bibliography

The article outlines a new agenda for reform that focuses on what Latin American countries can do given the current international regime, and identifies the failings of the earlier reform agenda: i); the reforms increased countries' exposure to risk without increasing their capacity to cope with it; ii); the macroeconomic reforms were unbalanced; iii); the reforms pushed privatization and measures for strengthening the private sector, but placed too little weight on improving the public sector. The article further argues in favour of formulating a set of economic policies that reflect a better balance between market and government, shifting the focus away from an overemphasis on inflation and towards job creation, away from privatizing existing enterprises and towards creating new ones, and away from a belief in trickle-down economics and towards poverty reduction, thereby reforming the economic agenda within the broader context of the transformation of society.