Academic literature on the topic 'Corporate state – latin america – congresses'

This chapter introduces the theory of embedded corporatism to explain U.S. drug enforcement. It argues that drug enforcement is an international regime where the interests and power of American corporations are embedded in drug prohibition. The regime also includes corporate-funded think tanks, some members of Congress, civil society groups, and foreign governments. The power of American corporations within the regime facilitates domestic and international consensus around drug prohibition as a mechanism for corporate expansion and capital accumulation. The chapter demonstrates that democracies in Latin America have a higher level of human rights repression than countries in the developing world that are not democracies. Although GDP per-capita in the region is higher than other developing regions, income inequality in Latin America is significantly higher than the rest of the developing world. And while the United States is the supposed leader of the free world and the richest, its rates of incarceration are greater than those found in autocracies, and its level of income inequality is significantly higher than other rich OECD countries. It is argued that the paradox of human rights and democratization in the Americas along with widening class cleavages are the by-products of the embedded corporatist drug enforcement regime.

To test the theoretical components of the argument presented in chapter 5, this chapter develops an empirical model of how U.S. transnational corporations and paramilitary death squads mediate the U.S.-sponsored drug war’s effect on human rights repression in Latin America. In outlining this empirical model, this chapter is organized as follows: It first juxtapose the theoretical arguments of dependency and neoclassical liberal theories regarding the human rights effects of transnational capital by highlighting the theoretical and empirical limitations of neoclassical liberal claims. This is followed by a discussion of the empirical model, which draws on the extant human rights literature to identify important control variables that are important predictors of state repression. It then discusses important theoretical modifications that are incorporated into the overall empirical model. This is followed by a discussion of the limitations of the indicators used to measure the model’s mediating variables. structural equation modeling is used to analyze cross-national data for thirty-one countries from the Latin American region covering the period 1980 to 2012. All the components of the theoretical argument found strong statistical support.

Abstract This chapter presents a comparative analysis of the Brazil and Chile case studies, arguing for recognition of the significance of state ownership in understanding fundamental debates in the political economy that seek to address both critical real-world and normative questions: the relation between state capitalism and economic development, the role of state ownership in institutional capacity building and industrial policy expansion in the 21st century, and the political conditions necessary to maintain efficient, productive, and politically autonomous SOEs. It situates state ownership in a larger framework of reference by examining the challenges in pursuing SOE-based growth strategies in the rest of Latin America. The chapter explores and evaluates two other responses to economic globalization in the region: (1) Venezuela’s state ownership at the expense of the corporate autonomy of its NOC PDVSA in pursuing industrialization and the creation of alternative export industries; and (2) Peru’s full embrace of neoliberalism without any kind of state ownership, where the possibilities for structural transformation may have been closed due to the limited presence of industrial capabilities and overwhelming power of extractivist interests. In both cases, the balance between the pursuit of state activism and autonomy of SOEs had been difficult to achieve.

This chapter is motivated by the following questions: Why do American policymakers continue to increase funding for a drug war that has failed to realize its objectives, and why do they consistently give greater priority to reducing the supply of illicit narcotics from foreign countries than reducing demand in the United States? In answering these questions, the chapter draws on theories of the state to highlight the role that corporate capital play in shaping the federal government’s budgetary allocations for drug enforcement. Congressional deliberations of Plan Colombia and the Mérida Initiative with Mexico serve as case studies to test pluralist, radical and elite theories of U.S. drug enforcement policy making. Radical and elite theories consistently explained the ways in which corporate power shaped the drug supply reduction strategies of Plan Colombia and the Mérida Initiative. Both theories also explain how these strategies justifies the provision of large government contracts to corporate members of the regime, how drug enforcement foreign aid is used to provide security for American oil companies that operate in Latin America, and how that aid is also used to market the defense industry’s military hardware to countries in the region to prosecute the drug war.

Understanding the factors related to destructive ecological processes in the tropics has expanded significantly in the last decade. Much has been learned about heterogeneity in geomorphology, soils, hydrology, and climate and about associated vulnerability to ecological damage. Research on cropping systems has divulged both the suitability and the liability in swidden agricultural practices and has led to recommendations involving alternative cropping and agroforestry complexes (Altieri 1987). At the same time, there has been a growing awareness that a more comprehensive knowledge of tropical ecology and enlarged technological and/or agricultural options will not necessarily affect a sustainable ecology (Altieri and Hecht 1990; Redclift 1984, 1987). Research on peasant economies in Latin America and elsewhere has demonstrated the existence of a highly differentiated peasantry, the vast majority of whom are landless or land-poor and who are more dependent on income earned from off-farm than from on-farm sources (Collins 1986; Deere and Wasserstrom 1981; Stonich 1991b). Such studies have demonstrated that systemic interconnections among family and corporate farmers with landholdings of all sizes promote environmental destruction (Stonich 1989); have established the existence of labor scarcity rather than labor surpluses in many peasant communities and the related environmental consequences (Brush 1977,1987; Collins 1987,1988; Posner and MacPherson 1982; Stonich 1993); and have called for rural and agricultural development policy that takes into account a socially differentiated peasantry and diversified rural poverty (de Janvry and Sadoulet 1989). It is increasingly evident that ecological destruction cannot be fathomed apart from the demographic, institutional, and social factors that influence the agricultural practices and other natural resource management decisions of agricultural producers. This paper describes a multidisciplinary methodology designed to examine the interactions among demographic trends, social processes, agricultural production decisions, and ecological decline in southern Honduras, a region characterized by widespread and worsening human impoverishment and environmental degradation. The methodology integrated the research efforts and databases compiled by anthropologists from the University of Kentucky using a farming systems approach, who were part of the socioeconomic component of the International Sorghum Millet Project (INTSORMIL) with potentially complementary research conducted by the natural and agricultural scientists working as part of the Comprehensive Resource Inventory and Evaluation System Project (CRIES) at Michigan State University.

Wooden construction has been present since the beginning of humanity, but today, faced with the effects of climate change and sustainability discourses, the use of wood as a construction material is presented as a sustainable option. In this sense, in the Latin American region, Chile is one of the most advanced countries in this matter, however, in comparative terms with Europe and North America, wood construction is still in its infancy. The development of wooden construction has been driven mainly by the two main forestry companies in Chile (ARAUCO and CMPC), who have implemented several ini

This paper compares growth conditions in China and Latin America to assess fears that China will displace Latin America in the coming decades. China's strengths include the size of the economy, macroeconomic stability, abundant low-cost labor, the rapid expansion of physical infrastructure, and the ability to innovate. China's weaknesses, stemming from insufficient separation between market and state, include poor corporate governance, a fragile financial system and misallocation of savings. Both regions share important weaknesses: the rule of law is weak, corruption endemic, and education is