Resumo

SUNKEL, Osvaldo. La precaria sostenibilidad de la democracia en Latinoamérica. CDC [online]. 2008, vol.25, n.68, pp.3-29. ISSN 1012-2508.

The escalation of globalization and the adoption of neoliberal policies in the 1980´s led to a radical socioeconomic reorganization as L.A. countries moved from the state-led to the market-led development model. Simultaneously, democratic regimes emerged in most of them. Both trends were supposed to reinforce each other. Two decades later, this assumption has to be seriously questioned. Slow and unstable economic growth, the persistence or worsening of poverty, inequality and under- and unemployment, sociocultural polarization and frustration, transnational integration of the elites and national disintegration of the middle and working classes, political instability and governance crises, plus the corruption and weaknesses of the political systems, suggest that, in the Latin American context, neoliberalism is undermining democracy.

Palavras-chave : Democracy; State-led development; Neoliberalism; Neostructuralism; Development from within.