Distributional coalitions and the politics of economic reform in Latin America

In the recent: Latin American experience, however, these reforms have preserved market reserves for firms that provided vital political support to, and often colluded with, policymaking elites. This setting has thus reproduced incentives for rent-seeking behavior, even in the presence of comprehensive liberalization. This evidence supports two interrelated theoretical claims. First, distributional coalitions may proliferate when the state withdraws from the economy, not only when it intervenes. Second, interest-based variables retain explanatory power in political economy-which state autonomy arguments disregard-irrespective of whether the economy is closed or open-which neoclassical perspectives overlook To highlight the centrality of interest groups favoring marketization, therefore, the article suggests modifications to the dominant theories of collective action and the literature on the politics of economic adjustment.