Broadened embedded autonomy and Latin America’s Pink Tide: towards the neo-developmental state

ABSTRACT

A central issue in the scholarly literature on the Latin American Pink Tide is the renewal of state-led development, or neo-developmentalism, and dependence on primary resources or the so-called resource curse. In this article, we consider the question of neo-developmentalism during the Pink Tide and state capacity, analyzing whether the three ‘radical’ Pink Tide governments in Ecuador, Venezuela, and Bolivia were able to achieve their respective neo-developmental political objectives. We employ a comparative approach building on the theory of ‘broadened embedded autonomy’ as conceptualized by Peter Evans. We argue that while reliance on resource extraction posed a challenge for the construction of state capacity for Pink Tide governments, national-level differences help explain why some governments were relatively more successful than others at inducing neo-developmentalism. A comparative approach focused on the politics of state-society thus provides a promising analytical framework for interpreting variations across cases.

KEYWORDS:

• Latin American politics
• developmental state
• embedded autonomy
• neo-extractravism
• state capacity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 In his comparative work on the developmental state, Evans identified South Korea as the case that most conformed to embedded autonomy which describes, on the one hand, a competent Weberian state as ‘autonomy' joined with ‘embeddedness' as non-clientelist linkages with actors in the private economy and society to enhance and support the development of industries or economic sectors. Evans (1995) developed the argument about developmental states as being characterized by embedded autonomy in relation to another ideal type, a ‘predatory state', but argued that most states actual states were ‘intermediate' cases between these two ideal types.

2 Infant industry is a nebulous description that includes a range of measures put in place by governments including subsidies to businesses, seed capital or funding for start-ups, protectionist policies like tariffs, public funding for research and development and programmes aimed at building the capacity of businesses. In Embedded Autonomy, Evans (1995, p. 13) describes two traditional roles that states play, referring to the legal and norm and demiurge roles that governments play in the development of economic activities or sectors: ‘midwifery', which involves governments actions to fund start-ups or encourage the creation of new economic sectors or activities and ‘husbandry' which involves supporting existing firms and industries at different points in the growth and expansion process. We recognize the gendered implications of these terms and we employ them without necessarily giving credence to the one-dimensional male-female partnership that they imply.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Patrick Clark

Patrick Clark completed a PhD in Political Economy from Carleton University in 2019 and is currently a sessional assistant professor in the Business and Society program in the department of social science at York University in Toronto, Canada.

Antulio Rosales

Antulio Rosales completed a PhD in Global Governance in 2017 from the Balsillie School of International Affairs, University of Waterloo. He is currently an assistant professor in political science at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton, Canada.