This book evaluates the record of the Left in Brazil and Venezuela, two key cases of the “pink tide” wave. The wave of Left governments that emerged across Latin America in the early 2000s – a process dubbed the “pink tide” – has been on the wane in recent years. The Left regimes that, at one point, seemed unbeatable have either been defeated at the ballot, ousted through coups or have had to contend with increasing economic and political conflicts which have nullified many of their achievements. This book argues – like many voices on the Left today – that the waning of the “pink tide” in the region must be viewed in the context of the Left’s inability to initiate radical structural changes in its constituencies. At the same time, however, the book makes the case for a more nuanced and balanced evaluation of the development record of the Left than is often done. In doing so, it seeks to go beyond the reform–revolution binary that has blinkered recent assessments and intends to highlight alternative paths that the Left could have taken.

This book turns to the intellectual discourses that have emerged from India and Latin America, two outposts of the Global South, on the themes of imperialism, sovereignty, development, and socio-economic, racial and caste inequalities. It recovers the elided reflective traditions of thinkers, writers and activists from these peripheries and highlights the distinctive ideas, alliances and parallelisms in their works, as well as the manner in which they articulate liberatory paradigms which continue to have contemporary relevance. The book maps the innovative epistemic engagements of thinkers from India and Latin America, highlighting the manner in which they have disrupted and challenged the hierarchies of global knowledge production. It argues that political, spatial and historical distinctions notwithstanding, the experiences of peripheralization, their common traditions of resistance to oppression and their deeply entangled histories have forged a shared intellectual identity and a rich alternative set of emancipatory epistemologies grounded in the realities and histories of Southern nations. The book recovers this body of work as mass movements the world over seek civilizational alternatives to capitalist modernity. The book will be of interest to students and researchers of development studies, history, political science, sociology, political economy, South Asian studies, Latin American studies and Global South studies.

Over the last two decades, military and authoritarian regimes in Latin America have receded as indigenous social movements and popular protests have demanded and won peaceful transitions to democratically-elected governments. Across the entire Southern hemisphere, democracy arose with a radical flourish, bringing dramatic changes in politics, education, civil society, and the media. Historically, revolution in Latin America has been depicted as civil war, violent conflict, and armed resistance, but recent social change has resulted from the political power of mass social movements reflected in elections and government policy change rather than guerrilla insurgencies. The Pink Tide investigates the relationship between media access and democracy, arguing that citizen participation in broadcasting is a primary indicator of the changed social relations of power in each country. Democracy has meaning only to the extent that citizens participate in discussion and decisions. This book demonstrates that participation in public communication is a prime ingredient in democratic action and citizen self-organization, a vital means for constructing new cultural practices and social norms.

Latin American states took dramatic steps toward greater inclusion during the late twentieth and early twenty-first Centuries. Bringing together an accomplished group of scholars, this volume examines this shift by introducing three dimensions of inclusion: official recognition of historically excluded groups, access to policymaking, and resource redistribution. Tracing the movement along these dimensions since the 1990s, the editors argue that the endurance of democratic politics, combined with longstanding social inequalities, create the impetus for inclusionary reforms. Diverse chapters explore how factors such as the role of partisanship and electoral clientelism, constitutional design, state capacity, social protest, populism, commodity rents, international diffusion, and historical legacies encouraged or inhibited inclusionary reform during the late 1990s and early 2000s. Featuring original empirical evidence and a strong theoretical framework, the book considers cross-national variation, delves into the surprising paradoxes of inclusion, and identifies the obstacles hindering further fundamental change.

The contributors to Beyond Civil Society argue that the conventional distinction between civic and uncivic protest, and between activism in institutions and in the streets, does not accurately describe the complex interactions of forms and locations of activism characteristic of twenty-first-century Latin America. They show that most contemporary political activism in the region relies upon both confrontational collective action and civic participation at different moments. Operating within fluid, dynamic, and heterogeneous fields of contestation, activists have not been contained by governments or conventional political categories, but rather have overflowed their boundaries, opening new democratic spaces or extending existing ones in the process. These essays offer fresh insight into how the politics of activism, participation, and protest are manifest in Latin America today while providing a new conceptual language and an interpretive framework for examining issues that are critical for the future of the region and beyond. Contributors. Sonia E. Alvarez, Kiran Asher, Leonardo Avritzer, Gianpaolo Baiocchi, Andrea Cornwall, Graciela DiMarco, Arturo Escobar, Raphael Hoetmer, Benjamin Junge, Luis E. Lander, Agustín Laó-Montes, Margarita López Maya, José Antonio Lucero, Graciela Monteagudo, Amalia Pallares, Jeffrey W. Rubin, Ana Claudia Teixeira, Millie Thayer

Challenges the mainstream understanding of BRICS and US dominance to situate the new global rivalries engulfing capitalism BRICS is a grouping of the five major emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Volume five in the Democratic Marxism series, BRICS and the New American Imperialism challenges the mainstream understanding of BRICS and US dominance to situate the new global rivalries engulfing capitalism. It offers novel analyses of BRICS in the context of increasing US induced imperial chaos, deepening environmental crisis tendencies (such as climate change and water scarcity), contradictory dynamics inside BRICS countries and growing subaltern resistance. The authors revisit contemporary thinking on imperialism and anti-imperialism, drawing on the work of Rosa Luxemburg, one of the leading theorists after Marx, who attempted to understand the expansionary nature of capitalism from the heartlands to the peripheries. The richness of Luxemburg’s pioneering work inspires most of the volume’s contributors in their analyses of the dangerous contradictions of the contemporary world as well as forms of democratic agency advancing resistance. While various forms of resistance are highlighted, among them water protests, mass worker strikes, anti-corporate campaigning and forms of cultural critique, this volume grapples with the challenge of renewing anti-imperialism beyond the NGO-driven World Social Forum and considers the prospects of a new horizontal political vessel to build global convergence. It also explores the prospects of a Fifth International of Peoples and Workers.

The book examines the 'Pink Tide' of leftist governments in Latin America struggling against neoliberal hegemony from a critical International Political Economy perspective. Focusing particularly on Venezuela and Brazil, it evaluates the transformative and emancipatory potentials of their political projects domestically, regionally and globally.

Schweizer, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, discusses the state of government and the depths of its political corruption.

This book studies the experiences of Brazil and India, the major economic powerhouses of the 21st century, during the neoliberal era. Both the nations have become important players in global markets and their economic performance has captured the attention of policymakers and academicians across the world. The book explores the patterns of growth and the changing status of human development in the two regions, since the 1980s. In an attempt to better grasp the subtleties of their developmental experiences, it also highlights the political and institutional dynamics that have under girded the liberalization of the two countries.

The collection brings together experts in the field of twentieth-century writing to provide a volume that is both comprehensive and innovative in its discussion of a set of newly canonical texts. The book includes new applications of philosophical and critical thinking to established texts.