Latin American Politics: Latin America's Left Turn

Catalog description

This course examines Latin America's ongoing "Left Turn," a process that has brought left and center-left governments to national office in over a dozen countries throughout the region between 1998 and today. The course will examine the following questions: What is "the Left"? How has the meaning of this term shifted historically and how does it differ in different countries? How does the contemporary or "new" Left compare to the "old" Left in Latin America? Why did the Left Turn happen? In what ways are the policies implemented by leftist governments in Latin America similar to and/or different from policies implemented by centrist and conservative governments of the past, and particularly the neoliberal era of the 1980s and 1990s? What are the similarities and differences within the multiple paths that the Left Turn has taken? How can we make sense of variation within the Left Turn? What effect has the Left Turn had in terms of economic policy, social policy, democracy, politics, socioeconomic indicators (such as poverty, literacy, economic growth), gender, race and ethnicity, foreign policy and more?