Abstract

While it is true, as Paul Craig Roberts and Karen Lafollete maintain in The Capitalist Revolution in Latin America, that Latin America has begun to break away from its statist tradition, the basic culture of mercantilism, corporatism, and interventionism remains, underpinned by the positivist tradition that has made public policy and legislation a substitute for the rule of law, as reflected in a schema of essential rights. The confusion between a private‐enterprise economy and a free economy is at the heart of the failure of Latin America to create a truly competitive, privilege‐free, and institutionally adequate economic environment, while the divorce of market economics from the rule of law has led to an authoritarianism that has undermined the transition from a state‐led to a private‐enterprise economy.