If export orientation is a goal in a sustainable development strategy, this study argues that public interventions at the sectoral level in a variety of markets can produce economic reorientation that pursues international comparative advantage faster and at lower cost than free market forces can. Pervasive failures in information, credit, input, distribution, and insurance markets can render strictly market-based adjustment both slow and costly. Although Chile's export boom and high growth rates have been associated with its free market economic policies, this article, based on a comparison of the fruit, fish, and forestry sectors, contends that new forms of public intervention were crucial catalysts in shaping a sustained export response.

Colombia and Peru made significant progress in reducing the institutional prerogatives of their respective militaries in the 1990s and 2000s while reforming their economies in a neoliberal direction. They accomplished this despite internal armed threats to state authority and stability. The end of the Cold War, U.S. promotion of “market democracies,” and the international centrality of free markets and formal democratic governance coincided with the rise to power in Peru and Colombia of “neoliberal policy coalitions.” The internal insurgency mitigated the emergence of antiglobalization or antidemocratic reform factions in the military and civil society. The armed forces unified behind their counterinsurgency mission, and opposition in civil society was weakened, creating greater space for neoliberal elites to reform their economies and reduce military prerogatives.

Grassroots environmental activism among Latin America's poor has altered the debate over environmental policy, social welfare, and citizenship. Yet the question remains whether this social mobilization of the poor is part of a larger trend toward broader environmental concerns and democratic political participation, or a shortlived movement susceptible to the same pressures that have dissolved community mobilization in the past. This article compares Brazil with other Latin American and European countries in surveys of environmental awareness, concerns, and reported behavior. It finds that Brazilians residing in the urban periphery link their own local environmental concerns to more global considerations, and that concern for and activism on environmental issues is positively related to wider community involvement.

This study explains the erosion of conservative rule and the rise of leftist opposition at the subnational level in the Northeast of Brazil in recent electoral cycles. Compared with explanations based on economic modernization, social spending, and fiscal reform, the data best support the hypothesis that the organizational and spatial dimensions of leftist mobilization in these states have shifted to the detriment of conservative machines. Specifically, urban mobilization of leftist supporters has determined the electoral success of these oppositions. The study also explains where conservatives maintain a floor of support based on the continuation of clientele networks.