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Inequality in Latin America and the Quandary of Clientelism

Review products

Building Equality and Opportunity through Social Guarantees: New Approaches to Public Policy and the Realization of Rights. Edited by Gacitúa-MarióEstanislao, NortonAndrew, and GeorgievaSophia V.Washington, DC: World Bank, 2009. Pp. xxvi + 270. $30.00 paper. ISBN: 9780821378830.

The Legal Foundations of Inequality: Constitutionalism in the Americas, 1776-1860. By GargarellaRoberto. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Pp. 351. $85.00 cloth. ISBN: 9780521195027.

Indelible Inequalities in Latin America: Insights from History, Politics, and Culture. Edited by GootenbergPaul and ReygadasLuis. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010. Pp. xvi + 228. $22.95 paper. ISBN: 9780822347347.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 September 2022

Roberto Patricio Korzeniewicz*
Affiliation:
University of Maryland
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Abstract

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Type
Review Essays
Copyright
Copyright © 2012 by the Latin American Studies Association

References

1. An example of the latter view is David De Ferranti, Guillermo E. Perry, Francisco H. G. Ferreira, and Michael Walton, Inequality in Latin America: Breaking with History? (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2004).

2. For a useful analysis of some of the problems that have developed more recently in health-care reform in Chile, see Nuria Cunill Grau, María Margarita Fernández, and Marcos Vergara, “Gobernanza sistémica para un enfoque de derechos en salud: Un análisis a partir del caso chileno,” Salud Colectiva 7, no. 1 (2011): 21-33.

3. The case of Cuba illustrates better than others the skepticism with which subaltern groups can view public policies aimed at the poor and disadvantaged. It also reveals how the persistence of inequality is an ex post facto conclusion. For example, the racial inequality of Cuba in 1960 is not equivalent to the racial inequality of 2011; the latter is not a remnant, but a new ensemble of interactions that only through a certain lens can be classified as a continuity.