Guardians of the Nation?

Reviews / Votes

"Biglaiser seeks to fill a gap in the development of literature by identifying the larger historical processes underlying policy choices under military regimes." ". . . an excellent addition to the publications of the Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame." "Glen Biglaiser has written an interesting book comparing the performance of the countries of the Southern Cone of South America-Chile, Argentina and Uruguay-under military and civilian governments from the 1960s to the 1980s. Examples from Brazil, Peru, Colombia and Mexico are also used in the book to make some comparisons . . . . This book is the product of serious research, and well worth reading, especially for those interested in the economic performance of Latin America." ". . . this is a remarkable book, one that combines throughout meticulous treatment of case studies with overarching theoretical projections." ". . . readers of Guardians . . . will learn much about the politics of military regimes and the institutional differences of Chile's, Argentina's, and Uruguay's armed forces."

"Biglaiser . . . is to be applauded for offering a dynamic analysis that charts with considerable care subtle shifts in policy measures, even in those cases where others tended to see greater continuity. Guardians of the Nation? will command the attention of students of political economy, the institutionality of economic policy-making, and the 'professionalization' of economics in Latin America. Social scientists, in general, will welcome a systematic study of the impact of ideas and ideologies on the stance of the state." "Guardians of the Nation? is a particularly important contribution to comparative politics because it forms a well-constructed theory that helps explain policy choice. By recounting the story of economists and their development in Latin America, Biglaiser provides a unique and previously unexplored explanation to the debate over policy outcomes with respect to the adoption of neoliberal economic measures."

"[Biglaiser's] analysis is instructive and original and does what the best books in comparative politics should do: it opens up new lines of inquiry that can be applied in a wide variety of countries. Guardians of the Nation should be widely read." "Biglaiser's work is . . . a serious attempt to understand the politics of economic reform . . . from the perspective of the military governments of the Southern Cone that ruled in the 1970s and early 1980s. The greatest strength of the work as a whole is... its careful documentation of the growing but varying influence of neoliberal economists in the various governments considered."