Competing Visions of Democracy and Development in the Era of Neoliberalism in Mexico and Chile

This article takes as its starting point the current scholarly concern with democratic quality, poverty, and inequality. It notes the tendency of political leaderships at the federal level in Mexico and Chile to exclude political pressures that contravene their neoliberal imperatives. It develops this argument with specific reference to the contestation over conditional cash transfer programs. Research reveals the existence of two competing visions of democracy and development at the root of this conflict. The neoliberal perspective is supported by political-technocratic leaders who developed these programs, while the community development perspective is found among their civil society critics. The community development perspective challenges the key tenets of the neoliberal viewpoint, making its exclusion from policy development and monitoring understandable. However, this exclusion may give rise to increased criticism of the responsiveness of democratic institutions and to less than efficacious policy outcomes.