Pragmatism vs. Shock Therapy

Paper Summary:

This paper explores the major differences between the economic outlook of the regimes of both Chile and Argentina during a ten-year period. Both countries were similar in that they were emerging from limited marketplaces, but had great ambitions of mirroring the free markets like those of the United States, Britain, and Japan. The writer argues that the Chilean approach was more successful in this endeavor because its approach was based on slow transformation, or pragmatism, as opposed to the Argentinean approach, which emphasized "shock therapy.?"

From the Paper:

"The 1980s were most significantly marked by the rulership of General Augusto Pinochet (Collier and Sater 359). After taking power during the country's political breakdown of 1973, Pinochet asserted himself as the military dictator of the country (Collier and Sater 359). He closed the democratically elected Congress, and eliminated opposing political parties, especially targeting the far leftist ones. The military dictatorship of Pinochet was very ignorant in terms of economics and market regulation. When he consolidated power, Pinochet's country was already in great economic turmoil (Collier and Sater 364). He looked to capitalist minded thinkers in the country for help. Sergio de Castro, the dean of social sciences at the Catholic University in Santiago, was placed in charge of economic policy. He, in turn, recruited other "neo-liberal" economic thinkers for his cabinet. They became known as the "Chicago Boys," and soon started making plans for stimulating the markets and stabilizing the dislocated Chilean economy."

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