Politics obviously involves much more than winning elections and launching military coups. Players also want to influence people who manage the economy, administer justice, educate citizens, provide social services, and protect the nation against foreign adversaries. Seldom, however, does everyone agree on how all of these tasks should be done. Commonly, entrenched elites contest with the middle and lower classes over how wealth should be distributed and justice delivered, and persons who represent agriculture, industry, commerce, and labor frequently disagree with one another on how to achieve economic development.

There are many kinds of public policy worthy of study, but limited space prohibits our looking at all of them. Consequently, we will confine ourselves primarily to policies designed to affect economic development and social welfare. Few things stir more controversy or are more important to the well-being of citizens than the ways that wealth is created and distributed. This is what much of the political contest in Latin America is about today, so in limiting ourselves to economic and social policy we need not worry about missing the most important political conflicts being fought in the region.

Economic underdevelopment

Latin America's economic and social maladies are no secret. Poverty is immense in most nations despite substantial economic development throughout the region during the past half century. Evidence of modernity is not hard to find anymore, but only a few blocks from the skyscrapers, modern hotels, and enormous factories sits some of the world's worst squalor. Poverty as well as affluence are basic features of Latin American life and will remain so well into the future.