The central thesis of this book is that the rural sector plays a critical role in the construction of free market democracy because of the electoral base it can provide for neoliberal elites and their partisan representatives during periods of painful retrenchment. Otherwise, these actors might be compelled to impede or reverse democratization in the effort to defend their material interests from the redistributive policies of popularly elected leaders. We saw in the Chilean case that the creation of a conservative peasant base was possible because of the social atomization, dependence, and interest fragmentation unleashed during the consolidation of free market agriculture under military auspices. But this also begs an important question: could liberalization have been implemented there without the extended and heavy-handed authoritarianism of the Pinochet dictatorship?

Alternatively, was free market democracy consolidated in Chile precisely because the painful economic transformations were undertaken in the most unfree of contexts? For an answer, I turn to the Mexican experience with comparatively simultaneous economic and political liberalization. Examining the dynamics of this case of conjoint democratization and economic reform is critical on both empirical and normative grounds. Free market reforms are under way across the South American continent, but their implementation has as often as not been accompanied by the recourse to undemocratic practices justified because of their ability to circumvent “political” opposition to “essential” economic changes.