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Peru's APRA Party in Power: Impossible Revolution, Relinquished Reform*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Carol Graham
Carol Graham*
Affiliation:
Brookings Institution and Adjunct Professor in the Department of Government, Georgetown University
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Extract

Nowhere on the crisis-ridden latin continent were hopes raised as high as they were in Peru with the 1985 election of Alan Garcia. Nowhere were hopes dashed as dramatically by the onset of an economic, social, and political crisis of unprecedented severity. There is no single explanation for the dismal performance of the APRA government. Indeed, the APRA's performance in power was in keeping with Peru's age-old paradox: an extremely poor record of social reform despite the longterm presence of a strong reformist party. This raises the question of why reform is so difficult to implement in Peru, and why APRA, in particular, proved so inept once in power. While external conditions were largely responsible for Peru's decade-long economic crisis, yet they were far less important than domestic political factors in explaining the APRA's disastrous performance.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs , Volume 32 , Issue 3 , Fall 1990 , pp. 75 - 116
Copyright
Copyright © University of Miami 1990

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Footnotes

*

Field research for this article was conducted with the assistance of grants from the Oxford University Committee for Graduate Studies and from the Brookings Institution. The author would also like to thank the Journals anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.

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