The State in the Latin American pink tide

Some general considerations

Abstract

The social struggles and the crisis of neoliberalism at the end of the 1990s and the beginning of the following decade allowed, in several Latin American countries, the rise to power of progressive or populist governments (the pink tide). The policies implemented by these governments involved greater degrees of state intervention and, consequently, brought about a return to the political agenda of the problem of the role of the capitalist state in the transformation of society. In this article we want to propose some general considerations on this problem, focusing on the following questions: did these policies bring about radical changes in the state? To what extent did these changes modify the political relations between the state and society? And to what extent can we consider these changes as progressive?