Tom Chodor's Neoliberal Hegemony and the Pink Tide in Latin America is an interesting book in many ways. Few academics have had the courage to analyse the whole region's development over the last decades within one general framework, but that is what Chodor sets out to do. He dedicates almost a third of the book to describing a Gramscian critical political economy perspective and providing his views on the developments in global capitalism the last decades. The changes in Latin America over the last half century are subsequently explained in Gramscian terms: the development and dissolution of the historic bloc of the era of import substituting industrialisation (ISI), the role of a passive revolution of the desarrollistas in promoting ISI and how the neoliberalism initiated a new passive revolution in the 1980s and 1990s. The main part of the book concentrates on explaining how the so-called ‘pink tide’ governments (the centre-left governments that came to power in Latin America from 1999) have represented at least two different attempts at counteracting the neoliberal hegemony. On the one hand, they represent a new revolution (exemplified by Lulismo in Brazil) and, on the other, counter-hegemonic projects, as represented by the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela. The analysis of Brazil and Venezuela is followed by a discussion of the shifting strategies of the ‘hegemon’ (the United States) in Latin America, including its reactions to the rising influence of China in Latin America.

While Gramscian concepts such as ‘organic intellectuals’ and ‘historic bloc’ are frequently tossed around in academic as well as general public debates about Latin American development and politics, very few undertake an analysis so thorough and true to Gramsci's thinking as Chodor. This book is full of detailed insights and thoughtful arguments. It is also written in an exemplary clear prose, taking readers by the hand and walking them through the material. This is excellent for anyone seeking to quickly get a better understanding of changes in the region in the past 15 years. It could be included in the reading list for introductory courses to Latin American current affairs.

However, its high level of abstraction and outsider's perspective are problematic. Outside perspectives can sometimes be refreshing. Nevertheless, they should be presented in close dialogue with the social thinking emerging in the region. Of the 500 titles which comprise the reference list, only four are written in Spanish or Portuguese. There is a glaring lack of Latin American thinkers on the relationship between capitalist and other social forces, state formation and repression. There are seven references to Stephen Gill alone, but not even one to Raúl Zibechi, Álvaro García Linera, Aníbal Quijano, or Atilio Borón, to mention just a few. As a long-distance student of Latin America, I often try to imagine the world upside down. What if for example a Brazilian researcher wrote a general interpretation of my home country (and region!) referring almost only to literature written in Portuguese for a foreign audience? Would I feel comfortable that he or she had made a sincere attempt to understand what is going on?

Another problem is how the book tries to generalise. While it provides detailed insight of the Lulista project in Brazil and the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela and despite its aim is to interpret the entire ‘leftist’ move in Latin America, we are still deprived of thorough insights into the particular developments in Ecuador, Bolivia, Argentina, or indeed Uruguay and Chile. Moreover, while categorising the leftist project into two categories, Chodor accidently reconfirms the outdated and highly criticised attempts at distinguishing between the ‘good’ (social democratic, moderate) and ‘bad’ (radical, contestatory) left.

The final chapter makes it rather clear that one of the purposes of the book is to argue against romanticising an anarchist solution in the manner of Hardt and Negri. Hardt and Negri have received some attention among Latin American social movements, even if the rejection of the state as a vehicle for social transformation was perhaps based more on concrete historical experiences of repression than the work of these authors. Chodor uses the ascendance of ‘left tide-governments’ to demonstrate the possibility of pursuing counter-hegemonic strategies by taking state power through democratic means. This is a valid argument, but Chodor fails to take into account all the challenges from below to the many projects that he lumps together under the title ‘the pink tide’, and even those that he regards as counter-hegemonic. Moreover, he makes little reference to the debates that have been going on inside Latin America's leftist movements, particularly on their relationships with the state and formal democratic institutions.

The failure to include such a discussion appears as a major omission given the deep problems recently encountered by what he refers to here as ‘passive revolution’ and ‘counter-hegemony’. The counter-hegemonic potential of the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela is deeply compromised by economic mismanagement. The strategies launched by the chavistas after losing parliamentary control illustrate the limitations of legitimising their rule with reference to popular support within a formally democratic system, as long as formal institutions are not governed by transparency and accountability or respect for distribution of powers.

There are indeed very interesting lessons to be learnt from the achievements as well as the current challenges experienced by the different political projects in Latin America lumped together under the headline ‘the pink tide’. This book provides a good discussion of some of them, but would have benefited from lowering its ideological ambitions and aims for analytical generalisation in order to address some more of them more effectively.