This book's contribution can be situated within larger debates among comparativists about the appropriate theoretical objectives and methods to guide comparative research. At one end of the continuum, one finds area or country specialists who utilize thick descriptions and develop complex causal explanations with little or no attention to their generalizability. At the other end of the continuum, one finds those scholars less concerned with particular cases or area studies and more concerned with developing highly generalizable theories. Such work typically utilizes large-n studies and develops parsimonious explanations, in contrast to the complex explanations of the area-studies specialists.

Between these two extremes, one finds what Peter Evans calls “the eclectic messy center” (Atul Kohli et al., “The Role of Theory in Comparative Politics: A Symposium,” World Politics 48 [October 1995]: 1–49). This approach to comparative politics is more concerned with real-world problems of particular places than with theory development. Alternative theoretical perspectives provide useful tools for analyzing concrete problems, but generality becomes a less important goal and only limited generalizations are pursued. This approach implies attention to a relatively small number of cases and a willingness to develop “thicker” causal explanations than those found in the large-n studies. Moreover, one is likely to find in the problem-focused research of the eclectic messy center more attention to normative issues and to policy implications.

The book under review essentially seeks to develop a useful analytical framework for studying contemporary Latin American politics and society from that eclectic messy center. Manuel Antonio Garretón et al. view the grand development theories from the past—modernization theory, dependency theory, Marxism, and so on—as inadequate for understanding contemporary sociopolitical phenomena in Latin America and the profound structural transformations that have occurred in recent decades. What they propose is a thicker analytical framework, constructed around their idea of a sociopolitical matrix to fill the void in contemporary development theory. As the authors put it, “we concur with those who espouse the need to move from grand paradigms to middle-level hypotheses; from unicausal and unidirectional theories to the study of inter-related processes; and from understanding change as a form of essentialist determinism between structures to reciprocal historical causation across economic, political, social, and cultural dimensions” (p. iii).

A sociopolitical matrix (SPM) is comprised of “relation-ships among the state, a structure for representation or a party system …, and a socioeconomic base of social actors with cultural orientations and relations (including the participation and diversity of civil society outside formal state structures)—all mediated institutionally by the political regime” (p. 2). Essentially, a matrix provides a heuristic device to identify the interacting economic, structural, cultural, and political dimensions that define a particular society and to examine processes of sociopolitical change. There is no attempt to establish any system of causal ordering or analytical priority among any of these diverse dimensions.

SPMs go through a process of emergence, consolidation, and decomposition, reflecting societal and political transformations occurring within particular societies. In order to consolidate an SPM, the cultural system (particularly conceptions of modernity), the social base, social movements, and systems of representation must be mutually reinforcing and congruent with the dominant development model. Conversely, decomposition or disarticulation of an SPM comes about as the matrix of reinforcing relations among culture, society, the economy, and the state begins to disintegrate. The primary exogenous forces leading to SPM decomposition and recomposition within Latin American societies are structural transformations of the international economy and of geopolitical environment and concomitant changes in the development model. This work examines the “statist-nationalist-popular SPM” that characterized Latin American societies from the 1930s to the 1980s, the decomposition of this SPM due to the forces of economic globalization, and the failed effort to construct a viable neoliberal alternative and possibilities for the recomposition of a more viable SPM in the face of increasing economic globalization.

According to the authors, a relatively consolidated, fused, statist-nationalist SPM emerged in many Latin American countries during the pre-1980 era. The developmental model of that era was premised on state-directed import-substitution industrialization (ISI). That model was premised on a conception of modernity associated with the reproduction of the Western industrial model in late-developing societies. As the authors succinctly explain, the ISI model was “centered on the domestic generation of an industrial society in which social classes became the ‘allies of development’ around a national, proactive, mobilizing state as the ‘agent of development’” (p. 45). The proactive state became a central unifying force of the prevailing SPM, even if representational systems in some countries were weakened by the hybrid nature of ostensibly democratic regimes and by the problematic incorporation of the newly mobilized lower classes.

The autarkic model that guided development in much of postwar Latin America was not compatible with the increasingly liberalized global economy of that era. As a consequence, the region became increasingly marginalized in the international economy, even though becoming geopolitically important due to the Cold War (Chap. 3). By the late seventies and particularly as a consequence of the debt crisis of the 1980s, the ISI development strategy became increasingly less viable. Hence, Latin American countries turned to an export-oriented development strategy and structural readjustment that led to increasing insertion in the global economy. The book provides a superb discussion of the many forms of globalization and shows how Latin American countries have adjusted historically to transformations of the global economy (Chap. 3). The cur-rent shift in the development model has occurred in a context of political democratization, growing social exclusion, and the emergence of conflicting conceptions of modernity (Chap. 4).

In brief, the authors argue that the attempted construction of a neoliberal sociopolitical matrix from the ruins of the decomposition of the statist-nationalist-popular SPM has proven to be a failure (Chap. 5). They argue that “a new stable matrix of relations between the state and society and their key components has not consolidated itself” (p. 63) and that “most Latin American countries that tried to follow the neoliberal market-driven agenda of structural reforms failed to achieve sustainable development” (pp. 70–71). The problems with the neoliberal development model and SPM are not simply ones of economic sustainability but also of social exclusion, the weakened nation-state, the lack of an effective party system and systems of representation, and problems of “generating legitimacy, and providing for its own reproduction” (p. 67).

In the concluding chapter (Chap. 5), the authors consider prospects for transitions to a more democratic, progressive, and socially integrative SPM to overcome the pattern of continued drift and decomposition found in many countries. The achievement of their preferred SPM, they argue, depends on continuing integration into the global economy but with states capable of retaining some control and influence over economic outcomes, a stronger civil society and system of popular representation, and an integrative national ideology to overcome growing social and cultural diversity. A central argument throughout the book is that analysts of structural transformations in Latin America need to examine more than simple transitions from one type of regime to another or from one set of economic policies to another; they need to adopt a holistic perspective that takes into account the entire sociopolitical matrix, including social and cultural dimensions.

Latin America in the 21st Century provides a useful analytical framework for analyzing the major structural transformations that have radically changed the sociopolitical landscape of Latin America in recent decades. The framework is useful for generating complex or thick explanations of these phenomena, rather than parsimonious explanations. As such, it may be best suited for case studies and small-n studies in which the analyst seeks to unravel the complexities of domestic sociopolitical matrices in specific cases and to connect matrix change to the shifting international environment. There is no reason why this analytical tool would not be of major interest to comparativists and area specialists whose area focus is outside Latin America.

How this framework might be used in future studies is given little attention here. The authors are far more concerned with identifying deficiencies in the neoliberal model and with the presumed failure to construct a viable SPM in Latin America (see Chaps. 5 and 6). The case for the deficiencies of the neoliberal model is convincing. I would also agree with the normative preferences set forth by the authors in making their case for “an ethically desirable potential new SPM” (p. 98). However, I am not convinced that “the neoliberal project to construct a market-driven matrix has aborted in Latin America” (p. 94). While it has been con-tested in a variety of countries, this project remains stubbornly hegemonic despite the deficiencies that are noted in this study. Perhaps the critical factor sustaining neoliberalism has more to do with its congruence with the realities of geopolitics and of the current global capitalist economy than with its effects on the domestic sociopolitical order.