This book provides the first general theory, grounded in comparative historical analysis, that aims to explain the variation in the models of economic liberalization across Ibero-America in the last quarter of the 20th century, and the legacies they produced for the current organization of the political economies. Although the macroeconomics of effective market adjustment evolved in a similar way, the patterns of compensation delivered by neoliberal governments, and the type of actors in business and the working class that benefited from them, were remarkably different. Based on the...