Liberalism in Ecuador

Pedro Romero, Fergus Hodgson and María Paz Gómez

Econ Journal Watch, 2018, vol. 15, issue 1, 105–128

Abstract: Ecuador suffers from a Spanish colonial legacy strongly antithetical to liberalism, which, alongside explicit slavery, included racially oriented peasant subjugation until the late 20th century. The Spanish economic system of trade mercantilism and pervasive clientelism continues to this day, albeit under new branding of 21st-century socialism. A history with twenty constitutions characterizes an unstable nation vulnerable to grandiose, illiberal populism, and the few liberal advances have tended to be top-down political calculations. One bright spot has been dollarization in 2000, which derived from the general populace and better protected earnings and wealth and stabilized the economy. The rise of the Citizen Revolution under President Rafael Correa (2007–2017), in solidarity with other socialist regimes in Latin America, has put Ecuador into a fiscal crisis and ushered in a modern authoritarian and corrupt regime, noted by many international human-rights and economic watchdog organizations. Despite an environment of intimidation with very limited free speech, liberal research and advocacy organizations continue their work and are gaining traction.

Keywords: Ecuador; liberalism; Latin America; 21st-century socialism; economic development; Citizen Revolution; Rafael Correa (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A13 O54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://econjwatch.org/File+download/1052/RomeroHo ... 018.pdf?mimetype=pdf (application/pdf)
https://econjwatch.org/1113 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ejw:journl:v:15:y:2018:i:1:p:105-128

Access Statistics for this article

Econ Journal Watch is currently edited by Daniel Klein

More articles in Econ Journal Watch from Econ Journal Watch Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jason Briggeman ().