Latin America´s Left turns in the twenty-first century. Revisiting the academic debates

SOLEDAD STOESSEL

Londres

Conferencia; ?Swinging back? Winds of change after a decade of the Latin American Left?; 2015

Institute of Latin America Studies de la School of Advanced Study, University of London

The turn to the left of most of Latin American governments during the twenty-first century challenged social sciences to analyze the specific characteristics of these contemporary political processes. The literature on the subject privileged the study of three cross-wise aspects of current political experiences: the contents of their post-Washington Consensus agendas, the recovery of state capacities and social-state mediations, principally the ways of political representation. Thus, the postneoliberalism idea, the so-called ?state return? and the categories of ?populism? and ?postliberalism? emerged as unavoidable elements of different conceptual interpretations and political analyses. In this sense, this article aims to provide a revision of specialized literature based on these dimensions which have configured the Latin American phenomena since the beginning of this century.