Although political developments in Central America over the last decade have been profound, the region continues to exhibit sluggish economic growth in some countries and complete stagnation in others. To alleviate these economic problems, demands for authoritarian regimes and imposed solutions are likely--according to the authors of this work. Examined are: 1) the role of the State in economic revitalization and growth in Central America; 2) the impact of structural adjustment policies on the agricultural sector; 3) the prospects for expansion of the cooperative sector in the current political climate; 4) the persistence of external debt, its impact on domestic policy, and possible approaches to alleviating the debt burden; 5) the role of multinational corporations and foreign direct investment in economic restructuring; and 6) the prospects for regional economic and political integration.

Was the Anglophone Caribbean condemned by its colonial history to permanent conditions of dependency and by Cold War geopolitical realities to international interventionism? In Dependency and Socialism in the Modern Caribbean Euclid Rose focuses upon the efforts made by the English-speaking Caribbean-through case studies that compare and contrast the political economies of Guyana, Jamaica, and Grenada-to break out of the legacy of colonial dependency and underdevelopment through the implementation of a Caribbean brand of socialism. The work considers the Caribbean's adoption of Fabian-style socialism as an alternative to capitalist development and how these socialist policies were impacted by differences in infrastructure capacity, economic and social resources and political agendas. It highlights the pivotal role of race and class, and the hitherto little studied impact of religion, on the region's political economy. Moreover, the study calculates the impact of the global economy upon Caribbean socio-economic conditions, and the ideological, geopolitical, and strategic implications of the Cold War and the Caribbean's socialist alignment on the nature, character, and intensity of British and American interventionism in the region. A must read for political economists in search of a greater understanding of the postcolonial political economy of the Caribbean and Latin America.