Poverty, inequality, and growth in Latin America: Searching for the high road to globalization

This article revisits debates concerning poverty, inequality, and developme nt in Latin America and explores a possible "high road" to globalization ca pable of achieving both more rapid economic growth and significant and last ing reductions in poverty and inequality. In reconnoitering the contours of this path, the authors probe a partial convergence in theory, concepts, an d policies that may offer new opportunities for bridging the yawning chasms that heretofore have divided multilateral financial organizations, local g overning elites, and academics as well as Center-Left political parties, or ganized labor, social movements, and NGOs. The article concludes with an as sessment of the capacity of this emerging political agenda and attendant "p olycentric development coalitions" to deepen and extend democracy effective ly beyond the electoral arena to include basic issues of justice and equity .