The Internationalization of Palace Wars: Lawyers, Economists, and the Contest to Transform Latin American States (Chicago Series in Law and Society)

How does globalization work? Focusing on Latin America, Yves Dezalay and Bryant G. Garth show that exports of expertise and ideals from the United States to Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico have played a crucial role in transforming their state forms and economies since World War II. Based on more than 300 extensive interviews with major players in governments, foundations, law firms, universities, and think tanks, Dezalay and Garth examine both the production of northern exports such as neoliberal economics and international human rights law and the ways they are received south of the United States. They find that the content of what is exported and how it fares are profoundly shaped by domestic struggles for power and influence—"palace wars"—in the nations involved. For instance, challenges to the eastern intellectual establishment influenced the Reagan-era export of University of Chicago-style neoliberal economics to Chile, where it enjoyed a warm reception from Pinochet and his allies because they could use it to discredit the previous regime. Innovative and sophisticated, __The Internationalization of Palace Wars__ offers much needed concrete information about the transnational processes that shape our world. Contents 6 Acknowledgments 8 Chronologies 10 Terminology and Abbreviations 14 PART ONE: Imperial and Professional Strategies within the Field of State Power 18 1. Introduction 20 2. Retooling Statesmen to Restructure the State: From Héritiers of European Legal Culture to the Technopols Made in the USA 34 3. The Internationalization of Palace Wars 49 PART TWO: Hegemony Challenged: Making Friends, the Cold War Roots of a Reformist Strategy 76 4. The Archeology of the New Universals: The Cold War Construction of Human Rights and Its Later Avatars 78 5. The Chicago Boys as Outsiders: Constructing and Exporting Counterrevolution 90 6. Fostering Pluralism and Reformism 112 7. The Paradox of Symbolic Imperialism: The Southern Cone as an Explosive Laboratory of Modernity 127 PART THREE: Competing Universals: The Parallel Construction of Neoliberalism in the North and the South 142 8. The Reformist Establishment out of Power: Investing in Human Rights as an Alternative Political Strategy 144 9. From Confrontatión to Concertacion: The National Production and International Recognition of the New Universals 158 PART FOUR: Reshaping Global Institutions and Exporting Law 178 10. Fragmented Governance: A Washington Agenda for Reshaping Global Institutions and National Expertises 180 11. Top-Down Participatory Development: Putting a Human Face on Market Hegemony and Trying to Stem the Social Violence of Glo 203 12. Lawyer Compradors as Opportunistic Institution Builders 215 13. Reformist Strategies around the Courts 237 14. The Logic of Half-Failed Transplants 263 Notes 268 References 318 Index 334 How does globalization work? Focusing on Latin America, Yves Dezalay and Bryant G. Garth show that exports of expertise and ideals from the United States to Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico have played a crucial role in transforming their state forms and economies since World War II. Based on more than 300 extensive interviews with major players in governments, foundations, law firms, universities, and think tanks, Dezalay and Garth examine both the production of northern exports such as neoliberal economics and international human rights law and the ways they are received south of the United States. They find that the content of what is exported and how it fares are profoundly shaped by domestic struggles for power and influence -- "palace wars" -- in the nations involved.