NEOSTRUCTURALISM IN CONTEMPORARY ECLAC THINKING: RUPTURE BEFORE THE (POST) NEOLIBERAL REALITY?
ECLAC; Neoliberalism; Neostructuralism.
Since the Great Recession of 2007-2008, the neoliberal economic model has been losing
primacy on the global stage. With the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, the paradigm shift
of national economies became evident, a period in which states had to deliberately act in a
positive way to try resolve the overwhelming economic and social effects resulting from this
global health crisis. In this meantime, the War in Ukraine has been highlighting the present
role of the richest nations in the world in their economies, by imposing multifaceted
restrictions on Russian capital. Therefore, the practical reality of recent years is significantly
different from that which the neoliberal economic model was consolidated as a hegemonic
doctrine, in the post-Cold War period. It is worth pointing out that it was precisely in this
context, in the 1990s, that the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean
(ECLAC) itself sought to adapt its historical-structuralist method to the reigning
neoliberalism, which came to be called neostructuralism. Given that ECLAC’s
neostructuralism emerged precisely as a response to the hegemonic neoliberal economic
model, the loss of primacy of neoliberalism since 2007-2008, within the scope of ECLAC,
could mean the overcoming of neostructuralism in the thinking of that institution.