[Editor’s Note: The following piece was written exclusively for The Cobden Centre by Axel Kaiser, the Executive Director of think tank Fundacion para el Progresso, based in Santiago. It gives a good outline of how Austrian/free market ideas are developing in South America. Many young people globally are now embracing the ideas of Mises and Hayek, but we are also currently seeing undesirable reactions among many people, who now tragically associate free market ideas with crony capitalism and bailouts for the wealthy in society.]
The Austrian school of economics has gained increasing attention since the 2008 financial crisis and Latin America has not been an exception in this trend. It is mostly young people who have been captivated by the ideas of Hayek, Mises, Rothbard and Huerta de Soto. The most powerful proponents of these ideas in the Spanish-speaking world presently are the Juan de Mariana Institute and the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos in Spain. The first actively participates in the public debate while the second has introduced both a Masters degree and a PhD in Austrian Economics under the leadership of Austrian economist Jesús Huerta de Soto. Many Latin Americans have been trained in the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos and returned to their countries to teach and influence in the public debate.
But there are also several institutions supported by private sponsors that actively promote Austrian economics and classical liberalism in Latin America itself. A remarkable case is Caminos de la Libertad in Mexico. Financed by Ricardo Salinas Pliego, head of the Salinas Group, Caminos de la libertad focuses on educating students in the ideas of liberty. It also organizes the most competitive classical liberal essay contest for scholars in the Spanish-speaking world. Fundación Libertad in Rosario, Argentina is another think tank that advances the Austrian school with great success among young people. Perhaps the most notable case of an institutional effort made to spread classical liberalism and the Austrian school is the Universidad Francisco Marroquín in Guatemala, which was founded entirely on a classical liberal philosophy. Its contributions to the cause of liberty have been considerable in a region dominated by socialist and populist worldviews.
Other important think tanks are CEDICE that does an extraordinary complex work in Venezuela, CREES in the Dominican Republic, IEEP in Ecuador and Fundación para el Progreso in Chile. This last one emerged as a classical liberal reaction against the dramatic rise that socialism and populism experienced over the last years. The Cato Institute has also a special concern with Latin America and permanently finds in these institutions support for organizing the “Cato University”, which brings together students from all over Latin America to learn classical liberalism and fee market economics from leading Latin American scholars.
Despite all these efforts, Latin America at large seems to be moving in the direction of populism and statism. The best and most alarming example is Chile. Long considered a bastion of free market reforms, the country has started a violent departure from the path of progress that followed the last three decades. The hegemony of left-wing and populist ideas has overwhelmed public opinion and caught pro market opinion leaders off guard. If the new statist trend is not stopped on time, the now most prosperous country in the region could follow an Argentinian type of institutional evolution in the next decades that would leave Latin America without a role model on sound economic policy.
Like in Europe and the United States, one of the central causes for the hegemony of statism in Latin America is the fact that most intellectuals and especially university professor are strong supporters of government intervention. This is extremely problematic in countries that are developing and require a wide consensus on policies needed for overcoming poverty. The free market movement in Latin America is still too weak to counterbalance this hegemony and achieve the shift in the intellectual climate of opinion necessary to move towards sound economic policies. It remains to be seen if in the long run the failure of statist ideas will allow once again for change that is desperately needed in the region. It that comes to happen, current pro market think tanks and intellectuals will play a decisive role in shaping the new institutional arrangements and in creating the public support for ensuring their survival.
Axel Kaiser is a Chilean public intellectual, financial columnist and writer dedicated to spreading classical liberalism in Latin America. He is also executive director of the think tank Fundación para el Progreso based in Santiago.
