Between 1989 and 1996, Venezuela successfully implemented trade liberalization in manufacturing, which contrasts sharply with the failed outcome of other attempted market reforms, including agricultural trade liberalization. Rather than reject these theories, this article refines and combines them into a novel proposition. Sectors whose corporatist institutions were more autonomous from populist parties, less engaged in profit-making, and less densely populated might be better prepared to accept the costs and uncertainty of reform. Specifically, constellations of intellectual traditions that questioned the value of hemispheric cooperation have circulated in almost every country of the hemisphere since the early 19th century. Individually, none of these traditions became dominant, but collectively, they reined in hemispherism for the past 200 years.
Education reforms are politically difficult for at least three reasons.
Nonetheless, a review of cases from the developing world suggests that these political obstacles can be overcome. In fact, this paper argues that the hypothesis that education reform implementation is impossible is one of at least ten widely held views about the politics of education reform that is contradicted by the experience of certain cases in the last two decades. These contradicted hypotheses appear in Chart 1. True Reform is impossible. Maximizing inclusion of stakeholders is always conducive to education reform.