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The Paradox Of Participation : Political And Economic Model For Developing Countries

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The “Paradox of Participation” in Marketing Democracy In her book Marketing Democracy: Power and Social Movements in Post-Dictatorship Chile Julia Paley thoughtfully criticizes contemporary Chilean democracy. The author interprets Chile as the political and economic model for developing countries. She depicts the Chileans’ struggle for mobilization and critique of the democracy that has evolved as a result of the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. The book is written in accessible and descriptive prose, which allows Paley to raise a couple of questions concerning the governance in the country and the era allegedly adherent to “participation”, “growth with equity”, and “democracy”. Chile’s economic and political history of the last 30 years undergoes regional typologies. Its iconoclasm indicates national processes of governance that utter disturbing questions about the character of current neoliberal reforms, as well as about the Chilian nature of democracy. The reforms, successfully tested under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, have followed democratic transitions in the former Soviet bloc, the collapse of Marxism, civil wars in Central America and a range of other events. The relationship between political action and political knowledge – the way it is produced, co-opted and constrained, and the way it can be used as a weapon against a democratic regime - is being closely examined by Julia Paley in her work. She illustrates how the objective and abstract

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