This book provides a political economy perspective on Chiles contemporary economic development, explaining the different stages of Chiles neoliberal pattern of economic integration into the global economy from 1973 to 2015. Three key explanatory variables are considered: the evolution of business-state relations, US geopolitical interest in the region through the waves of trade agreements, and the political impact of the dynamics of inflows and outflows of financial capital. Although Chile is typically considered to be a successful case of a free market economy, this book presents an alternative narrative of Chiles growth through using a Latin American Structuralist political economy perspective. While it recognises the positive results in terms of growth, it also emphasises the lack of dynamic sources for long-term development, which embeds the economy into short-term booms followed by periods of stagnation.

José Miguel Ahumada is a Teaching Associate at the Department of Politics and Government in the Alberto Hurtado University, Chile. Dr Ahumadas main research interests are in the areas of political economy of development in Latin America, comparative political economy and the history of economic thought.

Introduction.- The political economy of development and integration: a structuralist perspective.- Latin America since the 1990s: deindustrialization, reprimarization and policy space restrictions.- The military dictatorship and the origins of peripheral growth.- The rise and fall of peripheral growth: Chile during the 1990s.- Chile in the road to the commodity boom: deindustrialization without policy space.- Life after the commodity boom: the structure of contemporary peripheral development (2011 2015).- Conclusions: the mirages of the miracle.