Competition Policy in America or The United States and Latin America

Competition Policy in America: History, Rhetoric, Law

Author: Rudolph J Peritz

Americans have long appealed to images of free competition in calling for free enterprise, freedom of contract, free labor, free trade, and free speech. This imagery has retained its appeal in myriad aspects of public policy--for example, Senator Sherman's Anti-Trust Act of 1890, Justice Holmes's metaphorical marketplace of ideas, and President Reagan's rhetoric of deregulation.

In Competition Policy in America, 1888-1992, Rudolph Peritz explores the durability of free competition imagery by tracing its influences on public policy. Looking at congressional debates and hearings, administrative agency activities, court opinions, arguments of counsel, and economic, legal, and political scholarship, he finds that free competition has actually evoked two different visions--freedom not only from oppressive government, but also from private economic power. He shows how the discourse of free competition has mediated between commitments to individual liberty and rough equality--themselves unstable over time. This rhetorical approach allows us to understand, for example, that the Reagan and Carter programs of deregulation, both inspired by the rhetoric of free competition, were driven by fundamentally different visions of political economy.

Peritz's historical inquiry into competition policy as a series of government directives, inspired by two complex yet distinct and sometimes contradictory visions of free competition, provides an indispensable framework for understanding modern political economy-- whether political campaign finance reform, corporate takeover regulation, or current attitudes toward the New Deal Legacy. Competition Policy in America will be of great interest tolawyers, historians, economists, sociologists, and policy makers in both government and business.


"Everybody who is interested in twentieth century constitutional history or current constitutional law will want to read Competition Policy in America."--The Law and Politics Book Review

"The book is bold and provocative....Often eloquent, insistently contentious, and refreshingly insightful, Peritz gives us a bracing and challenging account of the evolution of antitrust law." --Law and History Review

"The book is bold and provocative....a truly daunting enterprise that few others have dared to attempt."--Law and History Review

"Everybody who is interested in twentieth century constitutional history or current constitutional law will want to read Competition Policy in America. Peritz offers an extremely fresh perspective of the era."--The Law and Politics Book Review

"Comprehensive, scholarly, and well documented....Recommended for legal scholars and graduate-level and professional economists."--Choice

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The United States and Latin America: The New Agenda

Author: Victor Bulmer Thomas

The end of the Cold War removed hemispheric security from the top of the agenda of U.S.-Latin American relations. Democracy, trade and investment, drugs, and migration rose in importance. Pressures to eliminate the anachronistic U.S. embargo on Cuba increased. The new agenda also includes Latin America's growing ties to the countries of the European Union and other regions. This book contains fifteen essays by distinguished U.S., Latin American, and European scholars on each of these issues, framed by overviews of the changing historical context from the nineteenth century to the end of the Cold War. Authors include such notables as Harvard scholars John Coatsworth, Jorge Domínguez, and Marcelo Suárez-Orozco; European academics such as editors James Dunkerley and Victor Bulmer-Thomas; and Latin American intellectuals such as Eduardo Gamarra and Rodolfo Cerdas-Cruz.

Table of Contents:

	Acknowledgement
	List of Contributors
	List of Tables
	List of Figures
Pt. I	Overview
Ch. 1	The United States and Latin America in the Long Run (1800-1945)	3
Ch. 2	US-Latin American Relations during the Cold War and its Aftermath	33
Ch. 3	The European Union and the Americas	51
Pt. II	Trade and Democracy
Ch. 4	Trade Relations in the Americas: MERCOSUR, The Free Trade Area of the Americas and the European Union	75
Ch. 5	Trade, Investment and NAFTA: The Economics of Neighbourhood	99
Ch. 6	United States Foreign Relations and the Promotion of Democracy in Latin America	123
Ch. 7	The United States and Democracy in Mexico	141
Pt. III	Drugs and Migration
Ch. 8	Hooked on Drugs: Colombian-US Relations	159
Ch. 9	The United States and Bolivia: Fighting the Drug War	177
Ch. 10	Packaging Drugs: Certification and the Acquisition of Leverage	207
Ch. 11	Latin American Immigration to the United States	227
Pt. IV	Cuba
Ch. 12	Cuba's Economic Transformation and Conflict with the United States	247
Ch. 13	The Cuban External Sector in the 1990s	267
Ch. 14	The Politics of the Cuban Diaspora in the United States	287
Ch. 15	Conclusions	311
	Bibliography	327
	Index	349