The public sector’s role In Latin American development

The public sector’s role in the development of the Latin American countries is undergoing a big change. The system of State action and intervention which arose after the Second World War cam e to an end in the early 1980s, when the debt crisis forced the end of a cycle and the beginning of a process of adaptation to new circumstances. This article seeks to outline the main changes that have taken place in the State’s role and to analyse the causes giving rise to the public sector’s new operating model. The availability and reactions of the financial markets were of decisive importance both in the external adjustment process and in the phase that followed it, when the region regained its access to credit.