Journal of International Cooperation Studies, Vol.22, No.1（2014.7） How Latin American Countries Became Fiscal Conservatives 179 How Latin American Countries Became Fiscal Conservatives: A book review of ‘Globalization and Austerity Politics in Latin America’ by Stephen Kaplan Mauricio BUGARIN ＊ The 1980s have been called “the lost decade” for Latin America. Following Mexico’s debt moratorium in August, “by the end of 1982 Latin America had entered one of the darkest periods in its history” 1 . Latin American suffered a negative growth of –0.78 in 1982 and inflation reached 165% in Argentina, 100% in Brazil, and 124% in Bolivia. Fifteen year later, in 1997, inflation in Argentina was reduced to a mere 0.5%, in Brazil to less than 7% and to 4.7% in Bolivia and Latin American growth reached 5.4%, almost two points above the world growth average on 3.7% 2 . Stephen Kaplan’s “Globalization and Austerity Politics in Latin America” (Cambridge University Press, 2013) presents a very compelling analysis of Latin American political economic history over the past 30 years shedding light on a trend towards austerity politics that has attracted so much attention and investment to the region in the past decade. The book uses three main methodological approaches. After the introduction, it explains in Chapter 2 the main theoretic argument, the “Political Austerity Cycle” (PAC) theory and its variations, as an alternative to the traditional Political Business Cycle (PBC) theory. Then, it tests the PAC hypothesis against the PBC in Latin America in Chapter 3 (“The Political Economy of Elections”), finding evidence for the Mauricio Bugarin was a visiting researcher at the Graduate School of International Cooperation Studies of Kobe University, GSICS, during the fall semester of 2013. The institutional support of GSICS is gratefully acknowledged. The fnancial support of CNPq is gratefully acknowledged. The author remains sole responsible for errors or opinions expressed here. ＊ Professor of Economics, Economics Department, University of Brasilia and Leader of the Economics and Politics Research Group, UnB and CNPq. e-mail: bugarin.mauricio@gmail.com. Web-page: www.bugarin mauricio.com.