This article considers the capacity of small island and independent nation-states to recover from serious external economic crises by looking at the case of Cuba in the 1990s and comparing Cuban adjustment with adjustment in Thailand under an essentially IMF-controlled plan in 1997. Cuba had to restructure its socialist economy in the wake of the collapse of its trading relationship with the old Soviet Union and other Council for Mutual Economic Assistance countries. Thailand had to restructure its capitalist economy after a collapse of its currency and the widescale failure of financial institutions. Particular attention is paid to the similarities and differences between Cuban and IMF models of ‘structural adjustment programs’ and their outcomes.
2003 Independent structural adjustment: Cuban and neoliberal models compared PDF
Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies, 9(1)