Excerpt from today's Financial Times of London

Latin America's economic crisis has intellectual implications which extend far beyond that continent. It sounds the death-knell of "transitionology", the belief that by following a simple set of universal rules, countries all over the world can in a short space of time make the transition to democracy and the free market. This mantra is now intellectually dead, though it will doubtless live on in the mouths of politicians, pundits and diplomats. What we are left with is history, with its many winding paths and lack of final destinations.

Latin America is a particularly striking example of the triumph of hope over experience. Several states have achieved very real progress, and are of course vastly richer than they were a century ago. But very few indeed have achieved western standards of living and levels of democracy. Argentina was probably closer to such a breakthrough a century ago than it is today.