The new economic-political programs of globalization, pretending to be contributing to local wealth and development, still continue to widen the gaps of inequality. The logic of neopluralism, undergirded by market-based economic reforms, permeates entire political systems in a variety of ways. This paper examines the nature of the public sphere in Latin America and the ways in which large segments of the population are effectively marginalized from actively participating in it. More specifically, the narrowness of the public sphere is discussed in terms of two interrelated dimensions: the dominant mode of interest intermediation, which the author calls neopluralism, and the growing gap between the general population and the political elite.
www.ciaonet.org/wps/oxp01/oxp01.pdf