This book provides an evaluation of Peruvian politics and economics in the 1990s, on the evidence available up until the end of 1997. The purpose is twofold: to detect continuities and discontinuities between the Fujimori period and earlier ones, and to offer an answer–however tentative–to the question of whether the Fujimori government has laid the basis for greater future stability. The answers to these questions are mixed. There appear to be more continuities than many suppose, even though 1990 in many ways was a ‘turning point.’ And while the Fujimori government helped provide a more stable context than the one it inherited, it is by no means clear that the changes it has brought about will prove sustainable over the longer run. The political model looks particularly brittle. The contributors are Luis Abugattás, Elena Alvarez, Javier de Belaúnde, John Crabtree, Carlos Iván Degregori, Francisco Durand, Adolfo Figueroa, Raúl Hopkins, Javier Iguíñiz, Drago Kisic, Enrique Obando, Martin Tanaka, Jim Thomas, and Rosemary Thorp.
