The trajectories of macroeconomic reforms and policies adopted in Central Eastern Europe (CEE) and South America (SA) have parallels that have been pointed out by the comparative political economy literature. There are countless approaches that emphasize influence of multilateral institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which include the effect of external shocks – for example the debt crisis and the collapse of communist regime, the construction of democratic institutions, the role of regional integration etc. Within this variety of approaches, the prevalent perception is that the legacies of authoritarianism and economic crises in the 1980s set the stage for the adoption of institutional reform experiences that would produce long-term effects as to the capacity to implement a development agenda in these countries.

Such is the case with the recent discussions on the characterization of varieties of capitalism in the wake of the seminal study by Hall and Soskice. This brand of literature takes up central arguments produced about the characterization and changes in the capitalist system in the 1970s and 1980s – a period of turbulences in the global scenario with the oil shocks, debt crises and stagflation. Many of the aspects pointed out in previous analyses dating from that period already signaled a drastic reconfiguration occurring in the center/periphery (or semi-periphery relations), in particular the undermining of the socialist bloc, the rise of East Asian Tigers and even the future emergence of China as a possible capitalist power (Wallerstein 2004; Frank 1969).