Just How Socialist Is Latin America?

Is there a "centrist-socialist" category? Greg Weeks reports:

Yet even in countries that are supposedly Hugo Chávez satellites, such as Ecuador, 35 percent approve of U.S. leadership, and 33 percent of Venezuelan leadership. On the flip side, despite all the talk of a rightward tilt, 22 percent of Chileans approve of Venezuelan leadership. And 35 percent of Venezuelans even approve of U.S. leadership!

So we end up with the unsurprising conclusion that in the aggregate, Latin Americans very often want the state involved in the economy and, like most people in the United States, do not simply want free market capitalism. But the Venezuelan model does not necessarily appeal to them.

Has anybody contrasted political attitudes in Latin America to those in other regions like Europe? How much is this effect is a product of diffusion? It seems like there are quite a lot of interesting research questions raised by these two questions. I'm sure some of them already have answers, but my knowledge of the Latin American literature is sparse in the best of times. If anybody knows of related material, please post it in the comments.

American-style "Socialism"

This is from Conor Clarke over at the Atlantic. Pretty interesting post:

Have you heard that the United States is headed toward socialism? Jonah Goldberg says it is. Alabama Senator Richard Shelby says it is. Phyllis Schlafly says it is. Richard Viguerie says it is. The Republican National Committee says it is. We must be getting pretty close.

How close? This is what socialism looks like:The hot-pink portion of this pie chart is the percentage of listed American business assets that have recently been nationalized by the American government (ie, General Motors). Obama's version of socialism is so sneaky you can hardly see it!

(And there is some reason to think this actually overstates the portion of the corporate landscape that's been nationalized, but more on that at the end of the post.*)

There is a serious discussion to be had here, and I think Jon Henke is having it: Socialism, like farenheit, comes in degrees. Sure, a government that nationalizes GM is "more socialist" than one that does not, even if it doesn't mean we're living "under socialism." But differences of degree shouldn't obscure differences of kind, and as Tim Fernholz says, "it's clear that putting the government in charge of private production is not the Obama administration's guiding philosophy."

If it were, 99.79% of the American corporate assets that existed at the start of the Obama administration would not remain in private hands. The differences of degree are so small that they aren't worth mentioning. And yet, somehow, they keep getting mentioned.