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domestic_omnom t1_j9wd3dy wrote

I always see these posts by you and it seems that Uruguay and Chile are always at the top of the metrics. Why is that? What makes Uruguay seemingly better than the rest of LatAm.

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Lusatra t1_j9whkpn wrote

Uruguay has a very low corruption index, one the lowest in the world. Chile is also low, but not as much as Uruguay. That really helps a country to develop

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domestic_omnom t1_j9whv41 wrote

Yes... But why is Uruguay like that when the neighboring countries are not.

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arturocan t1_j9ww3sg wrote

For starters because Uruguay isn't its neighbours. Due small population everyone knows each other and you can't hide your dirty laundry effectively. Then the neighbours are swimming in rich resources with lots of possibilities to profit for being corrupt. So as result of being less resourcefull, less corrupt, and having more humble begginings with lots of struggle Uruguay developed its own identity and political culture making it a polar opposite on certaint aspects of his "brother" argentina, ending looking something like twins separated at birth.

This is skipping a lot of info but is an understandable summary.

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xarsha_93 t1_j9yxtgw wrote

There are a few things playing in Uruguay's favor. One, it's tiny, it has a smaller population than the average capital city in Latin America, and two, most of the population stems from Europeans who came in the 20th century with investment money from Europe.

During the World Wars and whatnot, a lot of Latin America saw an influx of investment because Western Europe was a mess. Countries like Venezuela and Argentina also benefitted from that to varying extents, but Uruguay as a whole was completely changed by that process because the newcomers made up the majority of the population.

Buenos Aires underwent a similar process and if you took just Buenos Aires (which has about the same population as Uruguay), it would rank similarly.

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latinometrics OP t1_j9xoy2c wrote

That’s right. Uruguay and Chile have done a really great job in the last couple of decades. The rest of Latam need to learn from them!

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StarryEyedBeardog t1_j9y4pe9 wrote

There's a historic argument that the lack of spanish/portuguese institutions during colonialism in these regions was good for their long-term development. Chile, Uruguay and Costa Rica were some of the most ignored and poorest parts of the spanish/portuguese/brazilian empires (Uruguay used to be a brazilian province prior to independence), thus did not inherit the extractivist, cast-based and elite-oriented institutions of the spanish as much as their neighbors, these institutions, one could argue, would be the start of the corruption problems and political strife between the elites that haunts/haunted much of Latin America throughout it's history.

Thus, Chile, Uruguay, and Costa Rica were able to build up their own institutions in a manor that favored development more in the long term and made corruption less present.

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arturocan t1_j9ya7il wrote

Uruguay was a brazilian province for the last like 11 years before independence... you might be giving a bit to much credit to that argument

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StarryEyedBeardog t1_ja0ua3j wrote

Yes, I wasn't trying to say that Uruguay lacked brazilian institutions or that Uruguay had a lesser focus by the spanish empire because of Brazil, I just added that as an extra fact

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brorpsichord t1_ja3hox9 wrote

I don't disagree with you don't the first part, but not inheritting (SP?) Exctractivist, cast-based and elite oriented institutions didn't stoped them from creating their own.

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brorpsichord t1_j9yuz0c wrote

Argentina and Paraguay where arguably less integrated into the empires than Chile and Costa Rica yet there they are, doing worse

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