The Limits of Market Intervention: Nicaragua (1979–90)

Abstract

This chapter discusses the strategy of agricultural market intervention in post-1979 Sandinista Nicaragua. It focuses on the role of the state-centred accumulation model that was the basis for economic policies during most of the decade of Sandinista revolution (1979–90), in order to understand the scope and limits of state intervention in agricultural markets. This chapter also is a bridge between the comparative framework already presented and the empirical nature of the Nicaraguan case study which is to follow. For this purpose, the reader is introduced in the characteristics of the Nicaraguan agricultural market, while it is shown that an analysis of market intervention in Nicaragua can provide important insights. I will also bring to the forefront — against the background of actual developments in the economy — the leadership’s views on agricultural market intervention and the premises on which they were built. In this way the limits of market intervention in the Nicaraguan case can be identified in terms of real (as opposed to envisaged) possibilities for the state to transform, control or even substitute the market.