Is "Latin America" part of the "west"?

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Beet and patrick come the closest to what I think. No, Latin America isn't part of the West:

1. They're too poor. The wealthiest L American nations have about the same GDP per capita as Botswana.

2. Their domestic political institutions are too fragile.

3. Their monetary ties to Europe actually weakened over the course of the 20th century. Argentina was once a outside member of the 1900 international gold standard.

The part about the European culture Argentina (they did produce Borges) and southern Brazil more strongly reflects the fact that so few indigenous Americans lived in those places, not that the settlers carried out an ethnocide seen in Western settler societies like the US and Australia.**

In that sense, I think places like South Africa and Israel are failed Western societies -- they simply couldn't exterminate or suppress the indigenous population to the extent that the US and Australia could because they were too numerous.

**But those places had small indigenous populations as well.

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The bulk of Eastern Europe isn't any richer than Lat Am and its institutions are equally fragile. Lithuania's PPP GDP per capita is barely higher than Argentina's, Latvia's is roughly equal to that of Mexico and Uruguay, Bulgaria is like Venezuela, Romania is like Brazil. All 4 are EU members, so, arguably, at least somewhat "Western". Botswana may be a bit of a quirk of statistics: the PPP adjustment there is huge: its nominal GDP is closer to Colombia and Suriname, than it is to Mexico or Argentina (though Botswana's number still beats Bulgaria). In nominal terms, the richest Lat. Am. countries (Uruguay and Chile) have higher GDP per capita than Poland.  In fact, until fairly recently many Lat Am countries were wealthier than Spain or Portugal - it's only in the last 20 years that the migration flows have reversed.

Likewise, arguably, the history of democratic institutions in much of Latin America is roughly as long and robust as that in Eastern/Central Europe, and  the Southern Europe doesn't have that much of an advantage there either.  

Finally, as for monetary ties to Europe - why's that a criterion? Some Latin American countries have extremely strong ties (including financial) to the US - unless you consider US not to be part of the West either, why exactly should one bother about Europe per se here? For that matter, if the "monetary ties" to Europe were to be determinative, much of Africa would have done extremely well (all those quasi-French currencies )) ).

I always use PPP conversions when doing international wealth comparisons. The nominal GDP per capita (at least as tabulated on wiki) is so sensitive to fluctuations that it's hardly a usable metric, except in proximal places where the disparity is striking, like the US-Mexico, or France-Algeria.

And about the EU: Christopher Hitchens actually wrote someplace that (at the time) backward countries like Spain and Portugal were admitted to the Common Market in order to Europeanize them politically, irrespective of any monetary benefit to the member states, not that either were anything other than western even during their dictatorships. In that sense, the same impetus is true for EU expansion into eastern nations like Poland and the Czech Republic, not that they were anything less than western oriented in their histories, either.

I think instability of domestic institutions goes farther than simply the revolving-door style ministries of Italy. I mean situations where the civil institutions, civil infrastructure, or important industries like banks come to a complete stop, or even vanish, as was once common in Latin America and other stereotypical "Third World" countries (I regard Nigeria as a prototype of this).

And monetary ties to Europe: I thought, as an economist you would have drawn a distinction between being a member of a financial decision-making body (or, really, club) consisting of near-equals, like the old gold standard, or the G8**, and being a colonialist dependency subject to
unpayable IMF loans and western politicians like subsaharan Africa.

**unlike the modern G20

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The bulk of Eastern Europe isn't any richer than Lat Am and its institutions are equally fragile. Lithuania's PPP GDP per capita is barely higher than Argentina's, Latvia's is roughly equal to that of Mexico and Uruguay, Bulgaria is like Venezuela, Romania is like Brazil. All 4 are EU members, so, arguably, at least somewhat "Western". Botswana may be a bit of a quirk of statistics: the PPP adjustment there is huge: its nominal GDP is closer to Colombia and Suriname, than it is to Mexico or Argentina (though Botswana's number still beats Bulgaria). In nominal terms, the richest Lat. Am. countries (Uruguay and Chile) have higher GDP per capita than Poland.  In fact, until fairly recently many Lat Am countries were wealthier than Spain or Portugal - it's only in the last 20 years that the migration flows have reversed.

Likewise, arguably, the history of democratic institutions in much of Latin America is roughly as long and robust as that in Eastern/Central Europe, and  the Southern Europe doesn't have that much of an advantage there either.  

Finally, as for monetary ties to Europe - why's that a criterion? Some Latin American countries have extremely strong ties (including financial) to the US - unless you consider US not to be part of the West either, why exactly should one bother about Europe per se here? For that matter, if the "monetary ties" to Europe were to be determinative, much of Africa would have done extremely well (all those quasi-French currencies )) ).

I always use PPP conversions when doing international wealth comparisons. The nominal GDP per capita (at least as tabulated on wiki) is so sensitive to fluctuations that it's hardly a usable metric, except in proximal places where the disparity is striking, like the US-Mexico, or France-Algeria.

And about the EU: Christopher Hitchens actually wrote someplace that (at the time) backward countries like Spain and Portugal were admitted to the Common Market in order to Europeanize them politically, irrespective of any monetary benefit to the member states, not that either were anything other than western even during their dictatorships. In that sense, the same impetus is true for EU expansion into eastern nations like Poland and the Czech Republic, not that they were anything less than western oriented in their histories, either.

I think instability of domestic institutions goes farther than simply the revolving-door style ministries of Italy. I mean situations where the civil institutions, civil infrastructure, or important industries like banks come to a complete stop, or even vanish, as was once common in Latin America and other stereotypical "Third World" countries (I regard Nigeria as a prototype of this).

And monetary ties to Europe: I thought, as an economist you would have drawn a distinction between being a member of a financial decision-making body (or, really, club) consisting of near-equals, like the old gold standard, or the G8**, and being a colonialist dependency subject to
unpayable IMF loans and western politicians like subsaharan Africa.

**unlike the modern G20

1. Fine. But even under PPP several Lat Am economies have GDP numbers similar or above to those of several EU members.

2. Whatever Nigeria has to do w/ it, but the leading Lat Am economies have a lot more in common institutionally w/ Europe than they have w/ Nigeria.

3. I still have now clue about monetary ties? Is US Western or not? Which loans are unpayable? No clue, honest to god ))

2. I cite Nigeria as the prototype "Third World" nation: Decayed to nonexistent infrastructure, a peasantry with widespread low-human development, importance of the police/military as a political force, single-industry economy, etc.. And in this light, the national issues of Latin American countries more strongly resembles the national issues of Nigeria than it does any western country.

3. Debts borrowed against and serviced in a foreign currency are absolutely unpayable. Look at the way Ecuador and Argentina -- and Iceland -- defaulted on their dollar/euro debts earlier this decade.  But these countries have no choice other than borrowing from the IMF or from European banks: These national governments do not have the option of borrowing from themselves like Japan, printing up money like the US (they'd end up like Zimbabwe in months), or even borrowing from each other, since they need the capital just as much as their neighbors.

Even private banks in Mexico and Argentina are ultimately capitalized from Spain (which is ultimately backed by Germany), in the way that banks in Nigeria are capitalized from South Africa (which gets its debts from the UK).

The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that Latin America and Eastern Europe are not Western -- westernizing, certainly, but not Western, not yet.