Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 January 2018
Luna, Murillo, and Schrank (LMS) do our field a very valuable service by raising questions on the state of research on the political economy in Latin America and where it should be going. They cover a lot of ground in a short space, leaving a smorgasbord of issues to mull over, question, or endorse. To my mind, some of the most promising critiques in the memo are that there are gaps in the field and that those gaps are due in part to methodological fashion. Yet the discussion of gaps in LMS is somewhat ungrounded and underspecified. Closing the essay with a call for more research on democracy, development, state formation, inequality, and international linkages seems to miss the fact that most recent research is actually related to these five topics. Many readers probably would react by saying to themselves that they have been conducting some research in one or more of these areas.