'Recipient of the Charles H. Levine Memorial Book Prize' "This work looks not so much at the obstacles to reform as the ways to get around them through imaginative management. The proper setting of an agenda for action, the process of making intelligent decisions and the implementation of reform are all analyzed in depth."--'Foreign Affairs' "An essential work of reference for researchers investigating contemporary socio-political change in the Latin American countryside."--'Development and Change'

Merilee S. Grindle is a research associate at the Harvard Institute for International Development. Her previous books include State and Countryside. John W. Thomas is Institute Fellow at the Harvard Institute for International Development. Both authors have written and consulted extensively on issues in development and are lecturers in public policy at the Kennedy School of Government.