Bursting the Microfinance Bubble:

Post-capitalist declarations aside, Venezuela’s President Hugo Chávez and Bolivian President Evo Morales have both recently introduced their own state-run microfinance banks. To fully grasp the nature of the Bolivarian Revolution’s "new" social economic paradigm, it is first necessary though to consider how and why capitalist systems differ in an institutional manner. Accordingly, the following research will employ a French Regulation School theoretical scope, which offers a holistic, systematic approach for explaining productive logics, in particular, capitalist evolution or non-evolution over time. Attempts to classify the diverse nature of capitalist varieties in today’s neoliberal era have, in fact, largely ignored the Third World experience. By mapping the interactions between growth patterns, institutional compromises and social norms underpinning periods of capitalist stability in Latin America, this paper will move beyond current theorization on the historical trajectory of capitalism to identify a hybrid, rentier growth model.