Small country turning left: Ecuador's economic development before and after 2007 in the context of current political change in South America

Leftist governments are not very popular in media. However, South America seems to have ignored the critics and has elected several left wing governments in the recent years. This is also the case of Ecuador, a relatively small country, which has gone through interesting political and economic reforms since 2007. This thesis will try to evaluate the economic performance of Ecuador after this change happened, within the context of the general regime change to leftist or anti-neoliberal policies in the rest of the South American continent. The performance will be first compared between the countries according to their government's ideology through an econometric analysis of a group of economic, socio-economic and perceptual variables. After that, a more detailed analysis will be performed on Ecuador's indicators. Interestingly, results show an overall improvement of economic and socio-economic conditions in the countries under the leftist rule, which relies on a strong civic support, compared to the countries still following the neoliberal policies. The case study of Ecuador pretends to provide an example. of a successful performance since the country turned left in 2007.While this area is rarely analyzed, this thesis contributes some knowledge to the field about effectiveness of the current political economy in Latin America Moreover, it contributes to undermine critics often widespread in the media in cooperation with certain states and organizations for keeping the current unequal distribution of power and wealth intact.