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The success and legacy of major economic reforms in Ecuador and El Salvador has depended on the will of the people, analysis shows. The strength of political party ideology and support of unions, workers and the financial sector has hugely influenced decision-making.

In both countries, administrations led by left-wing parties tightened capital flow management, while their right-wing successors took the opposite approach. The extent of this depended on how much popular support the party had.

In Ecuador, extensive protests and strikes prevented left-wing governments extensively liberalizing the economy and meant successor right-wing governments had to take a more gradual approach. In El Salvador, left-wing governments went unchallenged as they implemented economic reforms. Successive right-wing administrations faced little resistance to implementing a radical agenda that included even the adoption of bitcoin as legal tender alongside the United States dollar.

Dr. Pedro Perfeito da Silva, from the University of Exeter, examined economic policies in Ecuador and El Salvador since the late 2000s.

In Ecuador, the strength of the bottom-up pressure against marketization led the Correa administration to reshape the country's relationship with capital flows, deploying encompassing outflow controls and restrictive macroprudential regulations. During the following presidencies of Lenín Moreno, Guillermo Lasso, and Daniel Noboa pressure from indigenous movements and labor unions slowed down the adoption of neoliberal policies, contributing to watering down the deregulation of capital flows.

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