Paradoxically, today's economic restructuring along neoliberal lines, which involves a decreasing role for the state in the economy (Biersteker, 1995), contains the possibility of introducing or strengthening democratic participatory decision making in the resource-rich semiperipheral nations. These countries occupy contradictory positions of domination and subordination in the world system. They have an awareness of their dependency but also the means for contestation of neoliberal globalism (Laxer, 2004). However, given that the dominant fractions of their ruling classes tend to agree and promote neoliberal globalism (Valdes Ugalde, 1996), contestation must come from below. In turn, challenging neoliberal globalism from below requires the existence and deepening of democratic governance. In Latin America, this democratization process is taking place endogenously at most levels of society, even while it appears that the economic requirements of globalization are being exogenously imposed. Eventually, deepening democracy in semiperipheral developing societies, in conjunction with a strengthening of civil societies in advanced industrial nations, may lead to an economic-model change, from neoliberal globalism toward one that is more compatible with a redistributive and environmentally sustainable model of development. The new society could resemble a popular democratic and multicultural type of nationalism.