Once they had exhausted their disruptive potential, the Pink Tide subaltern constituencies lacked the leverage necessary to push further. Without constituencies with the structural power necessary to take on business elites, left governments focused on appeasing their followers with neo-corporatist welfare provision, avoiding harsh confrontations with leading economic sectors on which they relied for the revenues they redistributed. Ironically then, in one sense, Pink Tide commitments to their urban poor voters blocked more aggressive reforms. Pink Tide restraint, therefore, did not flow from pledges to defend the interests of commodity-based business elites and restore neoliberalism’s legitimacy. Its timidity, rather, was a symptom of the least costly strategy they could devise to satisfy their constituents’ interests and secure reelection, despite its built-in limitations.