Foreign Policy and Regional Integration in Argentina: A Long and Winding Road
Argentinean economic and (particularly) foreign policies are often described as erratic. Indeed, the appointment of more than 50 ministers of foreign affairs between the mid-1940s and the late 1980s surely contributes to that view.1 Pundits explain this ‘erratic’ positioning as a fluctuation between contradictory poles, such as ‘Western alignment’ or the formulation of populist nationalist and non-alignment policies (Vacs, 2003, p. 289). What is erratic is, of course, a relative matter, both concerning variables of reference and in the (inevitable) comparison with other countries. However, with regard to regional integration there seems to be an established opinion that the ‘erratic pattern’ is less prominent. In fact, in this area, many pundits seem to agree that pro-integration polices have been an anomaly, even during periods when the lines of action were distanced from Western powers. Argentinean foreign policy had a more autonomous positions vis-a-vis big powers.
Estado y mercado en el nuevo desarrollismo
espanolEl nuevo desarrollismo no es una simple teoria economica, sino una estrategia nacional de desarrollo. Se diferencia del desarrollismo de los 50 en que no defiende amplias medidas para proteger a una industria infante y en que si bien le otorga al Estado un papel central, cree que para llevar a cabo su tarea, este debe ser financieramente solido y administrativamente eficiente. Por otro lado, a diferencia de la ortodoxia convencional, el nuevo desarrollismo no cree que el mercado pueda resolverlo todo ni que las instituciones deban limitarse a garantizar la propiedad privada y el cumplimiento de los contratos. El nuevo desarrollismo es entonces un tercer discurso, un conjunto de propuestas utiles para que los paises de desarrollo medio, como Brasil y Argentina, recuperen el tiempo perdido y logren ponerse a la par de las naciones mas prosperas. EnglishThe new developmentalism is not simply an economic theory; it is more a national development strategy. It is to be distinguished from the developmentalism of the fifties in that it no longer defends protectionist policies for infant industries and that, while conceding the State a central role, it insists that, to be effective, the State needs to be solvent in financial terms and administratively efficient. On the other hand, unlike conventional orthodoxies, the new developmentalism does not believe that the market can solve everything, nor that the role of the State should be limited to the defense of private property and the inviolability of contracts. The new developmentalism is a third discourse, a series of proposals designed to allow medium-sized developing countries like Brazil and Argentina to make up for lost time and catch up to the more prosperous countries.
Argentinean popular nationalism: A reaction to the Civilizadores' liberal project?
This article studies the political ideas of popular nationalism in Argentina as articulated by the influential publicist Arturo Jauretche. Nationalists in Argentina typically argued that vernacular liberals such as Alberdi, Sarmiento, Echeverría and Mitre imposed institutions modelled on foreign examples and aimed to re-craft society to make it fit these institutions. I argue that despite their condemnation of the so-called liberal civilizadores, Jauretche and some other nationalists shared with them an important theoretical commitment. More specifically, it is their common endorsement of what I call ‘social emanativism’ that helps explain the puzzling lack of interest on the part of popular nationalists in reforming the institutions they denounced as products of liberal imposition.