Welfare state crisis and neo-liberal imposition in Argentina. The administrations of Menem and Alfonsin

The main aim of this piece is to explain the reasons why there was no continuity in Argentina's economic policy. The political immaturity in the practice of democracy in Argentina led to a bipartisan system as the only way to achieve institutional stability. Both political lines, how-ever, have in their ideas and actions certain concepts and procedures that are inherent to Argentina's unstable political situation.welfare state, neo-liberalism, Argentina’s economic policy, democracy

The Return of the State in Argentina

Argentina’s economic collapse in December 2001 is seen as perhaps the most emblematic evidence of the failure of neoliberalism in the developing world to provide sustainable and equitable economic growth. A new policy frame has gradually emerged since the crisis which relies on a more active state in the promotion of growth. This article examines the prospects for state-led growth in Argentina in the context of open markets. It explores the policies implemented since 2002 and asks to what extent they constitute a possible route to stable post-crisis governance.

Picturing Argentina: Myths, Movies, and the Peronist Vision

No individual has had greater impact on Argentine history than Juan Domingo Perón. The years 1943–1945, when he was an influential member in his nation’s governing junta, and 1946–1955, when he was its president, were tumultuous ones that transformed Argentina. Perón was a highly controversial figure, and his memory continues to provoke intense and often acrimonious debate. Moreover, the nature of his legacy resists neat classification. Many of his achievements were positive. He oversaw the passage of progressive social legislation, including women’s suffrage and prison reform, and he implemented programs that aided the nation’s poor and working classes. On the other hand, he tolerated no opposition and, as president, incarcerated even former supporters who questioned his actions, and he ordered the closure of newspapers that he judged inappropriately critical. His regime’s impact on the nation’s cinema is similarly difficult to classify. When Perón came to prominence, Argentina had developed one of the two major film industries in Latin America. His government intervened in this sphere to an unprecedented degree and in contradictory ways. It encouraged production by providing financial credits for filmmakers, and in 1948 Perón and his wife, Evita, a former actress, presided over the inauguration of the nation’s international film festival in Mar del Plata. Conversely, his administration blacklisted a remarkable number of directors and performers, censored and prohibited movies, and required all films made in Argentina to portray his regime’s accomplishments in a favorable manner. Although Perón’s central role in Argentine history and the need for an unbiased assessment of his impact on his nation’s cinema are beyond dispute, the existing scholarship on the subject is limited. In recent decades Argentina has witnessed a revival of serious film study, some of which has focused on the nation’s classical movies and, in one case, on Peronism. None of this work has been translated into English, however. The only recent book in English to study this topic divides its attention between Argentine cinema and radio and dedicates only one chapter to film during the Perón years. Picturing Argentina: Myths, Movies, and the Peronist Vision is the first English-language book that offers an extensive assessment of Argentine cinema during first Peronism. It is also the first study in any language that concentrates systematically on the evolution of social attitudes reflected in Argentine movies throughout those years and that assesses the period’s impact on subsequent filmmaking activity. By analyzing popular Argentine movies from this time through the prism of myth—second-order communication systems that present historically developed customs and attitudes as natural—the book traces the filmic construction of gender, criminality, race, the family, sports, and the military. It identifies in movies the development and evolution of mindsets and attitudes that may be construed as “Peronist.” By framing its consideration of films from the Perón years in the context of earlier and later ones, it demonstrates that this period accelerates—and sometimes registers backward-looking responses to—earlier progressive mythic shifts, and it traces the development in the 1950s of a critical mindset that comes to fruition in the “new cinema” of the 1960s. [From the Publisher]https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/books/1053/thumbnail.jp

Subverting the spaces of invitation? Local politics and participatory budgeting in post-crisis Buenos Aires

This paper examines the political situation in Argentina in the wake of the mass protests of December 2001, which became known as the Argentinazo. Following the unprecedented turmoil in the country, which led to the resignation of President De la Rua and to the largest sovereign default in history, business ground to a halt and unemployment soared, leaving over half the population living below the poverty line by June 2002. The paper considers what new forms of political participation have emerged since the Argentinazo and analyses their relationship to the state. In particular, it examines what Andrea Cornwall has termed "invited" spaces - whereby political spaces are opened up to non-state actors - and analyses what consequences they might have for democratic practices

EMERGENCE, ORGANIZATIONAL TRANSFORMATIONS, AND DECLINE OF THE PIQUETERO MOVEMENT: A COMPARATIVE INSTITUTIONAL EXPLANATION

This paper offers an institutional explanation for the growth, organizational transformations, and decline of the piquetero social movement in Argentina, developed from a comparative perspective based on Latin America. I analyze which institutional arrangements, political actors, and configurations of power contributed to the success and decline of the piqueteros. Applying the basic principles of the rational choice approach, I find that the success, decline, and transformation of the organizational structures of the piquetero movement were mainly produced by a political cycle of deep political division within the ruling party (the Peronist party). Other socio-economic explanatory factors were the over-regulated Argentine labor market, and the exogenous impact of the Argentine economic crisis through relatively high unemployment rates.piqueteros; emergence; decline; transformation; social movement; Argentina

Grassroots Agency: Participation and Conflict in Buenos Aires Shantytowns seen through the Pilot Plan for Villa 7 (1971–1975)

open access articleIn 1971, after more than a decade of national and municipal policies aimed at the top-down removal of shantytowns, the Buenos Aires City Council approved the Plan Piloto para la Relocalización de Villa 7 (Pilot Plan for the Relocation of Shantytown 7; 1971–1975, referred to as the Pilot Plan hereinafter). This particular plan, which resulted in the construction of the housing complex, Barrio Justo Suárez, endures in the collective memory of Argentines as a landmark project regarding grassroots participation in state housing initiatives addressed at shantytowns. Emerging from a context of a housing shortage for the growing urban poor and intense popular mobilizations during the transition to democracy, the authors of the Pilot Plan sought to empower shantytown residents in novel ways by: 1) maintaining the shantytown’s location as opposed to eradication schemes that relocated the residents elsewhere, 2) formally employing some of the residents for the stage of construction, as opposed to “self-help” housing projects in which the residents contributed with unpaid labor, and 3) including them in the urban and architectural design of the of the new housing. This paper will examine the context in which the Pilot Plan was conceived of as a way of re-assessing the roles of the state, the user, and housing-related professionals, often seen as antagonistic. The paper argues that residents’ fair participation and state intervention in housing schemes are not necessarily incompatible, and can function in specific social and political contexts through multiactor proposals backed by a political will that prioritizes grassroots agency

Conceptualizing kirchnerismo

What is the nature of kirchnerismo? The experience of the period encompassed by the presi-dencies of Nestor and Cristina Kirchner have generated greater controversy regarding its characterization. The article critically reviews the analysis that Ernesto Laclau and Guillermo O´Donnell made of kirchneris-mo through their respective conceptual models of populism and delegative democracy.Fil: Peruzzotti, Carlos Enrique. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad Torcuato di Tella; Argentin

Design Exchanges in Mid-Twentieth Century Buenos Aires: The Programme Parque Almirante Brown and its Process of Creative Appropriation

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.This article offers a critical analysis of planning and housing design in mid-twentieth century Buenos Aires, Argentina, within the wider global context of modern design and architecture. In particular, the article focuses on an urban development programme, Parque Almirante Brown (PAB), and on its design plans for slums, shantytowns and social housing. The PAB creatively intertwined elements from different design and planning traditions, including urban design approaches fostered by the Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM). This article argues that the way in which the PAB incorporated these approaches implies the selection of concepts that responded to the government’s political agenda. In other words, it was only through their intersection with local political anxieties that international ideas were included in the actual design of the programme. Specifically, with regard to informal settlements, the PAB followed modern architectural practices based on slum clearance. Simultaneously, it filtered out those ideas which celebrated the vernacular, registered positive aspects in slum life, or granted agency to grassroots groups. Thus, despite contemporaneous discussions which engaged with bottom-up participation, such as those of Team 10, the PAB ultimately proposed the eradication of the shantytowns and the forced displacement of their inhabitants