The early adoption of Neoliberal policies in Argentina and its premature deindustrialization (1976-2001)

MARTÍN SCHORR; ANDRÉS WAINER

Paris

Congreso; World Economic History Congress; 2022

L'Ecole des Hautes Études en Sciencies Sociales (EHESS)

According to Dani Rodrik, premature deindustrialization, contrasting with the shrinking of manufacturing in developed countries, occurs in low and medium income economies much earlier than the historical norms and usually has detrimental effects on economic growth. The more often indicators for deindustrialization process are the manufacturing employment and the share of manufacturing in GDP. While technological progress is a key part to explain employment deindustrialization in the advanced countries, Rodrik says in the developing countries trade and globalization played a comparatively bigger role.In this paper we argue that, even these indicators are useful, other socio-economic and political variables should be considered to analyze some of deindustrialization process as Argentina’s. It was one of the fastest and deepest deindustrialization processes in the world: in 2001 the manufacturing value added was 5% below 1974’s, and 33% less considering population growth. Argentina’s deindustrialization process began earlier than most developed nations and also other Latin America’s countries as Brazil, with harsher consequences over economic growth (in 1974 Argentina’s GDP were 52,3% of Brazil’s, while in 2001 the rate was 33,2%). Our main hypothesis is that trade and globalization tendencies are not enough to explain Argentina’s deindustrialization and, therefore we should consider it as politically-induced. For this we study the role of neoliberal policies, which are not independent of the class struggle correlation of forces.