Argentina has most of the characteristics that various theories of democracy postulate as prerequisites for achieving liberal democracy: an urban industrial economy, key economic resources under domestic control, the absence of a peasantry, the absence of ethnic or religious cleavages, relatively high levels of education, strong interest groups, an

The victory of Alfonsn's Radicals in the November 1983 elections surprised most political observers by its depth and clarity. In this important and topical book, two Argentinian socialists briefly chart the country's political and economic history, before moving on to discuss the full-scale restructuring of the economy organized by the ruling junta. It was the crisis of this model, with its explicit ambitions of regional power, which drove Galtieri into the Malvinas adventure. The authors persuasively argue that although the integration of these bleak, inescapably dependent offshore islands with Argentina represents the only progressive solution, the junta's goal of self-aggrandizement gave the operation a reckless and overwhelmingly reactionary stamp. Itself the result of the crisis of military rule, the disastrous war with Thatcher's Britain intensified all the contradictions of the regime and isolated it from its original base of support in society. A concluding section written for this edition analyses the significance of the election results, especially for the declining Peronist movement and the left-wing groups and parties that threw themselves behind the war. First publication in English of a major, critical work from Argentina on the Malvinas/Falklands War and its aftermath.

Until 1930, Argentina was one of the great hopes for stable democracy in Latin America. Argentines themselves believed in the destiny of their nation to become the leading Latin American country in wealth, power, and culture. But the revolution of 1930 unleashed the scourges of modern militarism and chronic instability in the land. Between 1930 and 1966, the Argentine armed forces, or factions of the armed forces, overthrew the government five times. For several decades, militarism was the central problem in Argentine political life. In this study, Marvin Goldwert interprets the rise, growth, and development of militarism in Argentina from 1930 to 1966. The tortuous course of Argentine militarism is explained through an integrating hypothesis. The army is viewed as a “power factor,” torn by a permanent dichotomy of values, which rendered it incapable of bringing modernization to Argentina. Caught between conflicting drives for social order and modernization, the army was an ambivalent force for change. First frustrated by incompetent politicians (1916–1943), the army was later driven by Colonel Juan D. Perón into an uneasy alliance with labor (1943–1955). Peronism initially represented the means by which army officers could have their cake—nationalistic modernization—and still eat it in peace, with the masses organized in captive unions tied to an authoritarian state. After 1955, when Perón was overthrown, a deeply divided army struggled to contain the remnants of its own dictatorial creation. In 1966, the army, dedicated to staunch anti-Peronism, again seized the state and revived the dream of reconciling social order and modernization through military rule. Although militarism has been a central problem in Argentine political life, it is also the fever that suggests deeper maladies in the body politic. Marvin Goldwert seeks to relate developments in the military to the larger political, social, and economic developments in Argentine history. The army and its factions are viewed as integral parts of the whole political spectrum during the period under study.

This book accounts for the process of emergence and constitution of the human rights movement and discourse during the last military dictatorship in Argentina (1976-1983). Central to this account is the contention that the movement’s emergence and constitution should not be understood as a necessary or as a natural response to the atrocities carried out by the last military regime, but instead as the result of a contingent process of political articulation and as a response which could have failed in its constitution and success.Thus, the appearance of the human rights movement and discourse in the country can only be understood in its full complexity if attention is given to this very process of popular mobilisation and political articulation that took place during 1976-1982.

This book offers a new approach to the democratisation process and economic adjustment in Argentina during the 1980s. The objective of the book is to provid the key to understanding the changes undergone by the state and economy in the 1990s.