Economic developments in Argentina over the last half-century present a puzzle to observers: Before World War II, the nation's per capita income and standard of living were comparable to those in countries like Canada and Australia; today, Argentina is submerged in deep economic, social, and political crises. In analyzing the events that led to this reversal, the author enhances our understanding of the phenomenon of arrested economic development in Argentina and similar developing countries. Dr. Peralta-Ramos approaches the problem with a dialectical interpretation of contemporary Argentinian history, examining crucial economic and political developments since 1930 from the standpoint of class interests in conflict. She discusses early government strategies for industrialization and their consequences for economic growth and institutional stability, maintaining that state policies generated a struggle for the appropriation of income and, ultimately, for control of the state, not only between the middle classes and the urban working class but also between the agrarian and industrial sectors of the bourgeoisie. The ensuing political instability led to further fluctuations in economic policy, to an erosion of institutional legitimacy, and, eventually, to state terrorism. Ongoing political crisis, war, and military rule, as well as soaring speculation and dwindling capital, hastened the downward spiral of the Argentinian economy. Dr. Peralta-Ramos offers in this book an innovative theoretical approach for examining how power relations can inhibit economic development and produce a fragile institutional system that threatens democracy.

The process of demographic transition through which Argentina is passing is a window of both opportunities and challenges in economic and social terms. Argentina is still a young country in which the working-age population represents the largest proportion of its total population. Currently, the country just began a 30-year period with the most advantageous age structure of its population, which could favor greater economic growth. This situation, known as the 'demographic window of opportunity,' will last until the beginning of the 2040s. The dynamics of the fertility and mortality rates signify a gradual ageing of the population, with implications for various dimensions of the economy, the social protection system, public policies, and society in general. This book studies the opportunities and challenges that the demographic transition poses for the Argentine economy, its most important social sectors like the healthcare, education, and social protection systems, and the potential fiscal trade-offs that must be dealt with. The study shows that even though Argentina is moving through its demographic transition, it just recently began to enjoy the window of opportunity and this constitutes a great opportunity to achieve an accumulation of capital and future economic growth. Once the window of opportunity has passed, population ageing will have a significant impact on the level of expenditure, especially spending in the social protection system. This signifies a challenge from a fiscal policy point of view, because if long-term reforms are not undertaken to mediate these effects, the demographic transition will put pressure on the reallocation of fiscal resources among social sectors. Finally, population ageing poses concerns related to sustaining the rate of economic growth with a smaller working-age population. Taking advantage of the current window of opportunities, increasing savings that will finance the accumulation of capital, and increasing future labor force productivity in this way is a challenge for the Argentine economy.

In Workers’ Self-Management in Argentina, Marcelo Vieta homes in on the history, consolidation, and socio-political dimensions of Argentina’s empresas recuperadas por sus trabajadores (worker-recuperated enterprises), a worker-led company occupation movement that has surged since the turn-of-the-millennium and the country’s neo-liberal crisis.

Report offers an extended theoretical and methodological discussion of the logics of collective action and processes by which labor is incorporated into the substantive phases of democratic regime consolidation in the Southern Cone of Latin America. Keywords: South America; Class Compromise; Organized Labor; Argentina; Uruguay; Brazil.